Book & Author
Kamala Harris: The Truths We Hold — An American Journey
Sally McDean: The Tim Walz Story — The Journey of Minnesota’s 41 st Governor and How He Became a Champion for Education, Veterans and Social Justice.
By Dr Ahmed S. Khan
In her autobiography TheTruths We Hold — An American Journey Vice President Kamala Harris chronicles her life, from childhood in Oakland, California, to her rise in American Politics: her upbringing as the daughter of immigrant parents — an esteemed economist from Jamaica and an admired cancer researcher from India—met as activists in the civil rights movement when they were graduate students at Berkeley, her family’s activism in civil rights movement; her career in law enforcement and her efforts to bring victims of crime and violent offenders; her political journey of becoming first African-American woman to get elected as District Attorney in San Francisco, Attorney General of California, and eventually a US senator; her contributions to policy formations in areas of healthcare, the economy, immigration, national security, and Opioid crisis; her values and vision which guided her to excel in her career and vision of the country.
The 2024 presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is very close. Polls indicate the two candidates are neck-to-neck in several battleground states. But the polls lack reliability and validity. For example, during the 2016 election, poll site FiveThirtyEight predicted that Hilary Clinton had a strong chance of winning; at one point their forecast gave her a 79% chance of victory compared to Donald Trump’s 20%, in reality, all rural America was red with Trump yard signs. In 2024, again polls and media are showing a tight race, and yet the ground reality is quite different — rural America is again red with Trump yard signs.
In 2024, polls indicate a historic male-female gap — women are decisively backing Harris 53% to 36%, whereas men offering overwhelming support for Trump, 53% to 37%. Many of Kamala Harris’s opponents have voiced concern that her not being elected through a democratic process undermines the democratic principle.
Pakistani-American and Muslim voters are also keeping a distance from the Democrats because of Biden administration’s operation regime change (a mega blunder per policy analysts) to topple Imran Khan’s democratically elected government in Pakistan — by Generals’ rule, and its inaction to stop the ongoing AI-assisted genocide in Gaza. In Harris’s political rallies, Arab leaders have been ejected on a regular basis, further alienating her from Muslim voters — a crucial factor in battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Muslim voters could prove to swing the outcome of the election.
People have also compared Kamala Harris to Barack Obama; like him, she is also of mixed race (Jamaican father and Indian mother), but her book does not come close to Obama’s eloquent book Dreams from My Father, Harris’s book looks like a campaign brochure. In addition to a preface, the book has ten chapters: 1. For the People, 2. A Voice for Justice, 3. Underwater, 4. Wedding Bells, 5. I say we fight, 6. We are better than this, 7. Every Body, 8. The Cost of Living, 9 Smart on Security, and 10. What I’ve learned.
In the preface, the author, emphasizing speaking truth, observes: “This book grows out of that call, and out of my belief that our fight must begin and end with speaking truth. I believe there is no more important and consequential antidote for these times than a reciprocal relationship of trust. You give and you receive trust. And one of the most important ingredients in a relationship of trust is that we speak the truth. It matters what we say. What we mean. The value we place on our words—and what they are worth to others. We cannot solve our most intractable problems unless we are honest about what they are, unless we are willing to have difficult conversations and accept what facts make plain. We need to speak truth: that racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and anti-Semitism are real in this country, and we need to confront those forces. We need to speak truth: that, with the exception of Native Americans, we all descend from people who weren't born on our shores —whether our ancestors came to America willingly, with hopes of a prosperous future, or forcibly, on a slave ship, or desperately, to escape a harrowing past.”
Continuing her emphasis on speaking the truth, the author states: “We cannot build an economy that gives dignity and decency to American workers unless we first speak truth; that we are asking people to do more with less money and to live longer with less security. Wages haven't risen in forty years, even as the costs of health care, tuition, and housing have soared. The middle class is living paycheck to paycheck. We must speak truth about our mass incarceration crisis—that we put more people in prison than any country on earth, for no good reason. We must speak truth about police brutality, about racial bias, about the killing of unarmed black men. We must speak truth about pharmaceutical companies that pushed addictive opioids on unsuspecting communities and payday lenders and for-profit colleges that have leeched on to vulnerable Americans and overloaded them with debt. We must speak truth about greedy, predatory corporations that have turned deregulation, financial speculation, and climate denialism into creed. And I intend to do just that.”
Describing the nature of the book, the author notes: “This book is not meant to be a policy platform, much less a fifty-point plan. Instead, it is a collection of ideas and viewpoints and stories, from my life and from the lives of the many people I've met along the way.”
