As I picked up his first book, I was hesitant and even a little anxious because over the past 2 years, I have become completely transfixed by the aura of a man who has some how, some way, managed to not only transcend his own race but the cynical and calculated persona of a “typical politician”. So, here I was poised to open the first page, vulnerable to, yet excited by, the prospect of finding out who is the real Barack Obama.

Dreams From His Father

As I turned the first pages of Dreams From My Father, I began to relax as I could already sense that this was no ordinary book. This book, prompted by publishers attempting to capitalize on the first black man to head the esteemed, well guarded and all-white Harvard Law Review, was revealing itself to be more than an interior assessment of racial transcendence and pride. It was unfolding, page after page, as an honest and sometimes raw journey into the mind and psyche of a man’s struggle to find himself.

The story begins with the death of his Kenyan father, a father he only met once and only knew through stories and tales of others from his white American mother who raised him in a foreign and exotic land of Indonesia, and later, in Hawaii, his white Grandmother, who he fondly calls Toot, and his Grandfather, who he called Gramps. This, of course, sets the stage for his incredible journey from his early days with his mother to his later days in New York as a college student and ultimately in Chicago as a community organaizer.

He began his struggles with a self-identity rooted in multi-racial ethnicity and complicated by missing pieces concerning his father

who traveled back to Africa leaving him behind at a very young age. His curiosity of this unknown history led him on a journey to a continent thousands of miles away to learn the other half of the tales of his father. This story could only be told by the African half of his blood and this journey to Kenya and his ultimate discovery of “himself” and reconciliation with the memory of a father he hardly knew filled the last half of this engrossing book.

This book is a beautiful narrative written with complex layering of words and phrases that make it read like an award winning novel, making you want to turn the page to the next string of textured thoughts and somber self-reflections. This is a man who I would discover has more substance than I could have ever imagined. So, no, I am not disappointed with, nor disillusioned about, the 44th President of the United States.

So, Who is Barack Obama?

In finding out who Barack Obama really is, I also learned something about myself and about where we are as a nation and people of the world. In reading his book, it became evident to me that the thread of Obama’s global appeal comes not from his rhetoric or lofty speeches, it comes from his honorable intentions and ability to transcend not only his race, but to transcend any critics. Throughout the book, page after page, Obama listens intently and compassionately to others telling their stories, not judging but always inserting the other side to the story when they become critical and asking the story teller to imagine what it would be like to be in the other person’s shoes.

When his Kenyan family rails against the white man for bringing oppression and urban poverty to their country, he asks them to consider their own lack of work ethic and laziness. When working class white men complain of the difficulty of their children getting into college due to affirmative action, he reminds them that blacks have suffered decades of lost opportunity. Even when his father is derided by his own Kenyan family for being a worthless drunk during an episode of self-pity in economic hard times, he comes to his defense reminding them of his generosity of spirit and constant concern with others during the good times and how quickly people forget.

This is the real Barack Obama. He is the one who is ready to listen, to ponder, to compare and contrast all ideas and then to ask the other side for the same consideration. This is what our nation and it’s people need right now. We all need to step back and not be so quick to judge. We need to listen more and judge less. The partisan divide has become so explosive, so emotional that it clouds all good sense and practicality. We have painfully become a nation divided without common cause or common purpose in a perilous time that demands conciliation not reprobation.

With Dreams From My Father being at the top of the New York Times Best Selling Political Books, I am hopeful that more people will read it and come away with the same feeling of common values and shared dreams that remind us every day that we really have more in common than we have differences. It is time now that we celebrate this reality more than ever.