The Bridge: The Life And Rise Of Barack Obama Part 9

Chapter Six.

A Narrative of Ascent When Obama left Cambridge to start his public life, he could not have antic.i.p.ated some of the breaks that would accelerate his career: the political elders who stepped aside and provided him with crucial openings; a devastating electoral loss that turned out to be a kind of gift; political rivals who imploded as the news of their unfortunate personal lives became public; invitations to speak at an antiwar rally in 2002 and, two years later, at a national convention. In retrospect, the greatest break of all may have been that Jerry Kellman called him not from an immensity like New York (where he might have got lost or waited far longer to emerge), or from a city like Detroit or Washington, D.C. (where he might have run for mayor, but without hope of a larger career). Chicago itself was, for Obama, a stroke of fortune: a big-time metropolis and a political center with a large African-American base, but situated in a state whose demographics reflected the country as a whole. After the fall of the old Daley machine, Chicago was opening up to younger politicians, to blacks and Latinos. Chicago was home for Obama, it was a community; it was also an ideal place to begin a life in politics. Obama did not stay long enough to become a fixture of Chicago--his roots were not deep--but the city provided a series of profound lessons and opportunities. to start his public life, he could not have antic.i.p.ated some of the breaks that would accelerate his career: the political elders who stepped aside and provided him with crucial openings; a devastating electoral loss that turned out to be a kind of gift; political rivals who imploded as the news of their unfortunate personal lives became public; invitations to speak at an antiwar rally in 2002 and, two years later, at a national convention. In retrospect, the greatest break of all may have been that Jerry Kellman called him not from an immensity like New York (where he might have got lost or waited far longer to emerge), or from a city like Detroit or Washington, D.C. (where he might have run for mayor, but without hope of a larger career). Chicago itself was, for Obama, a stroke of fortune: a big-time metropolis and a political center with a large African-American base, but situated in a state whose demographics reflected the country as a whole. After the fall of the old Daley machine, Chicago was opening up to younger politicians, to blacks and Latinos. Chicago was home for Obama, it was a community; it was also an ideal place to begin a life in politics. Obama did not stay long enough to become a fixture of Chicago--his roots were not deep--but the city provided a series of profound lessons and opportunities.

When Obama returned to Chicago after graduation, he certainly could have taken a job with the corporate law firm or investment bank of his choosing. Instead, he accepted a place at the best-known civil-rights firm in town, Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. The firm, with around a dozen lawyers, had its offices in a brick town house on West Erie Street, north of the Loop; the concentration was on voting rights, tenant rights, employment rights, anti-trust, whistleblower cases--a cla.s.sic liberal "good guy" firm. Judson Miner, a liberal advocate who had been Harold Washington's corporation counsel, brought Obama to the firm and convinced him over a series of long lunches that he could work on cases that would "let him sleep soundly at night." The work, Miner promised, would feel like an extension of his work as an organizer on the South Side.

Obama also had Doug Baird's offer to teach law part-time at the University of Chicago. He was given the rank of a lecturer--a non-tenured, adjunct position--and provided with a stipend, benefits, and a small office on the sixth floor of the D'Angelo Law Library. At first, Baird did not require Obama to teach at all; both he and the dean, Geoffrey Stone, understood that Obama would spend most of his time writing a book about race and voting rights. When he decided to turn the book into a more personal rumination on family and race, they were unfazed.

All of Obama's employers in Chicago--Allison Davis and Judson Miner at the law firm, the deans at the university--proved indulgent of Obama's divided attentions; sooner or later, they figured, he would increase his commitments or go into politics. His intelligence, charm, and serene ambition were plain to see. The first time he met Geoffrey Stone, Obama was not yet thirty, and yet Stone's a.s.sistant, Charlotte Maffia, joined the legion predicting something large for him: she said that he would soon be governor of Illinois. Only occasionally were there rumbles of resentment about the young lawyer taking time to indulge his literary ambition. "He spent a lot of time "He spent a lot of time working on his book," Allison Davis admitted to a reporter for working on his book," Allison Davis admitted to a reporter for Chicago Chicago magazine. "Some of my partners weren't happy with that, Barack sitting there with his keyboard on his lap and his feet up on the desk writing the book." magazine. "Some of my partners weren't happy with that, Barack sitting there with his keyboard on his lap and his feet up on the desk writing the book."

Obama was starting his new life in Chicago in a far different spirit than he had the first time. Gone was the self-conscious asceticism, the intermittent periods of loneliness. When he started his life as a lawyer and teacher in 1992, he had a community and a partner. The writing was going slowly, but his relationship with Mich.e.l.le Robinson had survived the separations during law school. They were living together now in Hyde Park and were engaged to be married.

In the spring of 1992, before he could get much work done as a lawyer or complete his book, Obama made a commitment to lead a voter registration drive in the African-American and Hispanic communities called Project Vote. The drive was aimed at combating the Reagan Administration's rollback of social programs by registering as many as a hundred and fifty thousand of the four hundred thousand unregistered African-Americans in Illinois. The work had to be accomplished by October 5th.

Project Vote, which was founded by the civil-rights activist Sandy Newman in 1982, just before Harold Washington's first successful race for City Hall, could not rely on the old Democratic Party machine's method of padding the rolls by handing out cash payments known as "bounties." The program needed a director who was familiar with the city and who had organizing skills, someone who could reach people in the churches, the schools, the community centers, and on the street. "I kept hearing about Obama in community-organizing circles," Newman, who was Project Vote's national director, said. A well-known activist in town, Jacky Grimshaw, pressed Newman to interview Obama, saying that he had the right managerial and diplomatic skills to recruit volunteers and persuade community groups to join in the effort. After talking through the job with Obama, Newman called John Schmidt, a partner at the law firm of Skadden Arps, who had agreed to co-chair the Chicago branch of Project Vote, and asked him to meet with Obama.

Schmidt called Obama, who was doing some training work with organizers on the West Side, and invited him to the office. As they talked, Schmidt realized that in his long career in law and as a close aide to Richard M. Daley at City Hall, he had never before met someone who had deliberately spurned a sure clerkship at the Supreme Court. The work they discussed was tedious, and Schmidt worried that Obama would walk away from it after a few days or weeks. Traditionally, the Chicago machine did not want anyone registering to vote if that person was not going to vote with the machine. As a result, election law in the city required that registrars come for training sessions at the Board of Elections, downtown, teach people to fill out the forms precisely, collect the forms, and get them on the rolls. It meant getting people, mainly churchwomen, to stand outside of Sunday services all over the city and persuade people to sign up.

