in search of identity

Dreams from My Father

by Barack Obama

I picked up the book because a review article on WSJ commented on its good writing. I had had little interest in Obama's politic views and found his speech, which seemed to inspire just about everyone else in my vincity, rather boring and empty - this was still true when I watched him again the other night addressing the congress. Well.

However, I was totally absorbed into his stories, an almost nonchalant account of someone searching and defining his ancestral identity exclusively from his father's line. From there, I was also taken to the traumatic journey Africans have experienced (or been driven to) in the past hundreds of years. It is sadness, humiliation, desperation, confusion, anger, even hatred combined. And simple - forever seemingly - disorientation or dislocation for a people. Individualism, which I myself identify with, is rather powerless against such tantalizing tragedy of human life - I have to admit.

Of interest to me was also his experiences as a "community organizer". I remember I was mildly offended by the constant scorn against such a career during the presidential campaign, but had no idea what it was about. Well, it was part of his personal search for those of his own, and a mostly futile effort to mobilize people for some common causes that are evidently important but lacking in glory. I know better now with my own share of such endeavor.

As a geneticist, it's also quite curious how he seemed to have no desire in defining himself as a "hybrid". He saw and thought of himself as black.

All in all, a very good book.