{"id":24480,"date":"2012-07-23T22:09:33","date_gmt":"2012-07-23T22:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=24480"},"modified":"2017-04-13T15:31:03","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T15:31:03","slug":"race-and-identity-in-barack-obama%e2%80%99s-dreams-from-my-father-a-collection-of-critical-essays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=24480","title":{"rendered":"Race and Identity in Barack Obama\u2019s Dreams from My Father: A Collection of Critical Essays"},"content":{"rendered":"

Race and Identity in Barack Obama\u2019s Dreams from My Father: A Collection of Critical Essays<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Edwin Mellen Press<\/a>
\nJune 2012
\n308 pages
\nISBN10:\u00a0 0-7734-1601-3; ISBN13: 978-0-7734-1601-7<\/p>\n

Edited by:<\/p>\n

Michael A. Zeitler<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of English
\nTexas Southern University, Houston<\/em><\/p>\n

Charlene T. Evans<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of English
\nTexas Southern University, Houston<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

This book examines significant aspects of President Barack Obama’s<\/a> Dreams from My Father<\/a><\/em> both in relation to the African American literary tradition and to the context of the relevant historical and cultural productions that inform it. The authors view the book a work of literature and compare it to other works by black authors such as Toni Morrison<\/a>, Frederick Douglass<\/a>, and Ralph Ellison<\/a> among others. Some authors contest the idea that the book was written during a pre-political stage in President Obama’s life because it was released to coincide with his first political campaign in Chicago, Illinois<\/a> in the mid-1990’s. For autobiographical reasons the book is important because it shows various aspects of President Obama’s upbringing, and put in his own words his experience of being black in America. There is also a discussion of why he chose the less Americanized Barack when he went into college, rather than the homogeneous, whitened name Barry, which was the name he preferred in grammar school (out of being teased by other children)\u2014and how he chose this name precisely because it constructed his identity as antithetical to the dominant paradigms of whiteness that he had been confined to while growing up in Hawaii<\/a>. One article even describes President Obama’s father being ostracized from Kenyan politics after a coup d’etat forced a leader out of power who he had publically supported, which lead the family to America. It also tells the story of a turgid paternal influence on the young Barack Obama, where caught in a vicious cycle of perpetually working for his father’s approval, he spiraled into low self-esteem, which may have fueled his political ambitions later in life (as overcompensation for a lack of fatherly approval).<\/p>\n

Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n