Concluding the preface of the book, the author states: “Just two more things to mention before we get started: First, my name is pronounced ‘comma-la,’ like the punctuation mark. It means ‘lotus flower,’ which is a symbol of significance in Indian culture. A lotus grows underwater, its flower rising above the surface while its roots are planted firmly in the river bottom. And second, I want you to know how personal this is for me. This is the story of my family. It is the story of my childhood. It is the story of the life I have built since then. You'll meet my family and my friends, my colleagues and my team. I hope you will cherish them as I do and, through my telling, see that nothing I have ever accomplished could have been done on my own. — Kamala, 2018”
Introducing her parents, the author states: “My father, Donald Harris, was born in Jamaica in 1938. He was a brilliant student who immigrated to the United States after being admitted to the University of California at Berkeley. He went there to study economics and would go on to teach economics at Stanford, where he remains a professor emeritus. My mother's life began thousands of miles to the east, in southern India. Shyamala Gopalan was the oldest of four children—three girls and a boy. Like my father, she was a gifted student, and when she showed a passion for science, her parents encouraged and supported her. She graduated from the University of Delhi at nineteen. And she didn't stop there. She applied to a graduate program at Berkeley, a university she'd never seen, in a country she'd never visited. It's hard for me to imagine how difficult it must have been for her parents to let her go. Commercial jet travel was only just starting to spread globally. It wouldn't be a simple matter to stay in touch. Yet, when my mother asked permission to move to California, my grandparents didn't stand in the way. She was a teenager when she left home for Berkeley in 1958 to pursue a doctorate in nutrition and endocrinology, on her way to becoming a breast cancer researcher.”
Continuing her introduction to parents, the author notes: “My mother was expected to return to India after she completed her degree. Her parents had an arranged marriage. It was assumed my mother would follow a similar path. But fate had other plans. She and my father met and fell in love at Berkeley while participating in the civil rights movement. Her marriage—and her decision to stay in the United States—were the ultimate acts of self-determination and love. My parents had two daughters together. My mother received her PhD at age twenty-five, the same year I was born. My beloved sister, Maya, came two years later … Music filled our home. My mother loved to sing along to gospel—from Aretha Franklin's early work to the Edwin Hawkins Singers… My father cared about music just as much as my mother. He had an extensive jazz collection, so many albums that they filled all the shelving against one of the walls. Every night, I would fall asleep to the sounds of Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, or Miles Davis.”
Reflecting on the divorce of her parents, the author states: “But the harmony between my parents didn't last. In time, things got harder. They stopped being kind to each other. I knew they loved each other very much, but it seemed they'd become like oil and water. By the time I was five years old, the bond between them had given way under the weight of incompatibility. They separated shortly after my dad took a job at the University of Wisconsin, and divorced a few years later. They didn't fight about money. The only thing they fought about was who got the books. I've often thought that had they been a little older, more emotionally mature, maybe the marriage could have survived.”
Describing her mother’s traits and affection, the author states: “My mother was barely five foot one, but I felt like she was six foot two. She was smart and tough and fierce and protective. She was generous, loyal, and funny. She had only two goals in life: to raise her two daughters and to end breast cancer...My mother, grandparents, aunts, and uncle instilled us with pride in our South Asian roots. Our classical Indian names harked back to our heritage, and we were raised with a strong awareness of and appreciation for Indian culture. All of my mother's words of affection or frustration came out in her mother tongue—which seems fitting to me, since the purity of those emotions is what I associate with my mother most of all. My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women.”
Reflecting on President Trump’s executive order to impose travel ban on seven Muslim countries, the author observes: “The president had signed an executive order banning travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries—Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—for a period of 90 days. He barred refugees from coming to the United States for 120 days and barred refugees from Syria indefinitely. Travelers started getting detained at airports, unable to speak with lawyers. Families were panicking as their loved ones failed to emerge from airport security. I received calls from activists and lawyers, including Meena, who had rushed to airports to try to help people who were being detained. There was chaos. So I called John Kelly. By then he had been confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security, and I needed to find out what was going on and to make sure that anyone being detained would get access to a lawyer. There were a lot of ways Secretary Kelly could have shown his responsiveness, a lot of information he could have provided. Indeed, the American people had a right to this information, and, given my oversight role on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, I intended to get it. Instead, he said gruffly, ‘Why are you calling me at home with this?’ That was his chief concern.”
