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I Studied My Own Self
Obama's Dreams of My Father
Review by Rudolph Lewis
" I studied my own
self," responds a bluesmen, questioned on the
authenticity of his blues. These words could have been a
title for Dreams from My Father. For the bluesman
is always searching—on the move, looking for a better
chance, for wholeness, an escape from fragmentation.
Barack Obama too searches: spurred greatly by the absent
father, a loss (an impulse) inexplicable, seemingly, a
small matter—his father’s brief visit in which he
demanded excellence, the special extra, from his son,
though abandoned by the substance of that voice. There
was a lack of affection, communication.
But Barack—who
becomes a cosmopolitan man product of the post-colonial
and civil rights ages—is more than just the
cotton-picking bluesman of the stereotypical Delta,
whipped about randomly by forces of nature and man. To
his social and familial predicament, Barack Junior
applies astute analysis, creative prose, and poetry. He
is as well the man of intellect and reason. This memoir
in a sense heals the breach.
The Obamas (the
Luos of Kenya to Barack), we discover through their
Western educated children, are more than just
sojourners. They have purpose and force, even if wrong
headed, they exhibit endurance and caution. The
demanding Obama grandfather accepted and excelled in the
new colonial order. This story of the Obamas is a long
meditation, partly fictive, at times reading like a
novel, but seemingly to true effect. For it is indeed
subtitled "a story." The power and the meaning of his
father and his father’s life (including the extended
family) are unraveled. First through the eyes and life
of his Kansas family and how they came to embrace their
daughter’s choice and their son—a typical American
family but not yet so far from that which is best in
America.
Dreams from My
Father is a book about identity—the search for
self.. Its discovery. Its significance. Its role as
determinant of one’s sense of duty and destiny. Obama
was only 24 with a bachelor’s when he went to Chicago
determined to develop as a community organizer. The
memoir is divided into three sections: Origins, Chicago,
and Kenya. There is nothing in Origins that prepares us
for the social readiness of the organizer Barack Obama
who is fixated on succeeding politically in Chicago as a
social reformer. After three years in Chicago (24 t0 27
years old), Obama is fairly well-respected by the
grassroots people as well as social professionals to
political makers and shakers. He leaves Chicago
temporarily for Harvard Law School.
In between, he
spends several weeks in his father’s Luo Kenya.
Continuing a method began in part two Chicago, relatives
(sons, aunts, cousins, etc.) relate, first his sister
Auma studying linguistics in Germany, their memories of
the senior Barack, his father, his wives, his children,
his people, his tribe. They provide greater context than
he could have known through his white relatives. Their
post-colonial realities, far too many pushed farther
down in what became to be called poverty, that many of
the Obamas live in a state in which many have been
reduced to begging. Their children leave their rural,
land short parents to become “lost” in the city. Caught
in a tax system, like hut taxes, farmers are forced to
work for wages.
Even before
Barack’s Kansas mother, the Obamas were caught between
two worlds. The British colonial world diminished the
power and influence of the tribal life in ordering day
to day activities of literacy and international
business. Barack’s grandfather made the transition
seemingly effortless in the white man’s world and though
he would not take a caning he was well-liked by colonial
officers and households because of his superb skills as
a kind of butler and servant organizing household staff.
He was thrifty, saved his money, bought land, used
recent techniques in farming, and held a few cattle.
Terrible for his kinsmen, the grandfather had a mania
for cleanliness and order. Women found him difficult and
married only when he found it could sustain his
businesses.
The grandfather and
Barack Senior had a falling out that never repaired
itself. The boy he felt was undisciplined. The son
tried to prove him wrong. Barack Senior, with a little
help from white female friends, far exceeded his father
in accomplishments. He wrote a school in Hawaii and
received a scholarship. His study led him to Harvard and
a doctorate. He returned to Kenya with a government
appointment. Thinking free speech of government
operations was to be encouraged, Barack Senior made
accusations of tribal favoritism in Kenyatta’s
government. Jomo Kenyatta, then head of government, made
Barack Senior unable to work in government or businesses
contracted by government. The life of Barack Senior was
thrown into disarray and a downward spiral.
He drank more
without joy. Fear of government reprisals, his friends
abandoned him. He became more abusive to his children
and his wife. His children had a hard time. The life of
his second American wife is poignant. Ruth’s story. Auma’
story. That of David and Mark. Roy and Bernard, and the
son about eight years old. Barack Obama Senior regained
some of that which he lost. But his age mates had
already outstripped him in achievement. And then there
was the tragic car accident—a life snuffed out too soon,
leaving five, six children several wives in wonder,
anguish, and pain. Barack Junior too regains his loss,
his abandonment—by searching and by intellect. One
cannot escape the sense of wholeness in Barack Senior’s
tragic life.
