Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance is a memoir by Barack Obama. It
was first published in 1995 as Obama was preparing to launch his political career in a campaign
for Illinois Senate, five years after being elected as the first African-American president
of the Harvard Law Review in 1990. The book chronicles the events of Obama's life up until
his entry into law school in 1988. Obama's U.S. Senate Democratic primary victory
in Illinois in 2004 led to the book's re-publication in August that same year. This followed by
two weeks his July keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Obama
would later launch his campaign to be elected President of the United States three years
later. The 2004 edition includes a new preface by Obama and his DNC keynote address.
Narrative
Obama recounts his life up to his enrollment in Harvard Law School. He was born in Honolulu,
Hawaii, to Barack Obama, Sr. of Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas, who had met
as students at the University of Hawaii. Obama's parents separated in 1963 and divorced in
1964, when he was two. Obama's father went to Harvard to pursue his Ph.D. in economics.
After that, he returned to Kenya to fulfill his promise to his nation. Obama formed an
image of his absent father from stories told by his mother and her parents. He saw his
father only one more time, in 1971, when Obama Sr. came to Hawaii for a month's visit. The
elder Obama died in a car accident in 1982. After her divorce, Ann Dunham married Lolo
Soetoro, a Javanese surveyor from Indonesia who gained financing for graduate work through
the East-West Center. The family moved to Jakarta. When Obama was ten, he returned to
Hawaii under the care of his grandparents for the better educational opportunities available
there. He was enrolled in the fifth grade at Punahou School, a private college-preparatory
school, where he was one of only six black students at the school. Obama attended Punahou
School from the 5th grade until his graduation from high school in 1979. Obama writes: "For
my grandparents, my admission into Punahou Academy heralded the start of something grand,
an elevation in the family status that they took great pains to let everyone know." There
he met Ray, who introduced him to the African-American community.
Upon finishing high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he enrolled at Occidental
College, where he describes living a "party" lifestyle of drug and alcohol use. After two
years at Occidental, he transferred to Columbia College at Columbia University, in New York
City, where he majored in political science. Upon graduation, he worked for a year in business.
He moved to Chicago, where he worked for a non-profit doing community organizing in the
Altgeld Gardens housing project on the city's South Side. Obama recounts the difficulty
of the experience, as his program faced resistance from entrenched community leaders and apathy
on the part of the established bureaucracy. During this period, Obama first visited Chicago's
Trinity United Church of Christ, which became the center of his spiritual life. Before attending
Harvard Law School, Obama decided to visit relatives in Kenya. He recounts part of this
experience in his book's final, emotional scene. Obama used his memoir to reflect on
his personal experiences with race and race relations in the United States.
Book cover Pictured in left-hand photograph on cover:
Habiba Akumu Hussein and Barack Obama, Sr.. Pictured in right-hand photograph on cover:
Stanley Dunham and Ann Dunham. Persons in the book
With the exception of family members and a handful of public figures, Barack Obama is
open in the preface about using changed names for privacy reasons and created composite
characters to expedite the narrative flow. Some of his acquaintances have publicly admitted
their real names, and various researchers have made suggestions as to some figures'
real names: Reception
In discussing Dreams from My Father, Toni Morrison, a Nobel Laureate novelist, has called
Obama "a writer in my high esteem" and the book "quite extraordinary." She praised
"his ability to reflect on this extraordinary mesh of experiences that he has had, some
familiar and some not, and to really meditate on that the way he does, and to set up scenes
in narrative structure, dialogue, conversation—all of these things that you don't often see,
obviously, in the routine political memoir biography. ... It's unique. It's his. There
are no other ones like that."
In an interview for The Daily Beast, the author Philip Roth said he had read Dreams from My
Father "with great interests," and commented that he had found it "well done and very persuasive
and memorable." The book "may be the best-written memoir ever
produced by an American politician," wrote Time columnist Joe Klein. In 2008, The Guardian's
Rob Woodard wrote that Dreams from My Father "is easily the most honest, daring, and ambitious
volume put out by a major US politician in the last 50 years." Michiko Kakutani, the
Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times, described it as "the most evocative,
lyrical and candid autobiography written by a future president."
The audio book edition earned Obama the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2006.
Five days before being sworn in as President in 2009, Obama secured a $500,000 advance
for an abridged version of Dreams from My Father for middle-school-aged children.
Time Magazine Top 100 List In 2011, Time Magazine listed the book on
its top 100 non-fiction books written in English since 1923.
Versions New York: Times Books; 1st edition; Hardcover:
403 pages; ISBN 0-8129-2343-X This printing is very rare. Only a few signed
copies are known, and are estimated to be worth up to $13,000.
