Description:
When Barack Obama learns of the death of his African father, whom he hardly knew, he is compelled to trace his unusual family history. Obama, who became a nationally known figure in 2004 when he gave the keynote address at the Democratic Convention, writes movingly about being raised in Hawaii by his white mother. He goes on to describe his years at Harvard (where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review), his illuminating visit to family members in Kenya, and his work as a community activist in Chicago, where he eventually entered Illinois politics. Elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama was offered a book contract, but the intellectual journey he planned to recount became instead this poignant, probing memoir of an unusual life. Born in 1961 to a white American woman and a black Kenyan student, Obama was reared in Hawaii by his mother and her parents, his father having left for further study and a return home to Africa. So Obama's not-unhappy youth is nevertheless a lonely voyage to racial identity, tensions in school, struggling with black literaturewith one month-long visit when he was 10 from his commanding father. After college, Obama became a community organizer in Chicago. He slowly found place and purpose among folks of similar hue but different memory, winning enough small victories to commit himself to the workhe's now a civil rights lawyer there. Before going to law school, he finally visited Kenya; with his father dead, he still confronted obligation and loss, and found wellsprings of love and attachment. Obama leaves some lingering questionshis mother is virtually absentbut still has written a resonant book. Copyright 2005 Publishers Weekly.
- Author:
- Obama, Barack
- ISBN:
- 9781400082773
- Format:
- Paperback
- Pages:
- 448
- Publish Date:
- 08/31/2004
- Publisher:
- Three Rivers Pr
- Language:
- English
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