Race and Identity in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father: A Collection of Critical Essays
Edited by Zeitler, Michael A. , & Evans, Charlene T.

Description

This book examines significant aspects of President Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father 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, Frederick Douglass, and Ralph Ellison 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 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) - and how he chose this name precisely because it constructed his identity as anti-thetical to the dominant paradigms of whiteness that he had been confined to while growing up in Hawaii. 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).

Reviews

“Here we are with a book that leaps forth with analysis and critiques capable of filling in the gaps of our history by filling in the interstitial spaces between dreams and whishes, dreams and nightmares, dreams and realities from a paternity faintly remembered and preeminently present.”-Prof. Molefi Kete Asante, Temple University

“…the essays collected in this volume will offer a scholarly and critical examination of Dreams from My Father as a contribution to the African American autobiographical tradition; as the place where several important historical and cultural threads meet and mingle; as what will surely become a key document in the American conversation on race and identity.”-Prof. Martin Beller, Texas Southern University

“The variety of perspectives, the level of scholarship and the seriousness of purpose present in their text offers scholars and educators an important resource for further study of Barack Obama.” -Prof. Constantina Michalos, The University of St. Thomas

Table of Contents

Foreword
Molefi Kete Asantei

Acknowledgements

Introduction
Michael A. Zeitler

A Knot to Bind Our Experiences Together: Storytelling in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father and Critical Race Theory
Erin Ponton Fiero

No Apology for the Show: Performance and Oratorical Self-Creation in Obama, Douglass, and Ellison
Granville Ganter

Slumming and Self-Making in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father
David Mastey

In Search of My Father’s Garden: Kenya as the Focal Point for the Study of a New Kind of Narrative in African American Autobiography
Claire Joly

An Image of Africa: Race and Identity in Barack Obama’s Rewriting of Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ Michael Zeitler

Obama, Ellison, and the Search for Identity
Rita Saylors

Voices of His Mothers: Feminist Interventions and Identity in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father
Letizia Guglielmo

Queer Coherence: Loss and Hybridity in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father
Patricia Harris Gillies

The Search for Race and Masculine Identity in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father
Dolores Sisco

Beyond Race: Racial Transcendence in Jean Toomer’s Cane and Barack Obama’sDreams from My Father
Charlene T. Evans

Glorious Burdens: A Lacanian Reading of Racial Passing, Inheritance, and PaternalDesire in Obama’s Dreams from My Father
Nicholas Powers

ISBN10:  0-7734-1601-3   ISBN13:  978-0-7734-1601-7    Pages:  308    Year:  2012   

Series: hors série Number: 0

Subject Areas:  American - Literature, Biography, Sociology & Social Sciences,

Imprint: Edwin Mellen Press

USA List Price: $149.95 UK List Price: £ 99.95  

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