New York: Kodansha International; Paperback: 403 pages; ISBN 1-56836-162-9
New York: Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition; Paperback: 480 pages; ISBN 1-4000-8277-3
New York: Random House Audio; Abridged edition; Audio CD; ISBN 0-7393-2100-5; Includes the
senator's speech from the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
New York: Random House Audio; Abridged edition on Playaway digital audio player
New York: Random House Large Print; 1st Large print edition; Hardcover: 720 pages; ISBN
0-7393-2576-0 New York: Crown Publishers; Hardcover: 464
pages; ISBN 0-307-38341-5 New York: Random House; eBook; ISBN 0-307-39412-3
Melbourne: Text Publishing; Paperback: 442 pages; ISBN 978-1-921351-43-3
Translations Arabic: Aḥlām min abī : qiṣṣat ʻirq
wa-irth, translated by Hibah Najīb al-Sayyid Maghrabī; Īmān ʻAbd al-Ghanī Najm; Majdī
ʻAbd al-Wāḥid ʻInabah,, OCLC 460600393 Bosnian: Snovi moga oca : priča o rasi i
naslijeđu, Sarajevo : Buybook, OCLC 488621036 Chinese: The Dream Road of Obama : Yi Fu
Chih Ming, translated by Yao-Hui Wang, Kuan-Lan Shih China Times Publishing Company, Taipei,
Taiwan,, ISBN 978-957-13-4926-8 Croatian: Snovi mojega oca : priča o rasi
i naslijeđu,, ISBN 978-953-182-079-0 Czech: Cesta za sny mého otce : jedna z
nejpůsobivějších autobiografických knih o sebepoznání a hledání vlastní identity,
translated by Marie Čermáková, Praha : Štrob, Širc & Slovák,, ISBN 978-80-903947-6-6
Danish: Arven fra min far : selvbiografi, Gyldendals Bogklubber,, OCLC 488375191
Dutch: Dromen van mijn vader, translated by Joost Zwart, Atlas,, ISBN 978-90-450-0089-3
Finnish: Unelmia isältäni : kertomus rodusta ja sukuperinnöstä,translated by Seppo Raudaskoski
and Mika Tiirinen,, ISBN 978-951-692-723-0 French: Les rêves de mon père, translated
by Paris Presses de La Cité, Paris, France,, ISBN 978-2-258-07597-9
German: Ein amerikanischer Traum, Carl Hanser Verlag, ISBN 978-3-446-23021-7
Greek, Modern: Eikones tou patera mou : he historia henos genous kai mias klēronomias,,
ISBN 978-960-6689-41-3 Hebrew: חלומות מאבי, translated
by Edna Shemesh, Tel Aviv, Israel,, OCLC 256955212 Hindi: Pitā se mile sapane, translated by
Aśoka Kumāra, Aravinda Kumāra Pabliśarsa, Guṛagām̐va,(2009), ISBN 978-81-8452-017-0
Indonesian: Dreams from My father : pergulatan hidup Obama,, ISBN 978-979-433-544-4
Japanese: My Dream: An autobiography of Barack Obama, translated by Yuya Kiuchi, Mikiko Shirakura,
ISBN 978-4-478-00362-6 Korean: Nae abŏji robutŏ ŭi kkum, translated
by Kyŏng-sik Yi, Random House Korea, Seoul, Korea,, ISBN 978-89-255-1014-9
Marathi: Ḍrīmsa phrôma māya phādara, translated by Yamājī Mālakara and Nītā
Kulakarṇī, Ameya Prakāśana,, OCLC 515543205 Persian: Ruyāhā-ye pedaram, translated by
Rītū Baḥrī,, ISBN 978-964-174-082-7 Persian: Ruyāhā-ye pidaram, translated by
Manīzhih Shaykh Javādī,, ISBN 978-600-5253-09-2 Polish: Odziedziczone marzenia, translated
by Piotr Szymczak,, ISBN 978-83-7278-333-2 Serbian: Snovi moga oca : priča o rasi i
nasleđu, translated by Vesna Džuverović; Jasna Simonović,,ISBN 978-86-505-1029-2
Spanish: Los sueños de mi padre : una historia de raza y herencia, Vintage Español, New
York City, New York,, ISBN 978-0-307-47387-5 Spanish: Los sueños de mi padre : una historia
de raza y herencia, translated by Fernando Miranda; Evaristo Páez Rasmussen, Granada :
Almed,, ISBN 978-84-936685-0-1 Swedish: Min far hade en dröm, Albert Bonniers
förlag, ISBN 978-91-0-011728-3 Thai: Bārak ʻŌbāmā : phom likhit chiwit
ʻēng,translated by Nopphadon Wētsawat, Krung Thēp : Samnakphim Matichon,, ISBN
978-974-02-0139-7 Turkish: Babamdan hayaller : [ırk ve kimlik
mirasının öyküsü], İstanbul : Pegasus Yayınlar, ISBN 978-605-5943-32-5
Urdu: Obāmā kī āp bītī, translated
by Yāsar Javvād,, OCLC 421024762 Vietnamese: Những giấc mơ từ cha tôi,
translated by Quang Nguyễn,, OCLC 317713059 References
External links Barack Obama interview, 1995 August from the
Connie Martinson Talks Books collection in the Claremont Colleges Digital Library
All editions at WorldCat Amazon.com's book reviews and description
Barnes & Noble's editorial reviews and overview OnTheIssues.org's book review and excerpts