Obama's autobiography is called Dreams of My Father.
What were the dreams of his father?
After several readings of the book in question, I believe the title refers to
Obama's dreams of his father. His dreams
about his father. His fantasies about who his father was.
He only met his father once; he was around ten years old when the man came for a two-week visit.
He found his father abrasive, bossy, and quarrelsome, meddling and disruptive, upsetting everyone in the family, demanding that young Obama be forced to do extra schoolwork over the holidays instead of watching
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas on television, causing his mother and grandparents to argue endlessly.
He was happy when his father left.
But he always felt a void, an empty place in his life where his father was not.
It was a void that neither his grandfather nor his stepfather Lolo Soetoro could entirely fill, although each, in his own way, tried.
As one of the only children of color in a private school, he lied and told his classmates that his father was African royalty.
As a young man struggling with racial identity, he went to Africa to find out what he could about his father, although the man, by that time, was dead.
It turned out that his father had not, in life, been the sort of person Barack Obama could look up to. But he found other relatives who he became close to, and who eventually helped him come to terms with his life.
Although the book was first published over 15 years ago, it was re-published in 2004 with a foreword stating that, had he known his mother would die the same year the book was published, he might have written it from a very different perspective, focusing more on her and her life and influence upon him.
As it was, he had no idea at the time he wrote the book that she'd be dying any time soon; she was still a relatively young woman. At the time he wrote the book, his mother was a constant in his life, whom he no doubt took for granted, while his father was the one who had always been an elusive and idealized mystery, and was now gone beyond recall.
So he wrote the book for his dad, about his dad, about how the absence of this man shaped his life and identity.
It's a young man's memoir. What's he
supposed to write about, other than his own feelings and family dramas?