A few months ago I started it again, and this time I finished it. I can understand the excitement a book such as that would have generated considering the point at which it was published – several years into the W era – but in reading it three years into Obama’s administration, the book read to me like a very well-written bit of campaign literature. We can all gather round and hold hands and acknowledge our differences while at the same time, oh golly gee, we can … hope! the book seemed to be saying.
His first book, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely. The key word in the title, Dreams from my Father, I believe, is from. I don’t think Obama’s father is an actual character for a single chapter in the book, but he is a presence on each page. So too are impressions gathered from a lifescape, if you will, that includes Hawaii, Indonesia, Chicago, Harvard and Kenya. What Obama’s writing accomplishes that is truly stunning is the weaving together of all those impressions into an experience that leads not to answers but to questions.
Lots and lots of questions.
Is a man with a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya more black than white? Is arriving in the upper echelons of the middle class a betrayal of the poor or is it an accomplishment for all? Should a black person inherently and fundamentally mistrust a white person? Have the image Kenyans have of themselves been defined more by British colonialism than by their ancestors? Is there hope – audacious or otherwise – for inner-city, serially impoverished black people? Does the black church – as a whole – harm more than it heals? What, exactly, was the significance of Harold Washington’s ascension to the mayor’s office in Chicago? Is it a crime to play your part in order to get along? Or is it a concession?
One of the biggest questions, for me anyhow, is the interpretation of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. By the time Obama started his community organizing job in Chicago, Wright’s church had evolved into a clearinghouse of sorts for the city’s impoverished south side. I’m oversimplifying here, but here’s a synopsis of Wright’s position. It’s great for black people to get ahead socially and economically. It’s not so great when they succumb to what he called “middleincomeness” and shift their allegiances away from where they’ve been to where they’re hoping to go. Another of his trademarks is the notion that as much as those who remain in the inner city have to learn from those who have arrived in the inner sanctum, the reverse is equally true: There are plenty of lessons black corporate lawyers can learn from black women raising four children in public housing in a neighborhood where the sound of gunfire is so ordinary it’s barely noticed. Back in 2008, when I first heard the recordings of the reverend yelling about white folks, my guess that it was the handiwork of shrill conservatives, who consider use of the word “context” an act of elitism; after reading the book, I’d put money on that hunch. A lot of it.
For me, the most intriguing part of the book is the way it tackles nuance. While the main point of a lot of what’s written these days seems to be that we all share something called an “American character” that dictates to us a consistent set of hopes and ambitions, I think our president did a stunning job at underscoring the way different experience and history results in different narratives that, when placed alongside one another and occasionally intersected, define the United States. Everyone’s story, the book seems to say, has merit and has a place in the ongoing national conversation. Even those whose job is to fill the empty heads of people like Sarah Palin with empty words written and spoken with the sole purpose of ridiculing and trivializing the idea that a democracy hears the voices of those many would prefer remain disenfranchised.