Obama said he didn't mind the prospect of such work. His one reservation about taking the job was that he would miss the deadline, June 15th, for handing in his book ma.n.u.script. He wondered if he could work on Project Vote part-time--a suggestion that Newman dismissed. "I told him, 'Do you want to write this memoir at such a young age or rescue democracy?'" Newman recalled. The stakes were high: the Reagan-Bush era was in its eleventh year, and the Democrats in Illinois had a chance not only to elect Bill Clinton to the White House, but also to elect an African-American, Carol Moseley Braun, to the Senate. Obama accepted Newman's offer to run Project Vote in Illinois--which would be centered mainly in Cook County. The salary was around twenty-five thousand dollars. To a great degree, it was an extension of his work as a community organizer, but it was also a bridge to electoral politics. Through Project Vote, he had to call on committeemen, aldermen, state legislators, lawyers, activists, clergy--the intricate web of a.s.sociations that formed the political culture of Chicago and the state of Illinois. If he could register a significant number of new Democratic voters, he would bank the sort of capital that counts most: political I.O.U.s.

Obama heard that Sam Burrell, an alderman on the far West Side, in the Twenty-ninth Ward, had done successful work registering voters and so he arranged to meet with one of Burrell's aides, a young woman named Carol Anne Harwell, and tried to enlist her to help with Project Vote. "I don't think Barack had ever been that far west," Harwell recalled. "He came to the office in his raggedy black car and he was wearing a leather bomber jacket and carried a briefcase and a satchel." Obama struck Harwell as intelligent and eager, but despite his years as an organizer, lacking in street savvy. "He didn't know all the slang," she said. "If you had said, 'Oh, that's dope,' he wouldn't have known that. Hip-hop wasn't his thing." After Harwell agreed to work as Obama's a.s.sistant, she discovered what Obama was carrying around in his satchel--a laptop and his book ma.n.u.script.

Obama had some money to work with. Ed Gardner, whose family owned the SoftSheen hair-products company, agreed to help underwrite the campaign. The co-chairs of the finance committee were Schmidt and John Rogers, the founder of Ariel Investments, one of the biggest black-owned businesses in town, and a teammate of Craig Robinson's at Princeton. Schmidt and Rogers called on wealthy Chicagoans like the developer and ex-alderman Bill Singer and the developer and arts patron Lewis Manilow.

Obama was more concerned with the apathy and the political disconnection of unregistered voters than with resources. "Today, we see hundreds "Today, we see hundreds of young blacks talking 'black power' and wearing Malcolm X T-shirts," he told the of young blacks talking 'black power' and wearing Malcolm X T-shirts," he told the Sun-Times Sun-Times columnist Vernon Jarrett early in the campaign, "but they don't bother to register and vote. We remind them that Malcolm once made a speech t.i.tled 'The Ballot or the Bullet,' and that today we've got enough bullets in the streets but not enough ballots." Obama had visited the one-party state of Kenya, and he told Jarrett that his African relatives and friends looked at their American brothers and sisters with envy: "They can't understand why we don't relish the opportunity to vote for whomever we please." columnist Vernon Jarrett early in the campaign, "but they don't bother to register and vote. We remind them that Malcolm once made a speech t.i.tled 'The Ballot or the Bullet,' and that today we've got enough bullets in the streets but not enough ballots." Obama had visited the one-party state of Kenya, and he told Jarrett that his African relatives and friends looked at their American brothers and sisters with envy: "They can't understand why we don't relish the opportunity to vote for whomever we please."

Obama set up an office on South Michigan Avenue and went looking for registrars who could be both persuasive and reliable. He himself trained seven hundred registrars--there were eleven thousand overall--and helped devise a public-relations campaign with a black-owned firm called Brainstorm Communications. Obama and his team thought that posters and registers using a straightforward slogan like "Register to Vote" would do nothing to appeal to young people. That year, Spike Lee had come out with his popular biopic of Malcolm X, and Obama and his colleagues thought for a while about using Malcolm's slogan, "By Any Means Necessary." They settled on "It's a Power Thing."

"We took the 'X' from Malcolm, put it on some kente paper, and made posters and T-shirts with the slogan 'It's a Power Thing' that were so popular that we ended up trademarking them," Carol Anne Harwell said. "Of course, people in the African-American community knew that the 'X' referred to Malcolm, but we also had white girls going around wearing them, and one told us, 'Look at this! I'm Number Ten!'"

Project Vote volunteers put up the posters all over African-American neighborhoods and in Hispanic areas like Pilsen. The two major black-owned radio stations in town, WVON and WGCI, ran ads that told people where they could sign up; black-owned fast-food restaurants allowed registrars to approach potential voters over their burgers and fries.

Obama faced generational resistance from some longtime activists and black nationalists. Lutrelle (Lu) Palmer, the head of the Black Independent Political Organization and a popular journalist-activist known as "the Panther with a pen," was one of a small contingent that saw Obama as too young, too haughty, and too inexperienced to be taken seriously. Palmer helped register thousands of voters for Harold Washington's 1983 campaign; he had no patience for Obama's desire to continue along the same lines. In an interview with the Chicago In an interview with the Chicago Reader Reader, Palmer said that Obama "came to our office and tried to get us involved [in Project Vote], and we were turned off then. We sent him running. We didn't like his arrogance, his air."

But, relying on his connections with black church leaders and community activists from his organizing days, Obama more than overcame the resistance. Project Vote met its extraordinary goal of registering nearly a hundred and fifty thousand new voters. For the first time in the history of Chicago, registration in the majority-black wards was greater than that in the majority-white wards. Project Vote played a pivotal role in the election of Carol Moseley Braun, the first African-American woman ever elected to the Senate and only the second African-American to be elected to the chamber since Reconstruction. Bill Clinton, in a three-way race with George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot, became the first Democratic candidate to win Illinois since Lyndon Johnson overwhelmed Barry Goldwater, in 1964.

Obama, who was now thirty-one, was so successful in his leadership of Project Vote that Democratic Party political operatives in Chicago took notice. At the press conference announcing the results of Project Vote, Obama stood quietly to the side and let Jesse Jackson, Bobby Rush, and other senior Democratic Party politicians get the attention. "It wasn't modesty. Barack is not modest," Schmidt said. "But rather than grab the spotlight, it was more important to him to have these people as potential allies down the road. That was way more important than to be a star at a two-bit press conference in 1992. That is very rare. He has always had a level of a.s.surance and foresight that was very unusual."

