Book Review - Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama

This is Barack Obama's first book, written before he became Senator, while he was in law school, and after he had become the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.

He talks about his childhood and teenage experiences, and his trip to Kenya. He also talks about his experiences as a community organizer. I was reminded of another book that I've read - "The Color of Water", by James McBride.

I don't know what to say about this book. It made me uncomfortable - with how much race has divided us as a country and a planet. It made me more comfortable with Mr. Obama - with how his experiences have helped prepare him to be President, and more importantly, with how they have prepared him to be a good leader.

I think I understand race better as a result of reading this book. I think I understand why people feel divided and discriminated against even when they aren't. And, I can see how they are discriminated against extensively.

And the book has a number of episodes that I can relate to, such as the one of page 104-105, from Mr. Obama's first year of college at Occidental:

Her voice evoked a vision of black life in all its possiblity, a vision that
filled me with longing - a longing for place, and a fixed and definite history.
As we were getting up to leave, I told Regiona I envied her.
"For
what?"
"I don't know. For your memories, I guess."
Regina looked at me and
started to laugh, a round, full sound from deep in her belly."What's so
funny?"
"Oh Barack, " she said, catching her breath, "isn't life something?
And here I was all this time wishing I'd grown up in Hawaii."

I can relate to this quote. I think all of this envy others, or feel left out for one reason or another. In this case, Mr. Obama didn't feel like he fit in with whites or blacks, because he didn't share their experiences, when in some cases others envied him for his experiences.

I think it is impossible to sum up this book, for you need to read it to really absorb the message in a way that will stick with you. Mr. Obama does a good job of summarizing, or at least concluding, in his epilogue, page 439:

"In my legal practice, I work mostly with churches and community
groups, men and women who quietly build grocery stores and health clinics in the
inner city, and housing for the poor. Every so often I'll find
myself working on a discrimination case, representing clients who show up at my
law firm's office with stories that we like to tell ourselves should no longer
exist.

... at some point both plaintiff and witness decide that a
principle is at stake, that despite everything that has happened, those words
put to paper over two hundred years ago must mean something after all (referring
to the bill of rights - my comment inserted). Black and white, they make
their claim on this community we call America. They choose our better
history."

That, I believe, is what leadership is all about - all of us choosing our better history, and making our better future. Choose what is right about our history, and choose to carry that right forward into our own future, and our children's future.

Mr. Obama is a good writer, and the book is easy to read, but thought provoking. It is published by Three Rivers Press, a part of Crown Publishing, http://www.crownpublishing.com/, which is in turn a part of Random House, Inc.