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| Plot Summary of Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance |
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"Barack Obama wrote this memoir over ten years ago before he became the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois. In candid detail Obama shares his story of being raised by a white mother and grandparents in Hawaii while his father lived in Kenya. At the time of Obama's birth in 1961, his parents were enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a native of Kenya had left the states and return to Kenya when Obama was only two years old. Obama's mother, Shirley Ann Dunham, of Wichita, Kansas stayed in Hawaii for awhile until she married Obama's stepfather and then was moved to Indonesia until he was ten years old. His mother sent Obama back to Hawaii to live with her parents and it was there under the care of his grandparents his strong character started to form.
Education was emphasized in his family strongly and he went to college, moved to Chicago and took up community organizing in the Altgeld Gardens housing project on the city's South Side. While living in Chicago, Obama began to witness corruption, poverty, and racism and was compelled to make a change. He left Chicago for three years to study law at Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude. Obama returned to Chicago empowered with knowledge of law and pursued to make many changes.
After his father's death and not really knowing his father or his inheritance Obama goes to Kenya to met his African family and learn of his heritage and customs. At the end of the book Barack Obama shares his Keynote Address at the Democratic Convention on July 27, 2004.
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Susan D. Minkalis, Resident Scholar
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"Since he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Barack Obama has been very much in the news. Today he's one of the most outspoken of the Democrats in the U.S. and he has a brand new book out that discusses today's political climate and changes he thinks the US should make. Reading that book made me go back to find this one, which is very different. It's an autobiography that covers Obama's life before he was in the limelight, ending about ten years ago.
Barack Obama is the son of a Kenyan man and an American woman. They met while enrolled in graduate school in Hawaii. When their baby was just two years old, they divorced and Barack Obama, Sr., returned to Kenya. His son would see him very little after that. Soon Ann remarried and she and her new husband and the young Barack moved to Jakarta. When he was ten, however, they moved back to Hawaii, where he would be thenceforth be raised by his mother and grandparents. It was while he is the fifth grade that Barack began to realize how different he was from most of his classmates, being of mixed race. It was around the same time that he spent a long period with his father, of about a month. This was a painful period. His father was a very demanding man who really put Barack through his paces, demanding he read works of black literature that were above the boy's head.
Graduating from high school, Barack Obama got a rocky start at Occidental College, where he indulged in drugs and alcohol. But eventually he settled down, enrolling at Columbia. When he graduated he went to live in Chicago, where he became a community activist. Just before he enrolled at Harvard's law school, he decided to take a trip to Kenya to visit the relatives of his father, who had since died.
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Ann Gaines, Resident Scholar
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| Review Analysis of Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance |
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Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Political/social rights fight
Yes
Plotlet:
- minorities fighting for rights
Ethnic/Relig. of subject (inside)
- Black
If this is a culture clash:
- minority culture living in majority area
Ethnic/regional/gender
Yes
Period of greatest activity?
- 1950+
Subject of Biography
Gender
- Male
Profession/status:
- politician/elected ruler
Age:
- 20's-30's
- 40's-50's
Biography of famous person?
Yes
Ethnicity
- Black
Nationality
- American (!)
How sensitive is this person?
- sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor
- Strong but gentle sense of humor
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other people
Physique
- average physique
Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings?
- 5 ()
United States
Yes
The US:
- Midwest
- Hawaii
Africa
Yes
Kind of Africa:
- Black Africa
Century:
- 1980's-Present
Style
Person
- mostly 1st
Accounts of torture and death?
- no torture/death
Book makes you feel?
- challenged
- thoughtful
Commentary on society?
Yes
Commentary on
- race
Writer's slant towards subject:
- favorable
Story of entire life, or part?
- story of nearly entire life
- story of set of events during life
Autobiography?
Yes
Pictures/Illustrations?
- None
- A lot 11-15 B&W
How much dialogue in bio?
- roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
- significantly more descript than dialog
How much of bio focuses on most famous period of life?
- 0-25% of book
How much is philosophy rather than life story?
- 0-25% of book
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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