Obama's effort also attracted the attention of the business community. Crain's Chicago Business Crain's Chicago Business reported that Obama had "galvanized Chicago's political community, as no seasoned politico had before." reported that Obama had "galvanized Chicago's political community, as no seasoned politico had before."

One of the more important connections Obama formed during Project Vote was with Bettylu Saltzman, the daughter of Philip Klutznick, a rich developer who had been Secretary of Commerce in the Carter Administration. Saltzman was a well-known member of the Lakefront Liberals, left-leaning Chicagoans, predominantly Jewish, who lived in the high-rises along Lake Michigan and were vital fund-raising sources over the years for Illinois Democrats like Paul Douglas, Adlai Stevenson, Paul Simon, and Harold Washington. Saltzman was a regular at a group called the Ladies Who Lunch--a group of influential women in Chicago who included Christie Hefner, the chairman of Playboy Enterprises; the philanthropist Marjorie Benton; Isabel Stewart, who ran the Chicago Foundation for Women; Amina d.i.c.kerson, of Kraft Foods; the columnist Laura Washington; and Julia Stasch, of the MacArthur Foundation. Saltzman was also friendly with the wealthiest Jewish business families in town: the Crowns and the Pritzkers. When Obama paid a visit to Saltzman to ask for help on Project Vote, she joined the growing contingent of people who came home to tell a spouse that she had just met the man who could be the first black President. "I told everyone I knew about this guy," she said. "Everyone," in Saltzman's case, turned out to be a core of wealthy Chicagoans who one day would help form the financial base of Obama's political campaigns.

The meeting with Saltzman, and others like it during Project Vote, was Obama's introduction to the northern reaches of Chicago. He already had an education in the diversity of the South Side---the churches, the African-American neighborhoods, the liberal politics of Hyde Park and the university. Now he was reaching to the Gold Coast, the near North Side, the northern suburbs--liberal enclaves, too, but with a great deal more money.

Don Rose, a political consultant who worked with Martin Luther King, Jr., during his Chicago years and with a raft of Democratic politicians, said, "Obama is possibly the best networker I've ever seen. Bill Clinton might be his rival, but Barack is amazing. First, he comes to Chicago with a reference from Newton Minow's daughter, Martha. Then Newt introduces him to a circle of high-cla.s.s liberal lawyers. He gets this job with the churches as an organizer, and he finds himself a network of pastors and people working in related non-profits and foundations. He also finds himself at the University of Chicago, and that has a network at the law school, the business school--and they are all bowled over to discover this brilliant black guy. There is also a Harvard network. There are also liberal, elite funders and agency heads: Bettylu Saltzman was also part of the Minow grouping and she she has lots of friends. It's circle after circle that sometimes touch--or they can be bridged. An ambitious young man can get to know a whole lot of people. If you've impressed one or two people in three or four of these groupings, and you make it your business to do this for business or politics or social prestige, you can really go far." has lots of friends. It's circle after circle that sometimes touch--or they can be bridged. An ambitious young man can get to know a whole lot of people. If you've impressed one or two people in three or four of these groupings, and you make it your business to do this for business or politics or social prestige, you can really go far."

Saltzman also had friends in the political world. She made sure to contact David Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune Tribune reporter who had become a campaign consultant for Democratic candidates. Axelrod, a strategist who concealed his cunning behind a laconic charm, had worked for Simon, Stevenson, and Harold Washington, and, in 1991, was running the doomed Senate campaign of a personal-injury lawyer named Al Hofeld. He was especially involved with Richard M. Daley. "Bettylu called me up and said, 'I want you to meet this young guy who's running Project Vote,'" Axelrod recalled. "She said, 'I know this is an odd thing, but I think he could be the first black President.' She really did say it. And I thought, Well that's a little grandiose, but I'd like to meet him." Saltzman also knew people in the foundation world, the business world, and the political world. "Barack quickly became part of that circle, and they all took an interest in him, because he was an impressive young guy," Axelrod said. reporter who had become a campaign consultant for Democratic candidates. Axelrod, a strategist who concealed his cunning behind a laconic charm, had worked for Simon, Stevenson, and Harold Washington, and, in 1991, was running the doomed Senate campaign of a personal-injury lawyer named Al Hofeld. He was especially involved with Richard M. Daley. "Bettylu called me up and said, 'I want you to meet this young guy who's running Project Vote,'" Axelrod recalled. "She said, 'I know this is an odd thing, but I think he could be the first black President.' She really did say it. And I thought, Well that's a little grandiose, but I'd like to meet him." Saltzman also knew people in the foundation world, the business world, and the political world. "Barack quickly became part of that circle, and they all took an interest in him, because he was an impressive young guy," Axelrod said.

When a reporter who was writing a profile of Obama for a profile of Obama for Chicago Chicago magazine after the success of Project Vote asked him about running for office, Obama answered coyly. This was clearly not the first time someone had raised the question. "Who knows?" he said. "But probably not immediately. Was that a sufficiently politic 'maybe'? My sincere answer is, I'll run if I feel I can accomplish more that way than agitating from the outside. I don't know if that's true right now. Let's wait and see what happens in 1993. If the politicians in place now at city and state levels respond to African-American voters' needs, we'll gladly work with and support them. If they don't, we'll work to replace them." magazine after the success of Project Vote asked him about running for office, Obama answered coyly. This was clearly not the first time someone had raised the question. "Who knows?" he said. "But probably not immediately. Was that a sufficiently politic 'maybe'? My sincere answer is, I'll run if I feel I can accomplish more that way than agitating from the outside. I don't know if that's true right now. Let's wait and see what happens in 1993. If the politicians in place now at city and state levels respond to African-American voters' needs, we'll gladly work with and support them. If they don't, we'll work to replace them."

Obama married Mich.e.l.le Robinson, on October 3, 1992, just as Project Vote was winding down before the election. Surrounded by guests from Kenya, Hawaii, and Chicago, Jeremiah Wright presided over the ceremony at Trinity. Wright talked about the importance of marriage and responsibility, especially for black men. Because Mich.e.l.le's father, Fraser, had died the previous year, her brother Craig walked her down the aisle. At the reception, held at the South Sh.o.r.e Cultural Center, the music was "old-school stuff, music you could move to," Carol Anne Harwell recalled. Sant.i.ta Jackson, Mich.e.l.le's high-school cla.s.smate and Jesse Jackson's daughter, sang.

