Ubalblog

[  Mood: Happy ]
Barak Obama is the great black hope of the current US election. But before this year, he had a pretty interesting life. This book is a memoir of his coming to grips with the absence of a father in his life.

The work spans his childhood to his time as an organizer in Chicago to his visit to his father’s famiuly in Kenya. In it, he is very blunt about his own shortcomings as well as his successes.

While it is a memoir, this book is also a snap shot of race in America. Barak grows up one of the few black people in Hawaii. And while he experienced some racism and challenges because of this, it was not a typical childhood. His time in Chicago showed him what might be termed "the typical black experience", opening Barak’s eyes to what most blacks went through.

This book was written long before Barak became a politician, yet is interesting to see some familiar themes that keep popping up. The imortance of fathers and the impact of not having one on young men’s lives reoccures again and again, both in the US and in Africa. Now I understand where a lot of the passion from his recent Father’s Day speech came from.

This was a worthwhile read. I am waiting for The Audacity of Hope to come in from the library.