Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father

In 2004, Barack Obama wrote the novel, “Dreams from My Father,” to give readers an inside look on his life growing up. Throughout the book he shows the importance of identity and the struggle of growing up as part African American. The book starts off with a clip of Barack’s life a couple months after his twenty-first birthday, where he receives the phone call revealing the news to him that his father had passed away. It then jumps to his childhood and starts explaining his background, and his life as a biracial child - his mother being a white American and his father being African. Barack’s father, Barack Hussein Obama, was the first African American to attend the University of Hawaii, where he met Ann Dunham, Barack’s mother. Where Barack Sr. was from Kenya, Ann was from Wichita, Kansas. Even though they were ridiculed, they got married and then had Barack Hussein Obama Jr. on August 4, 1961. Barack Jr.’s maternal grandparents moved to Hawaii from Kansas and played a large role in their life for awhile. A short while after the marriage began, it ended. Barack Sr. left Barack Jr’s

He gets very involved in many different things, including church organizations. From there, he took a plane back to Kenya, where his roots lie, in order to figure out more of his culture. When in Kenya, he has people tell him that he looks American, but Barack tells them that he is Luo. He also meets his Aunt Jane, the aunt that called him to inform him of his father’s passing, along with all of these other family members that he never knew about. He got to go on safari’s and different adventures with them as well, truly experiencing how it is to live in Kenya, and how it would be if he would have grown up in that country. Throughout all of his family moves, and all of the individuals and situations that he has encountered in his life, Barack now has a sense of his identity and both sides of his