Obama's relationship with Mich.e.l.le was not without its complications. Barack's ambitions and considerable ego often clashed with Mich.e.l.le's desire for stability and a sense of partnership. But the relationship was his emotional anchor. A few years after the wedding, but before Obama declared his intention to run for his first political office, a photographer named Mariana Cook visited Barack and Mich.e.l.le at their apartment in Hyde Park and photographed them sitting together on a couch under a couple of Indonesian prints. Cook also interviewed them for a book she was a.s.sembling about marriage.

Obama, for his part, clearly believed that he had found something profound in his wife. "All my life, I have been st.i.tching together "All my life, I have been st.i.tching together a family, through stories or memories or friends or ideas," he told Cook. "Mich.e.l.le has had a very different background--very stable, two-parent family, mother at home, brother and dog, living in the same house all their lives. We represent two strands of family life in this country--the strand that is very stable and solid, and then the strand that is breaking out of the constraints of traditional families, traveling, separated, mobile. I think there was that strand in me of imagining what it would be like to have a stable, solid, secure family life." a family, through stories or memories or friends or ideas," he told Cook. "Mich.e.l.le has had a very different background--very stable, two-parent family, mother at home, brother and dog, living in the same house all their lives. We represent two strands of family life in this country--the strand that is very stable and solid, and then the strand that is breaking out of the constraints of traditional families, traveling, separated, mobile. I think there was that strand in me of imagining what it would be like to have a stable, solid, secure family life."

Mich.e.l.le's remarks were no less loving, but it was clear that she felt that her husband was headed into potentially dangerous waters. "There is a strong possibility that Barack will pursue a political career, although it's unclear," she said. "There is a little tension with that. I'm very wary of politics. I think he's too much of a good guy for the kind of brutality, the skepticism. When you are involved in politics, your life is an open book, and people can come in who don't necessarily have good intent. I'm pretty private, and like to surround myself with people that I trust and love. In politics you've got to open yourself to a lot of different people."

With Project Vote and the election over, Obama again turned to his book. He had been committed to writing a book about race since his days at Harvard. Just after he was elected president of the and the election over, Obama again turned to his book. He had been committed to writing a book about race since his days at Harvard. Just after he was elected president of the Harvard Law Review Harvard Law Review, in February, 1990, Jane Dystel, a literary agent in New York, noticed the article in the New York Times Times about Obama's winning the post. Dystel called Obama in Cambridge and suggested that he write a book. She urged him to put together a proposal that she could submit to publishers. Dystel, whose father had been head of Bantam Books, clearly saw something in Obama, who came to visit her in New York. about Obama's winning the post. Dystel called Obama in Cambridge and suggested that he write a book. She urged him to put together a proposal that she could submit to publishers. Dystel, whose father had been head of Bantam Books, clearly saw something in Obama, who came to visit her in New York. Her a.s.sociate Jay Acton Her a.s.sociate Jay Acton, who represented James Baldwin, said maybe they could get Obama to write a book like The Fire Next Time The Fire Next Time.

Later, when Obama recounted his discussions with publishers to his friend and law colleague Judd Miner, he was amused by the a.s.sumptions they made about him. He recalled that one publisher "asked me to write about being poor and rising from the ghetto of Chicago. I told them, 'I never did take that trip but I would like to write about the trip I have taken.'"

After conducting an auction with a few other publishers, Dystel sold Obama's book to Poseidon Press, a small imprint of Simon & Schuster run by an editor named Ann Patty. The advance was reportedly over a hundred thousand dollars. Obama received half that amount on signing the contract.

While Obama was still at Harvard, he made notes for a book. Fairly soon, he realized that he had no interest in writing a straight book about issues--about civil-rights law, affirmative action, or organizing. Instead, he wanted to write about himself, about his struggle with ident.i.ty and the elusive ghost of his father. Relying on the journals that he had been keeping since his days as an undergraduate, he started working in earnest. After his wedding and honeymoon After his wedding and honeymoon, he spent a month alone, writing, in a rented hut on Sanur Beach, in Bali.

Obama took a long time to finish. "He had to come to terms with some events in his life that some people pay years of therapy to get comfortable revealing," his friend Valerie Jarrett said. The writing went slowly, she said, "because everything was so raw."

Along the way, Obama experienced some minor dramas of the publishing trade. In the summer of 1993, Simon & Schuster closed Poseidon. When publishers close an imprint, they usually transfer books for which they have high hopes to another imprint inside the house and try to get rid of projects without much promise. Obama had missed deadlines and handed in bloated, yet incomplete, drafts. "We took fliers on things," Ann Patty said, "but, when Poseidon went down, Simon & Schuster kept the gold and got rid of the fliers."

Dystel took the book, now ent.i.tled Dreams from My Father Dreams from My Father, to Times Books, an imprint at Random House run by the former Washington Post Post reporter and editor Peter Osnos. Times Books paid Simon & Schuster forty thousand dollars for the book--a very good deal, it turned out, for Random House. Simon & Schuster ended up losing the rest of the advance it had paid. reporter and editor Peter Osnos. Times Books paid Simon & Schuster forty thousand dollars for the book--a very good deal, it turned out, for Random House. Simon & Schuster ended up losing the rest of the advance it had paid.

Henry Ferris, the editor at Times Books who worked directly with Obama, communicated with him almost entirely by telephone and express mail. Obama proved receptive to editing. Ferris asked him to reduce one thirty-page episode to fifteen pages; Obama did it without complaint or hesitation. "He was a quick study," Ferris said. (In a preface to the 2004 paperback edition, Obama writes that he now winces when he reads the book and still has the "urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so" and get rid of "mangled" sentences and expressions of emotion that seem "indulgent or overly practiced.") paperback edition, Obama writes that he now winces when he reads the book and still has the "urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so" and get rid of "mangled" sentences and expressions of emotion that seem "indulgent or overly practiced.") Ferris was impressed by his young author's st.u.r.dy ego and sense of his own potential. "He thought enough of himself and his story that he thought to write his autobiography at the age of thirty," Ferris said. "He knew his story was special, his parentage was interesting. He had that much of a sense of story. I saw him as a person who at that time was in a position to talk about race relations in this country in a way that certainly I can't and few can. He understood the white world and the black world and he was tossed back and forth between them. That was something that I remember him talking about, being in a position to speak about things in a way that others couldn't."

