On the book of Obama’s that every American, regardless of political party,
should read.
I’ve tried in many posts in this
space to highlight some of the best works of AmericanStudies scholarship I know,
but I begin today with a quick mention of one of the very worst: Dinesh
D’Souza’s The Roots of Obama’s Rage (2010). D’Souza’s book, which seeks to
explain much of Obama’s perspective and emphases (as D’Souza falsifies, I mean
defines, them) through an “analysis” of his father Barack Obama’s “Kenyan
anti-colonialism” (one of those times I’m using actual quotation marks and the
other time they’re scare quotes, I’ll let you figure out which is which), is so
chock-full of lies and nonsense that it beggars description, and I’m going to
stop writing about in one more sentence and hopefully never mention or even
think about it again (although the
recent “documentary” that builds upon the book has forced me to do so). But
of all the reasons why it’s such a horrifically awful work, perhaps the most
frustrating is that it allegedly builds upon one of the most impressive and
engaging American personal narratives I’ve ever read: Obama’s own first book, Dreams
from My Father (1995).
Autobiographies by political
figures tend to fall into one of two categories: quickies published during
campaigns, mostly to sell the candidate’s platform and identity to prospective voters;
and massive tomes published after the person has left office, both to cement
certain hoped-for legacies and to admit to things that would have cost him or
her votes at the time. Obama has
written at least a couple of books in the former category, but I would
argue that Dreams is very much not
one of them: it was published while he was an attorney and law professor in
Chicago, a year before he first ran for the Illinois State Senate and five
years before he first ran for Congress; and while of course he likely had
political ambitions at that point, the book is profoundly honest about some of
the darkest and most potentially controversial aspects of his life and
identity, including drug use in college, his complex perspectives on the young
African American men with whom he worked as a community organizer, and his
experiences and relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church. While
conspiracy theorists like to argue that we know little about who Obama really
is, the truth is that for fifteen years now the reading public has had more
intimate access to his life and identity and perspective than has been possible
for any other president.
But the reason why I’m writing
about Obama’s book here—which very much parallels the reasons why it’s the focus
of the
Conclusion of my second book—is that it includes and analyzes such a wide
and interesting range of essentially American lives and identities. That would
include of course Obama himself, born to a Kenyan immigrant father and a
Scotch-Irish mother in Hawaii, raised there by his mom and by grandparents who
had transplanted their family from Kansas, and married to a woman who is the
descendent of slaves (among other crucial details); would certainly include
both of his parents and all of those other family members and generations; but
also includes a number of other pivotal figures in the book, most especially his
half-sister Auma (herself a Kenyan American immigrant) and half-brother Roy
(likewise). Obama’s ability and willingness to cede significant portions of
the book over to these other voices and lives helps create this narrative of a multi-part
American community; when Roy reappears at Obama’s wedding in the book’s
Epilogue, for example, having embraced his Kenyan heritage more fully and renamed
himself Obongo, yet also gaining two “honorary mothers” in Obama’s mother and
grandmother at that ceremony, we can truly see just how much his own American
story and identity have continued to evolve and deepen, and how much Obama’s
sense of who he is likewise evolves and deepens through his conversations and
encounters with these other American voices and lives.
As with everything I write about
in this space, my ultimate message here is a simple but significant one: I
think all Americans should read and engage with this text and history and
story. Of course in this context it is perhaps impossible that said message
could ever be disentangled from many other and more troublingly divisive
narratives—according to many
polls upwards of 60% of GOP voters would have to read the section about
Obama’s parents and his birth in Hawaii and believe that he’s lying, for
example. But I have to believe that a substantial part of the strength of those
divisive narratives is that many Americans don’t read into our history and
culture and literature at all, relying instead solely on what they hear about
them from less nuanced and analytical sources than (I certainly hope) this one.
So, in the words of Levar Burton one more time, “Read the book!” Next post
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
11/6 Memory Day nominees: A tie between John
Philip Sousa, whose compositions
define America
as much as any single musical
voice and genre
could; and Derrick
Bell.
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