Dreams from Obama

Finally, after four months of hand-wringing - and a detour in the form of a quick re-read of Eat, Pray, Love - I finished reading Dreams from My Father!  As excited as I am about finishing the book, I think I may have to revisit it at least once more as I journey through my own race, space and place.  The book is a rich and thick description of Obama's struggles with belonging, or the lack thereof.  And it is well-written and compelling, with just the right amount of schmultz and zero politicking.  I loved it!  And yet I trudged through this book: I sped past the 'Chicago' section, where he details his efforts as an intrepid community organiser, but I slowed to a complete stop (enter Liz Gilbert, who is also an amazing author and speaker - check her out) when I hit 'Kenya'.  In 'Kenya', Obama tells the story of his father, his father's father and what it was like going to the place from whence they came with his brothers and sisters.  He does not sugarcoat Africa.  The story is told in plain speech, and his descriptions of a country not quite recovered from the ravages of that centuries-old evil, colonialism, conjures images of my own Africa.  In short (before I begin to gush), he manages to go into details (including an episode of gastric misadventure) without sounding like a 21st century travelogue writer.

So, why did it take me four months to finish this impressive book?  Well, maybe it was that it was that good (yes, alright, that may have been slight gushing).  The honesty about Africa, and the psychosocial effects of socioeconomic, cultural imperialism was difficult to swallow.  The story contained in Dreams from My Father, and particularly in 'Kenya', is not just Obama's, but is the story of most Africans struggling to eke out a coherent identity on a continent crippled by structural racism.  In the following passage, he describes what he now understands about his father, and his father's father:

"I see my grandfather, standing before his father's hut, a wiry, grim-faced bot, almost ridculous in his oversized trousers and his buttonless shirt.  I watch his father turn away from him and hear his brothers laugh. [...] And as his figure turns, I know that for himthe path of his life is now altered irreversibly, completely.
"He will have to reinvent himself in this arid, solitary place.  Through force of will, he will create a life out of the scraps of an unknown world, and the memories of a world rendered obsolete.  And yet, as he sits alone in a freshly scrubbed hut, an old man now wiht milky eyes, I know that he still hears the clipped voice of a British captain, explaning for the third and last time the correct proportion of tonic to gin.  The nerves in the old man's neck tighten, the rage builds - he grabs his stick to hit at something, anything.  Until finally his grip weakens with the realisation that for all the power in his hands and the force of his will, the laughter, the rebukes, will outlast him.  His body goes slack in the chair.  He knows that he will not outlive a mocking fate.  He waits to die, alone.
"The picture fades, replaced by the image of a nine-year-old boy - my father.  He's hungry, tired, clinging to his sister's hand, searching for a mother he lost.  The hunger is too much for him, the exhaustion too great; until finally the slender line that holds him to his mothernsnaps, sending her image to float down, down into the emptiness.  The boy starts to cry; he shakes of his sister's hand.  He wants to go home, he shouts, back to his father's house.  He will find a new mother.  He will lose himself in games and learn the power of his mind. 
"But he won't forget the desperation of that day.  Twelve years later; at his narrow desk, he will glance up from a stack of forms toward the restless sky and feel that same panic return.  He, too, will have to invent himself.  His boss is out of the office; he sets the forms aside and from an old file cabinet pulls out a list of addresses.  He yanks the typwriter toward him and begins to type, letter after letter after letter, typing the nevelopes, sealing the letters like messages in bottles that will drop through a post office slot into a vast ocean and perhaps allow him to escape the island of his father's shame. 
"How luck he must have felt when his ship came sailing in!  He must have known, when that letter came from Hawaii, that he had been chosen after all [...] He had almost succeeded in a way his father could've never hoped for.  And then, after seeming to travel so far, to discover that he had not escaped after all!  To discover that he remained trapped on his father's island, with its fissures of anger and doubt and defeat, the emotions still visible beneath the surface, hot and molten and alive, like a wicked, yawning mouth, and his mother gone, gone, away..."

This is who we are, Africa.  Constantly running, trying to escape the fear, the humiliation, the anger of our continent's demons.  As hard as it is to read about, it is almost impossible to live it.