With Dreams from My Father Dreams from My Father, Obama was working in the oldest, and arguably the richest, genre of African-American writing: the memoir. The memoir tradition begins with the first slave narratives: A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a Negro Man A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a Negro Man, a pamphlet published in Boston in 1760; A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, as Related by Himself A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, as Related by Himself, in 1770; and then, in 1789, an international best-seller, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Va.s.sa, the African, Written by Himself The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Va.s.sa, the African, Written by Himself. Equiano recounted the story of his capture as a boy of eleven, his purchase by a sea captain, and then, after he buys his own freedom, his life in England as an abolitionist. There are more than six thousand There are more than six thousand slave narratives known to scholars, and, as the literary scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., writes, these texts arose out of the writers' need to a.s.sert their own ident.i.ty, and that of their people, as thinking human beings and not, as they were viewed by American law, as the animal possessions of white men: slave narratives known to scholars, and, as the literary scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., writes, these texts arose out of the writers' need to a.s.sert their own ident.i.ty, and that of their people, as thinking human beings and not, as they were viewed by American law, as the animal possessions of white men: "Deprived of access to literacy "Deprived of access to literacy, the tools of citizenship, denied the rights of selfhood by law, philosophy, and pseudo-science, and denied as well the possibility, even, of possessing a collective history as a people, black Americans--commencing with the slave narratives in 1760--published their individual individual histories in astonishing numbers, in a larger attempt to narrate the collective history of 'the race.'" histories in astonishing numbers, in a larger attempt to narrate the collective history of 'the race.'"

Any canon or college syllabus of African-American autobiography tends to begin with certain cornerstone texts: the three slave narratives of Frederick Dougla.s.s; Up from Slavery Up from Slavery, by Booker T. Washington; Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself; The Souls of Black Folk Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself; The Souls of Black Folk and and Dusk of Dawn Dusk of Dawn, by W. E. B. DuBois; The Big Sea The Big Sea, by Langston Hughes; Black Boy Black Boy, by Richard Wright; Dust Tracks on a Road Dust Tracks on a Road, by Zora Neale Hurston; Notes of a Native Son Notes of a Native Son and and n.o.body Knows My Name n.o.body Knows My Name, by James Baldwin; The Autobiography of Malcolm X; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings The Autobiography of Malcolm X; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou. (James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Ralph Ellison's and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man Invisible Man are novels, and yet they are so clearly based on the events of the authors' lives that they are often discussed alongside these memoirs.) Depending on which critic is doing the accounting, the canon of memoirists also includes Ida B. Wells, William Pickens, Anne Moody, Claude Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, Ralph Abernathy, Roger Wilkins, George Jackson, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, Amiri Baraka, John Edgar Wideman, Audre Lorde, John Hope Franklin, bell hooks, Brent Staples, and Itabari Njeri. Some co-auth.o.r.ed memoirs by entertainers such as Billie Holiday are novels, and yet they are so clearly based on the events of the authors' lives that they are often discussed alongside these memoirs.) Depending on which critic is doing the accounting, the canon of memoirists also includes Ida B. Wells, William Pickens, Anne Moody, Claude Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, Ralph Abernathy, Roger Wilkins, George Jackson, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, Amiri Baraka, John Edgar Wideman, Audre Lorde, John Hope Franklin, bell hooks, Brent Staples, and Itabari Njeri. Some co-auth.o.r.ed memoirs by entertainers such as Billie Holiday (Lady Sings the Blues) (Lady Sings the Blues), d.i.c.k Gregory (n.i.g.g.e.r) (n.i.g.g.e.r), Sammy Davis, Jr., (Yes I Can) (Yes I Can), and Count Basie (Good Morning Blues) (Good Morning Blues) can also claim a place on the extended list. One way that Obama joins this tradition is that usually, in European literature, a writer writes his or her novels, plays, and poems, and then, toward the end, writes a memoir; it is more common among African-American writers than Europeans to can also claim a place on the extended list. One way that Obama joins this tradition is that usually, in European literature, a writer writes his or her novels, plays, and poems, and then, toward the end, writes a memoir; it is more common among African-American writers than Europeans to begin begin their writing lives by a.s.serting themselves with an autobiography. their writing lives by a.s.serting themselves with an autobiography.

As a young man, Obama searched for clues to his own ident.i.ty by very purposefully reading his way through DuBois, Hughes, Wright, Baldwin, Ellison, and Malcolm X. He has also mentioned texts by Dougla.s.s, Marcus Garvey, Martin Delany, and a range of novelists--in particular, Toni Morrison. In fact, reading as a way of becoming is a feature of African-American autobiography, as it is of so many outsider-memoirists of any ethnicity. In memoirs of all kinds, a young person in search of a way to rise above his circ.u.mstances or out of his confusion invariably goes to the bookshelf. Malcolm X, for one, provides an extended account of his self-education. He reads histories by Will Durant He reads histories by Will Durant and H. G. Wells, which gave him a glimpse into "black people's history before they came to this country"; he reads Carter G. Woodson's and H. G. Wells, which gave him a glimpse into "black people's history before they came to this country"; he reads Carter G. Woodson's The Negro in Our History The Negro in Our History, which "opened my eyes about black empires before the black slave was brought to the United States, and the early Negro struggles for freedom." In In Soul on Ice Soul on Ice, Eldridge Cleaver recounts his reading of Rousseau, Paine, Voltaire, Lenin, Bakunin, and Nechayev's Catechism of the Revolutionist Catechism of the Revolutionist as a means of detailing his own radical catechism. Young autobiographers also read other memoirs to learn the form. as a means of detailing his own radical catechism. Young autobiographers also read other memoirs to learn the form. Claude Brown told an audience Claude Brown told an audience in New York in 1990 that he carefully studied the structures of Dougla.s.s's slave narratives and Richard Wright's in New York in 1990 that he carefully studied the structures of Dougla.s.s's slave narratives and Richard Wright's Black Boy Black Boy before writing before writing Manchild in the Promised Land Manchild in the Promised Land, his memoir of growing up in Harlem in the nineteen-forties and fifties. Even Sammy Davis, Jr. Even Sammy Davis, Jr., in his Harlem-to-Hollywood autobiography, Yes I Can Yes I Can, is eager to tell the reader that, while he was on "latrine duty" in the Army, he became an obsessive reader of Wilde, Rostand, Poe, d.i.c.kens, and Twain; and that helped him endure the racism of his fellow soldiers.

While it is safe to a.s.sume that by the time Obama published he was thinking about public office, even he, for all his ambition and his self-a.s.surance, could not have envisioned that Dreams from My Father Dreams from My Father, just thirteen years later, would provide a trove of material for voters, journalists, speechwriters, and media consultants during a Presidential campaign. After Obama's emergence as a national politician, it was difficult to read it solely in the spirit in which it was written; the book became a sourcebook of stories endlessly called upon for use in politics. Dreams from My Father Dreams from My Father is important precisely because it was written when Obama was young and unguarded. is important precisely because it was written when Obama was young and unguarded. "Barack is who he says he is "Barack is who he says he is," Mich.e.l.le Obama said. "There is no mystery there. His life is an open book. He wrote it and you can read it. And unlike any candidate he has really exposed himself, pre-political ambition, so it's a book that is kind of free from intent. It is the story of who he is."

