I keep hearing that Barack Obama came from a working class background and was raised by a single mother. Why, then, did he title his book Dreams from my Father? If his father didn’t help raise him, shouldn’t he give his mother more props? Or he just fabricating the single Mom story for a working class audience?
Originally posted 2008-11-06 16:05:27.
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Indeed he was raised mainly by his mother and grandmother; he had a stepfather for a while.
As to he titled his book the way he did, I can only speculate. I haven’t even read it. But I have the impression of Barack as a man who is seeking his identity, not yet sure who he is. This in spite of the fact that he is a highly accomplished and capable person with a loving wife and kids. He still yearns for that father whom he doesn’t really know at all.
As I said, this is my impression.
I did actually read, or rather, listen, to the book. Its called dreams from my father specifically because he didn’t know his father. As growing up a black man he had a fantasy of his father, the dream part, that proved to be untrue when he grew older. That’s kinda the point of the book. It doesn’t honor his father. It talks about how he idealized the father he never knew, as part of his understanding of being half-black, and how much of his young life was about learning the truth and reconciling the issue of race in his life.
And actually, the forward of the book he’s since added talks about how his mother died some time after, and if he had his time back he would have written a book that celebrated the parent that was in his life, rather than, and I quote him, a meditation on the absent parent..