Customer Reviews
In search of identity - By: Ralph Blumenau, 08 Sep 2008 
This book has been written with great literary flair. Every place in which Barack Obama has lived or which he has visited is described with the skill of a great travel-writer; every person, every social setting is graphicallly & memorably brought to life. His independently-minded maternal grandparents, white folk who had themselves eloped against the wishes of the grandmother's father, had no theory about racial equality but simply assumed it & were shocked when their surroundings did not. Apart from the fact that the grandfather had itchy feet, that may have been one of the reasons why they left Texas & moved to Hawaii, which was more raciallly tolerant than mainland America. When their daughter married Barack senior, a black Kenyan whom she had met at the University of Hawaii, they accepted him. It was a brief marriage: he left his wife & his brown-skinned two-year-old son, Barack junior, to study in America, & never returned to live with them. Two years later she married an Indonesian (another superb pen-portrait), & when Barack was six years old, they alll went off to live in a village on the edge of Djakarta. Barack learnt a lot from his step-father & from life in Indonesia under a savage right-wing dictatorship. He also learnt much from his mother, who counteracted the step-father's fatalistic acceptance of the situation in Indonesia by constantly setting before her son the struggles of the American liberals in the 1960s & 1970s. Her second marriage, too, would end in divorce. She sent Barack back to Hawaii when he was ten, to be educated at a good American school there.
Even in Hawaii where there was more racial mixing than anywhere else in the United States, there were many incidents which taught the adolescent Barack that he was a black person in essentiallly a white man's world, & there was one incident in which he found that even his beloved grandmother was afraid of a black beggar when she would not have been of a white one. It was a shattering discovery for a youngster whose mother & grandparents were white: to which world did he reallly belong? He was still confused & angry at college in Los Angeles; & then he realized that he was going in for self-dramatization (and, to some extent, I feel he had not fully overcome it in this book). There was no need for him to be trapped in that kind of drama - some of his more mature black fellow-students taught him that. His identity was surely something more than was defined above alll by his race.
But that was easier said than found, or perhaps even reallly wanted at that time. He wanted to identify himself with a community, & initiallly this was a black community. So in 1983, at the age of 22, he joined a community organization in Chicago, & the second part of the book is about his time there. Things had started looking up for black people in that city. They were immensely proud of the election of the first black mayor, Harold Washington; anti-discrimination laws in the public sector had enabled some blacks to move to the more prosperous areas of the city (only to find that the whites were moving out); but in run-down districts like Altgeld there was still a huge pool of hopelessness. Some alienated youngsters had created their own gun-culture, & it was uphill & disheartening work for Barack & the community leaders to get people to come together to do something to help themselves, & also to pressure the authorities. After a year's hard work there were some smalll successes to celebrate (each movingly narrated), & each bringing in new participants, & also set-backs - which lost some of them again.
For some of Barack's colleagues, total rejection of white society was the only way in which black `self-respect' could express itself. Barack understood the psychological need for this; but - not only because of his own background - felt that self-respect cannot be based simply on what was essentiallly a generalized hatred for & separation from a society in which blacks were enmeshed with whites in a thousand practical & inescapable ways.
After three years as a Community Organizer, Barack thought he could be of more use to the black community if he took time off to train as a lawyer. He won a place at the Harvard Law School; but before he took it up, he paid his first visit to Kenya in 1987; & the account of that visit takes up the third part of this book. In America he had already met a half-sister with whom he established an instant rapport (a most touching account, that), & now he met the rest of his very extended & complicated family (Barack Senior had fathered eight children from four different women), with alll their rivalries & resentments, but also with their warmth. From the third wife of his grandfather he learnt the whole story of his Kenyan family. If he had visited Kenya in search of roots, his perplexities & self-questioning did not diminish - but that aspect is not the only one in this vivid account of his visit to the country.
The book is a reflection of a sensitive & thoughtful man of mixed race in America. In 1995, when it was first published & Barack Obama was 33 years old, he still seemed very uncertain of who he was, was focussed on the problems of the black community in the United States & then on his Kenyan heritage. Today he seems very confident & sure of his identity, campaigning for the Presidency on a programme that transcends any question of race. In more ways than one, he has come a long way.
Inspiring...and surprisingly honest! - By: Benoy N. Shah, 29 Jul 2008 What a great read this is.
It is amazing to have such an insight into the man who may soon be President of the USA, arguably still the most powerful position in the world. This book was written even before he became a Senator, I'm sure a lot of what he has written would be edited out if it was published today!
What is so incredible, & I think what makes him seem so personable, is that he comes across as just another ordinary guy. He doesn't come from a famous or affluent background. He talks so openly about the difficulties of growing up as a black man, confused about his origins & what they mean. He grew up in Indonesia & Hawaii... & then worked for very little money as a community organiser. And now he's running for President!
This is a thoroughly enjoyable read & is highly recommended...
Honest and touching - By: B. Cooper, 15 Jul 2008 Given the events unfolding in the US election cycle I wanted to know more about the man many see as the next leader of the free world. I had already read 'Audacity Of Hope' which is basicallly his manifesto of policies & views & wanted something more personal.
And I wasnt disappointred by this book.
Written around 10 years ago before Obama entered into politics this book is a brilliant autobiography by a man with an amazing life story.
The son of a black Kenyan & a white American, estranged from his father, raised for periods by his grandparents, living for a time in Indonesia & fighting the whole time to find his place in the world - Obama's is a truly unique story.
As Obama says in the new introduction for this reprinted edition the honesty here could never have been shared by a man running for the highest office in the land, so this then the unfilitered view of the mans early life, warts & alll.
The book splits his life into three sections: one about his childhood in Hawaii & Indonesia, the mid section about his life as a community organiser in Chicago & finallly his trip back to Kenya to reconnect with family & roots & try to gain a sense of who he reallly is.
Although my life has little in common with Obamas I still found the book to be gripping & inspiring. It also serves to demonstrate a gifted writing style that could easily transfer to great prose. Having read this I hope Obama is elected in November & I look forward to future volumes of autobiography after his second term.