Many journalists eager to write or film profiles of Obama when he became a candidate read Dreams from My Father Dreams from My Father and expressed dismay that he had not written his book according to the precise standards of scholarly or journalistic veracity. In fact, Obama, unlike most other memoir writers, alerts his reader to the flexible terms of his book. and expressed dismay that he had not written his book according to the precise standards of scholarly or journalistic veracity. In fact, Obama, unlike most other memoir writers, alerts his reader to the flexible terms of his book. He signals his awareness He signals his awareness of "the temptation to color events in ways favorable to the writer" and "selective lapses of memory." He does not pretend to a purely factual rendition. He appropriates some of the tools of fiction. of "the temptation to color events in ways favorable to the writer" and "selective lapses of memory." He does not pretend to a purely factual rendition. He appropriates some of the tools of fiction. While the book is based on his journals While the book is based on his journals and conversations with family members, "the dialogue is necessarily an approximation of what was actually said or relayed to me." Moreover, some of the characters are composites; the names (with the exception of family members or well-known people) are altered; and chronology, he admits, has been changed to help move the story along. What's exceptional about this is not that Obama allows himself these freedoms, but, rather, that he cops to them right away. and conversations with family members, "the dialogue is necessarily an approximation of what was actually said or relayed to me." Moreover, some of the characters are composites; the names (with the exception of family members or well-known people) are altered; and chronology, he admits, has been changed to help move the story along. What's exceptional about this is not that Obama allows himself these freedoms, but, rather, that he cops to them right away.

W. E. B. DuBois set a standard for forthrightness about the genre of memoir, writing, "Autobiographies do not form indisputable authorities. They are always incomplete, and often unreliable. Eager as I am to put down the truth, there are difficulties; memory fails especially in small details, so that it becomes finally but a theory of my life, with much forgotten and misconceived, with valuable testimony but often less than absolutely true, despite my intention to be frank and fair." His book for forthrightness about the genre of memoir, writing, "Autobiographies do not form indisputable authorities. They are always incomplete, and often unreliable. Eager as I am to put down the truth, there are difficulties; memory fails especially in small details, so that it becomes finally but a theory of my life, with much forgotten and misconceived, with valuable testimony but often less than absolutely true, despite my intention to be frank and fair." His book The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois, he admits, is merely "the Soliloquy of an old man on what he dreams his life has been as he sees it slowly drifting away; and what he would like others to believe."

Obama's memoir is a mixture of verifiable fact, recollection, recreation, invention, and artful shaping. The reader is hardly to be blamed for asking the difference, quite often, between a memoir and a novel that is obviously based on facts. A modern writer like Philip Roth constantly invokes this crossfire of genre distinctions and deliberately arouses in the reader an urge to ask what is true and what is not, all the while reminding the reader that life, as it is lived, is an unstructured mess, whereas the fiction writer constructs the impression of reality by shaping it, using it as the verbal clay he needs to tell his story and thereby reveal emotional or philosophical truths.

African-American autobiographies often follow a structure that the literary scholar Robert Stepto calls a "narrative of ascent." The narrator begins in a state of incarceration or severe deprivation. He breaks those bonds so that he may go out, discover himself, and make his imprint on the world. (When the young Frederick Dougla.s.s finally fights back against the evil overseer and "slave-breaker" Edward Covey, he writes, "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.") Sometimes the narrator will not know one or more of his parents; he may not know his date of birth. ( finally fights back against the evil overseer and "slave-breaker" Edward Covey, he writes, "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.") Sometimes the narrator will not know one or more of his parents; he may not know his date of birth. ("Of my ancestry," Booker T. Washington writes in Up from Slavery Up from Slavery, "I know almost nothing.") He a.s.sesses and describes his deprivations, the oppression that keeps him down. He goes through trials. He takes a journey: he travels the Middle Pa.s.sage; he escapes his slave-master; or, like Wright, he leaves the Jim Crow South for the Northern city, or, like Washington, heads back back into the Deep South, or, like Malcolm X, goes from place to place, courting trouble, winding up in prison. He reads. He studies. He has experiences. He struggles with the absence of a father or struggles with the father who is there but cannot be relied upon. He into the Deep South, or, like Malcolm X, goes from place to place, courting trouble, winding up in prison. He reads. He studies. He has experiences. He struggles with the absence of a father or struggles with the father who is there but cannot be relied upon. He learns learns. And, as he acc.u.mulates experience and endures his trials, he begins to discover his ident.i.ty, often taking a new name as he does so.

In the case of many authors, including Dougla.s.s, Hughes, and Malcolm X, part of that struggle for ident.i.ty includes wrestling with the fact of a white parent or grandparent. The narrator begins to find his place in a community of African-Americans. He discovers his mission and sets out to fulfill it. Dougla.s.s becomes a leading abolitionist, meets with Lincoln in the White House, and presses him to integrate the Union forces. DuBois helps found the N.A.A.C.P., becomes a giant of American scholarship, and ends his long life in Ghana.

Obama's reading of black memoirists when he was still living in Hawaii was the "homework" of a young man trying "to reconcile the world as I'd found it with the terms of my birth." And yet, in all the books he reads, he keeps finding authors filled with a depressing self-contempt; they flee or withdraw to varying corners of the world, and to Obama they are "all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels." when he was still living in Hawaii was the "homework" of a young man trying "to reconcile the world as I'd found it with the terms of my birth." And yet, in all the books he reads, he keeps finding authors filled with a depressing self-contempt; they flee or withdraw to varying corners of the world, and to Obama they are "all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels."

For Obama, the great exception is Malcolm X. Despite their obvious differences of era, religion, temperament, and politics, it is not impossible to figure out why Obama is so taken with Malcolm. Malcolm's is a narrative of mixed races, a missing father, and self-invention. He starts life as Malcolm Little, becomes "Detroit Red" on the street, "Satan" in prison, Minister Malcolm X, and then El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. "His repeated acts of self-creation "His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me," Obama writes. "The blunt poetry of his words, his unadorned insistence on respect, promised a new and uncompromising order, martial in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will." spoke to me," Obama writes. "The blunt poetry of his words, his unadorned insistence on respect, promised a new and uncompromising order, martial in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will."

