In the book “Dreams from my Father” , Barack Obama talks about his life living in America from his childhood to his thirties. It is a memoir about the struggles and challenges that he had to overcome due to his father’s absence from his life. At an early age, he was sent to live with his mother’s parents in Hawaii. Although his father abandoned his family, Obama was protected from this truth as his family attempted to cover up what his father did by painting him in a greater light.  His father later on dies in a car accident when Obama was in college.

Throughout his life, Obama moved to many different places, living in some of the greatest cities in America. He moved to Los Angelos for college, and later transferred to Colombia University in New York. He also attended Harvard Law School in Boston. After the death of his father, he decided to move to Kenya to learn more about his father and his history that he was kept in the dark about. He learned many things about his father and many complications in his life.

Living in America, Obama’s family expected the privileges and social class rights of an American. However, due to race relations, they suffered many consequences and injustices that many African Americans suffered in history. As a result, Obama largely devoted a lot of his time to trying to fight these injustices against African Americans. Their vision was similar to the American dream. Obama did his part in uniting these visions despite the obstacles he faced as an African American as he was able to go to college, and have a successful career. 

A passage that stuck with me was ” At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me, both more and less than a man. He had left Hawaii back in 1963, when I was only two years old, so that as a child I knew him only through the stories that my mother and grandparents told. They all had their favorites, each one seamless, burnished smooth from repeated use. I can still picture Gramps leaning back in his old stuffed chair after dinner, sipping whiskey and cleaning his teeth with the cellophane from his cigarette pack, recounting the time that my father almost threw a man off the Pali Lookout because of a pipe…. “.

This passage really shows how despite his father passing when Obama was quite young, the impact it had on him was that it simply made him want to learn more about his father. He did not suffer the same emotional sadness that someone would normally suffer when their father died, but in turn used this as an opportunity to honor his father by learning about his history.