Reminiscing about her mother’s Cancer treatment and last moments, the author states: “My mother's cancer treatment acquired a grim kind of routine. During the day, I would take her to the hospital for chemotherapy. We'd see many of the same people every time — men and women of all different ages, hooked up to a machine that was infusing their bodies with the toxic drugs they hoped would save their lives. It took on a strange familiarity, an abnormal sense of normalcy. If I had to, I'd drop her off and pick her up when chemo was done, but I preferred to wait and keep her company, and she preferred it, too. Sometimes the chemo would steal her appetite… When my mother was asleep, I would walk down the long corridors, glancing into the rooms as I passed. Sometimes people would look up. Sometimes they wouldn't. And all too often, they were lying there alone. I left that experience convinced that no one should have to face a hospital stay without support — and that many do. My mother's circumstance could feel overwhelming. Chemotherapy is depleting; oftentimes my mother was too wiped out to do anything but sleep. Meanwhile, there were so many medications, possible side effects, counter-indications, and things to keep track of. What if she had a bad reaction to a new medicine, as happened more than once?... One of the last questions she asked the hospice nurse, the last concern on her mind, was ‘Are my daughters going to be okay?’ She was focused on being our mother until the very end. And though I miss her every day, I carry her with me wherever I go. I think of her all the time. Sometimes I look up and talk to her. I love her so much. And there is no title or honor on earth I'll treasure more than to say I am Shyamala Gopalan Harris's daughter. That is the truth I hold dearest of all.”
Commenting on the power of words, the author observes: “Words have the ability to empower and to deceive, the power to soothe and to hurt. They can spread important ideas and wrongheaded ones. They can spur people to action, for good or ill. Words are incredibly powerful, and people in power, whose words can carry farthest and fastest, have an obligation — a duty — to speak them with precision and wisdom. Scripture tells us, ‘The one who has knowledge uses words with restraint, and whoever has understanding is even tempered.’”
The Truths We Hold — An American Journey presents Harris’s political insights and personal anecdotes; but it has a number of shortcomings — 1. It does not delve deeply into policy issues or controversies or more detailed analysis.2. It lacks a scholarly tone and appears like a campaign document. 3. It has too much redundancy — repetition of themes and stories. 4. It lacks originality; the opening of the book is like Elizabeth Warren’s book. Despite these shortcomings, it offers an overview of Harris’s journey, her emphasis on the importance of collective struggle, and her insights for a vision for America’s future.
In terms of intellectual output of candidates; Harris is the author of three books, Trump thirteen books, J D Vance just one, and Tim Walz none. Not many books are available on Tim Walz in the libraries and bookstores except “The Tim Walz Story: The Journey of Minnesota’s 41 st Governor…” by Sally McDean, written in very simple language. Sally McDean is known for her work on biographies and memoirs; she has authored several books which also include “V.P. Harris vs. Trump? 2024 U.S. Elections: Exploring Kamala’s Strength, the Possibilities of Being a Candidate and Winning Trump If Biden Passes Torch to Her.” There are a number of books written against Tim Walz, which include “Stolen Valor: The Military Fraud and Government Failure of Tim Walz,” by Josh Mannina and Erin Brownback, and “Behind the Veil: A Stand Against Governor Tim Walz” by Paul Gazelka.
The Tim Walz Story: The Journey of Minnesota’s 41 st Governor… spanning six chapters, chronicles Tim Walz’s career path — how his personal conviction and public service shaped areas of education, veterans’ affairs, and social justice in Minnesota. The book also highlights his service in the National Guard, his career as a teacher, and his entry into politics leading to his tenure as Governor of Minnesota. While the book’s major strength is that it highlights his dedication to public service, it has a few shortcomings: 1. Lack of analysis of his policies and decisions, 2. Political bias in dealing with his challenges and controversies, and 3. Redundancy, many themes and stories are repeated, and 4. Lack of scholarly tone. Despite these drawbacks, the book offers a valuable perspective on Tim Walz’s contributions and their impact on Minnesota.
The Truths We Hold — An American Journey by Kamala Harris, and The Tim Walz Story — The Journey of Minnesota’s 41 st Governor and How He Became a Champion for Education, Veterans and Social Justice, by Sally McDean are two important books that provide personal backgrounds and political struggles, and political insights and visions for future of presidential and vice presidential candidates of the Democratic party.
(Dr Ahmed S. Khan — dr.a.s.khan@ieee.org — is a Fulbright Specialist Scholar)
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