Obama was disturbed by one line of Malcolm's: "He spoke of a wish he'd once had, the wish that the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged." The reference is to a moment in by one line of Malcolm's: "He spoke of a wish he'd once had, the wish that the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged." The reference is to a moment in The Autobiography of Malcolm X The Autobiography of Malcolm X when, as a minister of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm gives a speech in Detroit and talks about the rape of his grandmother: when, as a minister of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm gives a speech in Detroit and talks about the rape of his grandmother: We're all black to the white man, but we're a thousand and one different colors. Turn around, look look at each other! What shade of black African polluted by the devil white man are you? You see me--well, in the streets they used to call me Detroit Red. Yes! Yes, that raping, redheaded devil was my at each other! What shade of black African polluted by the devil white man are you? You see me--well, in the streets they used to call me Detroit Red. Yes! Yes, that raping, redheaded devil was my grandfather! grandfather! That close, yes! My mother's father! ... If I could drain away his blood that pollutes That close, yes! My mother's father! ... If I could drain away his blood that pollutes my my body, and pollutes body, and pollutes my my complexion, I'd do it! Because I hate every drop of the rapist's blood that's in me! And it's not just me, it's complexion, I'd do it! Because I hate every drop of the rapist's blood that's in me! And it's not just me, it's all all of us! During slavery, of us! During slavery, think think of it, it was a of it, it was a rare rare one of our black grandmothers, our great-grandmothers and our great-great-grandmothers who escaped the white rapist slavemaster.... Turn around and look at each other, brothers and sisters, and one of our black grandmothers, our great-grandmothers and our great-great-grandmothers who escaped the white rapist slavemaster.... Turn around and look at each other, brothers and sisters, and think think of this! You and me, polluted all these colors--and this devil has the arrogance and the gall to think we, his victims, should of this! You and me, polluted all these colors--and this devil has the arrogance and the gall to think we, his victims, should love love him! him!

Obama, who has been raised by a loving white mother and white grandparents, writes that even as a teenager, he knew that the presence of white family, white blood, could never become an abstraction: "If Malcolm's discovery toward the end of his life, that some whites might live beside him as brothers in Islam, seemed to offer some hope of eventual reconciliation, that hope appeared in a distant future, in a far-off land. In the meantime, I looked to see where the people would come from who were willing to work toward this future and populate this new world." by a loving white mother and white grandparents, writes that even as a teenager, he knew that the presence of white family, white blood, could never become an abstraction: "If Malcolm's discovery toward the end of his life, that some whites might live beside him as brothers in Islam, seemed to offer some hope of eventual reconciliation, that hope appeared in a distant future, in a far-off land. In the meantime, I looked to see where the people would come from who were willing to work toward this future and populate this new world."

Obama's Malcolm is not the Malcolm of mid-career. He admires "The Ballot or the Bullet" but not the strains of militancy and separatism, the faith in the cosmology of Elijah Muhammad. He admires Malcolm's masculine pride, his eloquence, his determined self-evolution, and the revelation at the end of his life that religious faith and separatism are incompatible. At law school, Obama's habit of mind was always conciliatory. That is the Malcolm he desires as well--the self-confident, charismatic, eloquent leader who comes to see his faith in a broader, more humanist light, the militant who begins to see the value of a broader embrace.

After he became President, Obama told me, "I think that I find the sort of policy prescriptions, the a.n.a.lysis, the theology of Malcolm full of holes, although I did even when I was young. I was never taken with some of his theorizing. I think that what Malcolm X did, though, was to tap into a long-running tradition within the African-American community, which is that at certain moments it's important for African-Americans to a.s.sert their manhood, their worth. At times, they can overcompensate, and popular culture can take it into caricature--blaxploitation films being the cla.s.sic example of it. But if you think about it, of a time in the early nineteen-sixties, when a black Ph.D. might be a Pullman porter and have to spend much of his day obsequious and kow-towing to people, that affirmation that I am a man, I am worth something, I think was important. And I think Malcolm X probably captured that better than anybody."

In the original Simon & Schuster contract, dated November 28, 1990, Dreams from My Father Dreams from My Father had been tentatively t.i.tled "Journeys in Black and White." had been tentatively t.i.tled "Journeys in Black and White." As Obama writes As Obama writes, the book is a "boy's search for his father, and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American." Obama told me that he was quite "conscious" of the great tradition of African-American memoir and knew that he had a more modest story to tell. "I mean, at that point I'm thirty-three and what have I done?" he said. "The only justification for anybody wanting to read it was to be able to use my experiences as a lens to examine what's happened to issues of race in America, what's happened to issues of cla.s.s in America, but also to give people a sense of how it's possible for a young person to pull strands of himself together into a coherent whole." The most limited way to read the book is to comb it for its direct referents to reality, to discover "who is who." One can discover that "Marty" is (for the most part) Jerry Kellman. Or that the saturnine nationalist known as "Rafiq" is based on a community activist in Chicago named Salim al Nurridin. Or that the militant-sounding "Ray" at Punahou is an ex-con named Keith Kakugawa. And so on. Some of these real people made news during the campaign when they protested some aspect of their portrayals. (Kakugawa said he wasn't as obsessed with race; al Nurridin disputed the rendition of his ideology.) Ann Dunham, who was dying, in Hawaii, of uterine and ovarian cancer, read drafts of her son's book, and although she admired it, even she had quibbles. She told her friend Alice Dewey that she was really not quite so naive about race as her son made her out to be.

Dreams from My Father is the extended and relatively guileless self-expression of Obama is the extended and relatively guileless self-expression of Obama before before he became a public man, a politician. We read him, as a young man reflecting on a still younger man, dealing with countless questions: What is race? What does it mean to be African-American? What does it mean to be raised by whites and identify oneself as black? What is the right way to live a life? And how is race relevant to such moral considerations? he became a public man, a politician. We read him, as a young man reflecting on a still younger man, dealing with countless questions: What is race? What does it mean to be African-American? What does it mean to be raised by whites and identify oneself as black? What is the right way to live a life? And how is race relevant to such moral considerations?

Obama's story contains many of the familiar features of African-American autobiography: a search for a missing parent; a search for a racial ident.i.ty; a search for a community and a mission; a physical journey that echoes all his other searches. Obama, however, is in many ways more privileged than his literary predecessors. He is middle-cla.s.s. He has benefited from the pa.s.sage of time and from many laws. He enters inst.i.tutions of privilege often denied his precursors. And, both as a person and as a story teller, this poses a problem for him. The lawns and quadrangles of Punahou, Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard Law School are not ordinarily the landscapes of epic struggle.

