Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

When Barack was elected the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review while in law school, he was approached regarding the idea of writing about race relations in America. After graduating he started work on the book which ended up as an autobiographical work, covering his grandparents and parents background, and ending with a journey to Kenya to connect with his father’s family there. The book was published in 1995, when Barack first decided to enter politics and run for the Illinois State Senate. It’s a fascinating story of a black American boy who is more sheltered than other blacks from the reality of race discrimination. His mother was white and his black father absent, and Barack’s early childhood is spent in Hawaii and Indonesia, where racial distinctions exist but impinge less on a child’s universe.

The book is still a treatise on race, however, since Barack early on realizes the inequality inherent in our society, even as he attends a private school for the more privileged in Hawaii, back living with his mother’s parents. The title of the book reflects the image he grew up with of his student father from Kenya, a forceful and charismatic figure whom Barack only met once, but whose story impacts Barack’s own struggle to make sense of who he is and what he is meant to do with his life. This is an important book to read if you want to understand Obama.