Dreams from My Father- Part II (pages 77-152)

Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2004.



As a recap, in the first section of this book we learn about Barack's feelings about his father's death, and about his solitary attitude in his earlier years. In the next section, we see a little more insight to his growing up years. He learns things that a lot of teenagers learned, too. One thing he learned was particularly relevant. He writes that the kids on his basketball taught him "That respect came from what you did and not who your daddy was. That you could talk stuff to rattle an opponent, but that you should shut the hell up if you couldn't back it up. That you didn't let anyone sneak up behind you to see emotions- like hurt or fear- that you didn't want them to see. (79)" I found this very interesting, because I hear from parents and sometimes teachers that kids don't seem to care about things, and that's really not true. But a good number of teenagers do conceal their emotions, like pain or fear, because those emotions aren't accepted in their societies or groups. I know my parents tell me they often can't tell what I think about something they've said, because I have grown used to not using very much emotion. This is true for many teenagers, it seems. This quote is also a good representative of the idea of respect, in that in modern times it has to be earned, not simply given. You generally don't respect someone until they have given you a good reason to. That reason can be a talent they have, or a position or office they hold. It could even just be the way they treat you. But there is always a reason you respect someone. Obama is learning these things from the kids his age that he hangs out with, which shows us that he isn't very solitary at this age. He doesn't become solitary until later in his life. Another example of his maturing is the description he uses to describe the way teenagers decide what they want to do or be. He explains "so that how to live is bought off the rack or found in magazines, the principal difference between me and most of the man-boys around me- the surfers, the football players, the would be rock and roll guitarists- resided on the number of options at my disposal (79)." By this he means that the only difference between him, who wanted to play basketball, and all the other kids who did other things, was that they had different options to take, different possibilities based on their families, their friends, and all the other things that influenced them. And, not to be racist, but a young African American boy sees African American men playing basketball and he might decide that's what he wants to be, and the people around him will support that, because it makes sense and it goes along with the stereotype.

Outside Reading- Dreams from My Father (part one)

Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 1995.

For my outside reading, I am reading Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama. It is the story of his struggles to find himself as a kid, being torn between the life of his father and ancestors in Kenya and his life in the states.

A brief background for those of you want to more about the man who will be our next president, Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama, Sr. was from Kenya. He met Barak's mother in the states, and they were married. When Barack Jr. was 2, his parents divorced. His father went back to Kenya, and his mother moved the family to Indonesia, because she had found a job there. He returned to Hawaii for his high school year, where he admitted that he used drugs such as marijuana and cocaine. He described this as "his greatest moral failure" at the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency. Obama later attended Harvard Law School, where he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He then moved to Chicago, where he was the director of the Developing Communities Project of south side Chicago. He ran and was elected senator of Illinois in 1996, and is now the next president of the United States.

This story begins with Barack living in New York, a few months after his twenty first birthday. He is a solitary person. He isn't sad about it, he just likes his privacy. He says "If the talk began to wander, or cross the border into familiarity, I would soon find reason to excuse myself. I had grown comfortable in my solitude, it was the safest place I know" (4). This allows us to infer a little about his past. The "safest place" bit tells us that he might have had some bad experiences with people in a past life, and now he stays solitary because he doesn't really feel safe reaching out to people any more because of these experiences. He will talk to people, and be polite and friendly, but he isnt putting any of himself into the conversation, he's just agreeing and saying things that dont give the other people any idea who he really is. It is at this point that his mother calls and tells him his father has died in a car crash. He doesn't really feel sad about it, because at this point he hasnt seen his father in about 15 years, and when he did see him he never go to know him as a father. Right after his aunt gives him the news, he says " The line cut off, and I sat down on the couch, smelling eggs burn in the kitchen, staring at cracks in the plaster, trying to measure up my loss (5)" He doesn't have any idea how he sohuld be feeling at that moment, because his father was never really his father to him. It would be like if some man you'd never seen, only heard of, came you your door and told you he was your father, and then many many years later, you learn he died in a car crash. You would probably not be wailing and crying, because you never really thought of that man as your father, anyways.