Dreams From My Father

Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
On the bright side, the current U.S. president has come a ong way as a writer since he was merely known as Barack Obama, Esquire.

Unfortunately, that also means his first book, the much-lauded Dreams From My Father, is a disappointment. having been moved to tears by Obama's speeches on the campaign trail and afterward, I expected this memoir—the story of Obama's struggle to come to terms with his absent father's legacy—to touch me in similar ways. but as Obama admits in his 2004 preface, written 10 years after the book was first published, given the chance to write it again, he would have cut more.

At first, I thought this was just false modesty, but Dreams could have been half as long (it runs 442 pages) without losing anything essential. The main problem is that while Obama has a fascinating story to tell, of growing up a mixed-race man and discovering the father he met just once, the book reads like a soap opera filled with family squabbles and the small-minded conflict one encounters at work. Some of that is relevant to what makes Obama's life story compelling, but the bulk of it just feels like the unedited pages of a journal.

It's a pity, too, because clearly Obama has something important to tell us—about our rigid racial attitudes and how we might make sense of a deceased parent's mistakes—but extracting those lessons from amidst all of the unnecessary detail included here is much more trying that it ought to be.

It seems President Obama has learned a lot about writing these past 15 years, acquired great speechwriters, or maybe is just an exceptional orator. Whatever the reason, I sit up and take notice when he speaks, but could scarcely pay attention while reading Dreams From My Father.

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