Dreams from My Father (review)

This epic document with the English title Dreams from My Father is divided into three parts, presented in nineteen chapters, with the addition of a preface, introduction, and afterword. In this autobiographical narrative, a cross between a family saga and life stories from childhood to adulthood, the narrator, Barack Obama, bequeaths to us, in hybrid fashion, the legacy of a spiritual journey, a self-questioning-in short, a quest for maturation. In his encounter with the existential questions raised in fiction, they readily signify the anguishes of one left unsatisfied by the limits placed on the less than complete answers received from one side of his family.

From the very start, the preface of this work underscores the high points in the author's life, namely, the search for identity fed by adventures, anecdotes, and small tales from his maternal grandparents. That cultural legacy enlivens young Barry's development. Indeed, the imprints of mixed cultures marked by an imbalance caused by the absence of a father and a of mother who left him too suddenly make him one who is troubled, anxious, absorbed by regret, and filled with remorse, saying that if he had known he would lose his mother, he would have paid more attention to the one who had been the only constant in his life (12).**

The narration of the first part, which opens the "film" of his life with the emblematic and very revealing title of "Origins," resemble the eschatological. As a young boy, he receives from his mother a work called Origins (21-148), stories of creation. But rather than calming his interests, these peaceful stories only raised other questions about his ambiguous identity that was home to contradictory values: "the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds" (ix/15). From that point on, the search for a consensus becomes the young Obama's obsession. He thinks of his father's ideological struggle with the promise of the American dream and with the universal declaration of human rights, showing quite clearly that at an early age he is marked by racial discriminations and social disparities. From there, he begins his profound interest in the great figures and defenders of human rights, such as Jimi Hendrix and Martin Luther King. In short, the search for equality becomes his secret dream (35).

In the end, these churning questions with the addition of that historical platform acted as a spur to start his intellectual and imaginary journey, with his recollections sometimes only vague reminiscences of an involuntary and sometimes selective memory. What is important in this introductory phase is the deep meditation and the visible and invisible ties between all these anecdotes and their repercussions in his own life (29).

The second part, "Chicago" (149-314), deciphers American society and its cosmopolitanism, the superposition of cultures with its attendant prejudices, and its corollary, intolerance. In the course of growing up, he encounters the Nation of Islam and the black nationalism of Refik el Shabazz who, while preaching radicalism to the extreme, became hardened. Obama also listened to his friend Marcus de l'Oxy who invited a return to authenticity, as well as the focused sermons of the black churches with their songs of hope that identified the sufferings of blacks with Christ-like penitence: a people who will triumph in this struggle thanks to "the audacity of hope" (312/267).

Obama then sets out to achieve harmony for the opposites: love rather than hate, thus, a certain complementarity. Thus, his mother's stories about his father's life keep coming back as a leitmotif, the union that goes against the grain inspiring in him the innocent love without taboo that is so necessary in this rainbow nation: "The love of someone who knows your life in the round, a love that will survive disappointment" (147/117). He ends up meeting his father in the course of a dream in a cold cell.

Finally, the last part, entitled...