Lucky me!
I'm in love with Barack Obama. I'm on my third day of reading Dreams of my Father and I can't get over the guy's brain. I mean, while doing all that education and networking and community stuff that future presidents without trust funds have to do, he managed to write - and write well - about his unconventional childhood, the father he barely knew and the identity issues that a multiracial background entails.
How I relate to his time in Indonesia, his return to an America that he saw with the eyes of the permanently displaced, his lonliness despite friends and family, and the identity crisis that had to be resolved before he could find some purpose in life.
(I too was given the option of spending less time overseas and attending a prep school in America, which would doubtlessly have affected the type of prejudices and personal crises I was faced with, in addition to the quality of my education. But I chose to stay abroad and so, alas, I will not be applying for a job at the White House in this lifetime.) And yet there is a quality to his way of explaining things that must appeal to people from every walk of life.
Reading this book may make me feel less unique and productive and well-spoken, but it also makes me feel less alone. I love me a good book!
And to think that, had he not become president, the book Barack Obama wrote fifteen years ago might never have found its way into my hands.
How I relate to his time in Indonesia, his return to an America that he saw with the eyes of the permanently displaced, his lonliness despite friends and family, and the identity crisis that had to be resolved before he could find some purpose in life.
(I too was given the option of spending less time overseas and attending a prep school in America, which would doubtlessly have affected the type of prejudices and personal crises I was faced with, in addition to the quality of my education. But I chose to stay abroad and so, alas, I will not be applying for a job at the White House in this lifetime.) And yet there is a quality to his way of explaining things that must appeal to people from every walk of life.
Reading this book may make me feel less unique and productive and well-spoken, but it also makes me feel less alone. I love me a good book!
And to think that, had he not become president, the book Barack Obama wrote fifteen years ago might never have found its way into my hands.