An authorized transcript of an Eye on Books author interview.
Barack Obama “Dreams From My Father”
Interview recorded 8/9/1995
Barack Obama was born to a Kenyan father and an American mother in 1961, but his parents divorced when he was just two years old. Obama has said his father was little more than a myth to him, at the time of the elder Obama’s death in 1982. Just before he went off to law school, Obama traveled to Kenya to learn more about his father, and to try and put perspective on his mixed-race heritage. The result was his book “Dreams From My Father,” first published in 1995. That’s when Eye on Books talked with him:
EYE ON BOOKS: Why did you write this book?
BARACK OBAMA: My father is a black African, was a black African. My mother is a white American. He came to the States to study, right after [the] independence of Kenya, and was part of that first wave of Africans to travel to the west in search of knowledge to bring back to post-independence Africa. My mother came from small towns in Kansas (my grandfather on my mother’s side was a traveling salesman for a long time). And so they came from very different backgrounds.
They came together during the civil rights movement – although they weren’t active, I think they were swept up in the spirit of integrationist America and the dream of Dr. King, and the optimism and the idealism of the Kennedys – and ended up separating shortly thereafter. So the book is really me trying to understand what their lives were about, and thereby understand what my life is about.
EOB: This is not the kind of book you originally set out to write, though?
Obama: No. I originally got the idea of writing a book while I was at Harvard Law School, where I served as president of the Law Review. In listening to a number of the debates going back and forth about affirmative action and voting rights and all the controversies surrounding race issues in the country, I thought that I might be able to insert myself into the debate and hopefully clarify it.
What I realized, though, was that the starting point for any insights I might have really had to do with the story of my own family, and coming to terms with that multi-cultural heritage. So the first book, at least, that I needed to write was a book that came to terms with that divided heritage.
EOB: Is it then an oversimplification to say you had to get your own house in order, in your mind, before you could work on the country’s?
Obama: Well, I certainly think that you have to know where you’ve been if you want to know where you’re going. For someone who comes out of a family and a background that’s both black and white, that’s an especially important process that one has to go through.
We live in a land of strangers. Blacks and whites don’t know each other, they don’t know their stories very well. Within my own family, even in the best-meaning family, there’s a tremendous scope for misunderstanding, for suspicion, for fear. Until I understood what those fears were, what those hopes were, and what those dreams were, I think I was destined to - potentially, at least - repeat some of the mistakes that my parents and grandparents had made.
more ~ http://www.eyeonbooks.com/obama_transcript.pdf
Barack Obama was born to a Kenyan father and an American mother in 1961, but his parents divorced when he was just two years old. Obama has said his father was little more than a myth to him, at the time of the elder Obama’s death in 1982. Just before he went off to law school, Obama traveled to Kenya to learn more about his father, and to try and put perspective on his mixed-race heritage. The result was his book “Dreams From My Father,” first published in 1995. That’s when Eye on Books talked with him:
EYE ON BOOKS: Why did you write this book?
BARACK OBAMA: My father is a black African, was a black African. My mother is a white American. He came to the States to study, right after [the] independence of Kenya, and was part of that first wave of Africans to travel to the west in search of knowledge to bring back to post-independence Africa. My mother came from small towns in Kansas (my grandfather on my mother’s side was a traveling salesman for a long time). And so they came from very different backgrounds.
They came together during the civil rights movement – although they weren’t active, I think they were swept up in the spirit of integrationist America and the dream of Dr. King, and the optimism and the idealism of the Kennedys – and ended up separating shortly thereafter. So the book is really me trying to understand what their lives were about, and thereby understand what my life is about.
EOB: This is not the kind of book you originally set out to write, though?
Obama: No. I originally got the idea of writing a book while I was at Harvard Law School, where I served as president of the Law Review. In listening to a number of the debates going back and forth about affirmative action and voting rights and all the controversies surrounding race issues in the country, I thought that I might be able to insert myself into the debate and hopefully clarify it.
What I realized, though, was that the starting point for any insights I might have really had to do with the story of my own family, and coming to terms with that multi-cultural heritage. So the first book, at least, that I needed to write was a book that came to terms with that divided heritage.
EOB: Is it then an oversimplification to say you had to get your own house in order, in your mind, before you could work on the country’s?
Obama: Well, I certainly think that you have to know where you’ve been if you want to know where you’re going. For someone who comes out of a family and a background that’s both black and white, that’s an especially important process that one has to go through.
We live in a land of strangers. Blacks and whites don’t know each other, they don’t know their stories very well. Within my own family, even in the best-meaning family, there’s a tremendous scope for misunderstanding, for suspicion, for fear. Until I understood what those fears were, what those hopes were, and what those dreams were, I think I was destined to - potentially, at least - repeat some of the mistakes that my parents and grandparents had made.
more ~ http://www.eyeonbooks.com/obama_transcript.pdf
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