#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - ONE OF ESSENCE'S 50 MOST
IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS
In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama "guides us
straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity,
class, and race" (The Washington Post Book World).
"Quite extraordinary."--Toni Morrison
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a
black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable
meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where
Barack Obama learns that his father--a figure he knows more as a myth
than as a man--has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death
inspires an emotional odyssey--first to a small town in Kansas, from
which he retraces the migration of his mother's family to Hawaii, and
then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts
the bitter truth of his father's life, and at last reconciles his
divided inheritance.
Praise for Dreams from My Father
"Beautifully crafted . . . moving and candid . . . This book belongs on
the shelf beside works like James McBride's The Color of Water and
Gregory Howard Williams's Life on the Color Line as a tale of living
astride America's racial categories."--Scott Turow
"Provocative . . . Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to
two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither."--The New York
Times Book Review
"Obama's writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth
savoring."--Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here
"One of the most powerful books of self-discovery I've ever read, all
the more so for its illuminating insights into the problems not only of
race, class, and color, but of culture and ethnicity. It is also
beautifully written, skillfully layered, and paced like a good
novel."--Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of In My Place
"Dreams from My Father is an exquisite, sensitive study of this
wonderful young author's journey into adulthood, his search for
community and his place in it, his quest for an understanding of his
roots, and his discovery of the poetry of human life. Perceptive and
wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are
black or white."--Marian Wright Edelman