Barack Junior
through Dreams of My Father, that is, the
peculiarities of his own life become a means of
discovering his place (his identity, his manhood) in a
much more complex world than his father inherited. In a
way the memoir is also a critique of the worlds he
inherited—black and white and other—Kenya, America,
Indonesia. Auma serves as Barack’s guide through the
matrix of Luo tribal manners, understanding and history
through the lives of the Obamas. Barry cannot but become
Barack, no more than his African Luo grandfather could
choose to become a Muslim rather than a Christian. A Luo
consciousness must be part of this identity Obama
constructs if it is balanced and credible of a learned,
scholarly colored man. Barack “studied his own self.”
Considering white
women, politically. Obama throws a sinking curve. It
drops off the table for a strike. He keeps coming at you
like that, you know
Satchel Paige
long legs and arms all up in your face.
Now you see it now you don’t. Maybe it’s a natural
trait. (The Luos should be checked for the possibilities
as MLB pitchers.) Barack seems to have chosen
consciously against mixed marriage; that for him white
marriage would take him off the road of identity seeking
and political success. He tells the story of a white
girl friend who invited him to her family’s place,
inherited by her father, and her father’s grandfather
and his grandfather. That world in its longevity,
grandeur, and connections to American power and wealth
would shut down his search. It’s a peculiar critique,
well-crafted.
There would be a
matter of acceptance of that upper class world and its
telescopic vision of the social deprivations and
oppression of the weak and poor. As far as wealth with
skills, connections and talented, Barack Obama could
have been a super wealthy black, and still that
possibility is opened after his presidency. But
millionaires come frequent within our communities with
the buying and selling of black bodies, as athletes for
universities and other money making institutions. Barack
Junior took his date to a play by black women about
black women and black lives. Outside she broke into
tears, “I cannot be black!”
It’s rough on both
sides and it stirs deeply. In a sense one asks for
troubles. Barack needed a woman who was black if he was
going to get to the White House. Chicago is a tough
town. Obama was offered Gary. He insisted on Chicago as
his base. He wanted to be a tough guy, helping the
powerless to get the services they are titled to by law,
changing the law to sustain the working poor. Many of
these are women, when we have the feminization of
poverty. Those Barack organized to be leaders were
mostly women. Male voices were seldom heard, except
negatively.
Chicago was a place
too where Southern strategies were thrown back like
lightweights by Northern or Mid-West hard hats and
families mouthing, screaming more cruel epithets than
could be harnessed by neo-Nazis and old KKK elements.
This was working class v. working class. King hit a
brick wall and had to settle for peanuts. Jesse
continued and brought King strategies into a new era of
electoral politics and lobbying for black businesses and
farmers, encouragement of punitive acts against
discriminators in jobs and hiring; negotiations with
large corporations for equity in services and
employment. But it was clearly left-wing ideologically,
his PUSH and rainbow coalition, and other political
campaigns. Jesse became the successor to the King
legacy, No. 1 race leader.
But America has
tired and somewhat neutered racial nationalism among the
vast 30 million persons. There is this consideration of
racial nationalism in Dreams of My Father—from
its most unconscious forms (e.g., impulse defense of
Michael Jackson) to the Nation of Islam, its most
radical, the scientists of revolution, those who follow
the line of communists. (See
Black Studies in the Age of
Obama .) These
nationalists groups seem to have a small membership (50
or less) and are very little in reformist grassroots
organizing. Grassroots organizing to pressure government
to do its duty, for Barack, seems central to any
substantial community leadership. He argues his
organizing is not about race or racial nationalism but
something much larger.
Obama in his identity search sought/seeks that which is
much larger than just the individual (the race), but
that impulse which strives for a larger community.
Dreams of My Father is a kind of Bible that should
be near the nightstand. Obama was born again at Trinity
during a sermon titled, “The Audacity of Hope.” I look
forward to reading Barack’s book of the same title.
Maybe brevity will be more emphasized.
My reigning question remains how this guy got to be so
smart so quick? Though ever a puzzle, Barack Junior
would suggest excellence comes when we study our own
selves, scrupulously, critically balanced. That kind of
honesty will take one far. The essential Barack, the
mind working in the creation of Dreams of My Father,
seems the same man we have in the White House. Older,
wise, loving to get what is possible done. This book is
the work of a genius. Brilliant! Fascinating! How
wonderful it will be to see him as more than a
consolation—one capable of governing within narrow
political margins, the power of a LBJ but without his
tools of arm twisting. The Right is frightened by his
gifts. His blues is global. His hands are limited at
home, more extensive in matters of war. His will be a
long presidency.
27 July 2009
posted 27 July 2009 |