Moreover, Obama has grown up, sometimes to his frustration, after after the civil-rights movement. His is hardly a world free of racism, but it is a world in which the popular culture around him is rich with African-American stars, from the musicians he watched on television as a child in Hawaii to the enormously influential figures of his adulthood. What's more, his white friends have listened to those records, watched those shows, idolized those same stars. Knowingly or not, they have come to accept Ralph Ellison's idea that what we understand to be American is, in countless visible and invisible ways, impossible without African-Americans. One of his earliest recognitions of racism comes when, watching television in Indonesia, thousands of miles away from black America, he notices that the Bill Cosby character in "I Spy" never gets any women, while his white partner, Robert Culp, makes out on a regular basis. Back in Hawaii, a cla.s.smate asks to touch his hair the way she might tentatively touch the coat of a farm animal. Painful, but, again, they are hardly moments worthy of the civil-rights movement. His is hardly a world free of racism, but it is a world in which the popular culture around him is rich with African-American stars, from the musicians he watched on television as a child in Hawaii to the enormously influential figures of his adulthood. What's more, his white friends have listened to those records, watched those shows, idolized those same stars. Knowingly or not, they have come to accept Ralph Ellison's idea that what we understand to be American is, in countless visible and invisible ways, impossible without African-Americans. One of his earliest recognitions of racism comes when, watching television in Indonesia, thousands of miles away from black America, he notices that the Bill Cosby character in "I Spy" never gets any women, while his white partner, Robert Culp, makes out on a regular basis. Back in Hawaii, a cla.s.smate asks to touch his hair the way she might tentatively touch the coat of a farm animal. Painful, but, again, they are hardly moments worthy of Manchild in the Promised Land Manchild in the Promised Land.

Narratives of ascent, by their nature, must begin with deprivation, oppression, and existential dread. Obama seems to sense this problem and, at the very start of his book, darkens his canvas as well as he can. He is twenty-one and living in New York, on East Ninety-fourth Street, between First and Second Avenues. This has always been a world away from East Ninety-fourth Street and Park or Madison or Fifth Avenues, and the block was markedly worse then than it is now. Veteran residents of the building Veteran residents of the building told a reporter for the New York told a reporter for the New York Times Times that there had been a.s.saults in the hallways and that drug use was common. And yet it was not Bushwick, either. Elaine's and the Ninety-second Street Y are nearby. that there had been a.s.saults in the hallways and that drug use was common. And yet it was not Bushwick, either. Elaine's and the Ninety-second Street Y are nearby. Obama places himself Obama places himself in that "part of that unnamed, shifting border between East Harlem and the rest of Manhattan," knowing that the mere mention of Harlem, to some white non-New Yorkers, will resonate in a minor key. The block is "uninviting," "treeless," shadowy; the buzzer is broken; the heat is spotty; the sounds of gunfire echo in the night, and a "black Doberman the size of a wolf" prowls nearby, an empty beer bottle clamped in its jaws. And, to flavor the menacing picture with a dash of cla.s.s resentment, Obama reports that "white people from the better neighborhoods" walk their dogs on his street "to let the animals s.h.i.t on our curbs." in that "part of that unnamed, shifting border between East Harlem and the rest of Manhattan," knowing that the mere mention of Harlem, to some white non-New Yorkers, will resonate in a minor key. The block is "uninviting," "treeless," shadowy; the buzzer is broken; the heat is spotty; the sounds of gunfire echo in the night, and a "black Doberman the size of a wolf" prowls nearby, an empty beer bottle clamped in its jaws. And, to flavor the menacing picture with a dash of cla.s.s resentment, Obama reports that "white people from the better neighborhoods" walk their dogs on his street "to let the animals s.h.i.t on our curbs."

Obama heightens the facts of his spare and lonely life. His "kindred spirit" His "kindred spirit" is a silent and solitary neighbor who lives alone, and eventually dies alone, a crumpled heap on the third-floor landing. "I wished that I had learned the old man's name," the narrator reports gravely. "I felt as if an understanding had been broken between us--as if, in that barren room, the old man was whispering an untold history." A paragraph later we realize the literary effect for which Obama is striving: the death of the old man with his "untold history" foreshadows by a month the death of the Old Man, Obama's father, who, of course, is himself the great untold story that Obama will set out to explore and tell. is a silent and solitary neighbor who lives alone, and eventually dies alone, a crumpled heap on the third-floor landing. "I wished that I had learned the old man's name," the narrator reports gravely. "I felt as if an understanding had been broken between us--as if, in that barren room, the old man was whispering an untold history." A paragraph later we realize the literary effect for which Obama is striving: the death of the old man with his "untold history" foreshadows by a month the death of the Old Man, Obama's father, who, of course, is himself the great untold story that Obama will set out to explore and tell. As he is cooking his eggs As he is cooking his eggs "on a cold, dreary November morning," Obama gets the news on a scratchy line from Nairobi. "on a cold, dreary November morning," Obama gets the news on a scratchy line from Nairobi.

Obama's book is a multicultural picaresque, a search both worldly and internal that will take him to Honolulu, Jakarta, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Nairobi, and his ancestral village of Kogelo. Along the way he acc.u.mulates knowledge, he peels back layer after layer of secrets, until he becomes his mature, reconciled self. When Obama writes a new preface When Obama writes a new preface for the 2004 edition, he is the Democratic Party nominee for U.S. senator from Illinois, and he insists that "what was a more interior, intimate" quest has now "converged with a broader public debate, a debate in which I am professionally engaged, one that will shape our lives and the lives of our children for many years to come." His quest is not just his own; it becomes emblematic of a national political quest. Writers rarely insist so boldly on the importance of their own books. for the 2004 edition, he is the Democratic Party nominee for U.S. senator from Illinois, and he insists that "what was a more interior, intimate" quest has now "converged with a broader public debate, a debate in which I am professionally engaged, one that will shape our lives and the lives of our children for many years to come." His quest is not just his own; it becomes emblematic of a national political quest. Writers rarely insist so boldly on the importance of their own books.

At the end of each of the memoir's three long sections ("Origins," "Chicago," and "Kenya"), the narrator is in tears and experiences an epiphany: first, he weeps when he sees his father in a dream and resolves to search for him; then he cries in Jeremiah Wright's church when he realizes that he has found both a community and a faith; and, finally, he collapses in tears at his father's grave, when he realizes that after discovering so much about his father--his intelligence, his failures, his tragic end--he is reconciled to his family and his past. of t