President Barack Obama’s first book “Dreams From My Father”, written fifteen years back at age 33 before holding any public office, is a compelling account of his persistent enquiry into his identity. Born in Honolulu of a black African father and a white American mother, who divorced while he was still two years of age. His mother married subsequently an Indonesian scholar. He was brought up by his mother and grandparents in Hawaii and Jakarta in an essentially white family milieu. Yet, his mixed racial descent kept teasing him about his identity. The circumstances and environ in which he was raised in Indonesia by his mother and in Hawaii by her parents, could not have prepared him to be black in America’s racially polarized society. His dilemma: His veins carried blood of both sides. He could see that he was black, but how could he be black when his nurturing family was white; his black African father was not more than a few stories he had heard from his mother and her parents and some photos.
His father did come to Hawaii for a month’s visit when Obama was ten - too young to clearly comprehend his predicament and seek his father’s advice on it. Also he found the father to be forbiddingly distant. Before he could meet him again, he died in a drunk driving car accident in 1982.
The image he nurtured in his mind of his father was the one he had developed on the basis of the accounts of his mother and grandparents. This was not a satisfying image for the inquisitive mind of Obama. The news of his father’s sudden death prompted in him the quest to find out for himself the truth about his father and seek fuller information about both sides of his family to gain a clearer picture of his descent that might help him to reconcile to his troubled inheritance.
His travels to Kansas, Hawaii and finally to Kenya were actually his journeys of heart and mind into the whirlpool of racial identity, antediluvian beliefs, grueling poverty, and prejudices. His meetings in Kenya with paternal grandmother and step brothers and sisters appear to have rewarded him with a clearer comprehension of his life as a black American.
There is much in common in the format of Obama’s book and that of Mahatma Gandhi’s “The Story of My Experiments with Truth”. Also, it bears resemblance to Alex Haley’s celebrated novel “Roots: The Saga of An American Family”. All of these works delve deep into the concerned individuals’ past in search of truth.
The treatment meted out to the African slaves till the abolition of slavery in 1865, is universally condemned now. But that is not an issue relevant to the enquiry of Obama; nor, to the narration. For, it recounts his journey from a happy, race-less boy running barefoot through the muddy back streets of Jakarta to a bewildered adolescent and student in Honolulu, Los Angeles and New York to an eager and dedicated community organizer on Chicago’s South Side.
The narrative runs till the entry of Obama in Harvard Law School. He decided to visit his paternal family in Kenya during the free period before the commencement of his Harvard law classes. His father had died when he was 21 but he could fulfill his desire of a visit to Kenya when he was 28.
He had built in his mind a lofty image of his father as a distant paragon, a super-man. During his sojourn in Kenya and in conversations with members of his large family there, he discovers that his father had many tragic flaws. No doubt he was a hardworking, scholarly person, but given to wild dreams and erratic conduct causing severe ups and downs in his life. He would be rolling in wealth at one turn of his life and become penny-less at the other. His potentials were restricted by the flaws in his conduct.
Obama had always imagined his father to be “the brilliant scholar, the generous friend, the upstanding leader”, but on the touch of reality that image was shattered and replaced by “a bitter drunk, an abusive husband and a lonely bureaucrat”.
His children, however, appeared to have inherited his genetic brilliance, and turned out to be high achievers. Obama outshone them all. At age 47, he became the first black President of the US, and the most powerful man of the world. And, he was conferred the Nobel Prize for Peace for a change of course in favor of peace in the world arena. He ended a very unpopular war in Iraq, decided to close down Guatanamo Bay, a notorious US prison, and gave a stirring message of peace and reconciliation to the Muslim world, challenging and negating the questionable concept of the clash of civilizations. He is actively engaged in seeking a solution to the Palestinian issue. And, he has convinced the world that the war in Afghanistan was one of necessity to eradicate Al Qaeda and its minions, universally seen as an unmitigated evil.
In his upbringing, the most crucial role was played by his remarkable mother. While in Jakarta, she would get up at 4 am to teach him English and other subjects, since the quality of education he was receiving at a local school did not measure up to her expectations. No wonder he has such an excellent command on the language and its idiosyncrasies.
In the preface to the 2004 edition of the book, he remembers her in the following word: “I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness (cancer), I might have written a different book - less a meditation on an absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life. I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her.”
Any one who has read the book closely would find not an iota of exaggeration in the above tribute of Obama to his mother. What he learned in Kenya about his father shattered the image he had built in his own mind about the stature and achievements of the man.
His mother became instead his ideal, and he sees her as the role model for his daughters.
Although the book falls in the category of autobiographies, it has been crafted like a novel. It is fast-paced, liberally sprinkled with dialogues and well-sketched scenarios, and the interaction of various figures in the narrative push narrative forward without the writer having to drag it ahead. It rivets the attention of the reader like a thrilling work of fiction. The techniques used by Mr. Obama will offer a lesson or two to even experienced fiction writers.
arifhussaini@hotmail.com
