Custom «Dreams from My Father» Essay Paper Sample

''Dreams from My Father'' is a careful, modest and strategic story about how a young man Mr. Obama struggles through many obstacles and emerged victorious. His radical identity and spiritual awakening while searching for meaning in life (Apte, par 4). It is a personal narration of his childhood and life. In this unusually honest narration, Mr. Obama speaks of places such as Kansas and the way it shaped his grandparents. His early life was in Hawaii where his white mother raised him up. She achieved this with the help of her parents. His strong character began to develop while he was living with his grandparents.

Followed by Indonesia where he lived for four years. Living in two different locations reinforced the fact that he belongs to two different worlds. It also provided him with a wide experience of other culture and made him more positive about a multi cultural society (Obama, pg 63). This gave him a first hand experience and knowledge on different views from various nations. In the beginning, Mr. Obama realizes his heritage; he is a son of biracial parents. His father is a Kenyan while his mother is an American. The two met while studying in Hawaii. One year after the couple gave birth to little Obama, they divorced and Obama's father returned to his native land Kenya.

Mr. Obama later meets his father when he is around ten years old. While in fifth grade, little Obama realized that he was somewhat different from most of his classmates (Apte, par 3). He spent a lot of time with his father during this period. His father was demanding and insisted that little Obama should study black literature. After this duration, he grew up to the age of twenty years without his presence. At this age, he realized what his father's weakness was. These were the dark moments and he speaks honestly about this. He embraced his identity as a black man.

After graduating from high school, he joined Occidental college. His youth is marked with rebellion. As an idle teen, He was fond of pot and drinking liquor. These early days faded away as he began the journey of seeking purpose. He eventually settled down and enrolled at Colombia. After graduating, he went to find new life in Chicago. The desire to find meaning in life drove him to leave a successful job in New York to become a street organizer. His job in the streets was to fight for the rights of the rights of poor blacks so that they could obtain fair housing and better educational opportunities. He worked passionately but he still felt incomplete. He comments, "My identity might begin with the fact of my race but it didn't, couldn't, end there."

He also narrates his visit to his father's family in Africa specifically in Kenya even though his father was already dead. His father Obama senior had died in a road accident (Obama, pg 72). Mr. Obama's purpose on this visit was to make a solid connection with his father and paternal family members. In his African visit, Mr. Obama receives much information about his former generation. He is faced with the bitter truth about his father. However, he manages to bring together his divided inheritance. Obama's narration enables one to understand the phenomena surrounding a multiracial individual. It shades light on how colonialism affected Africans. It shows that regardless of the challenges one faces, he can rise and shine. Even though he drifts somewhere as he tries to find out who he is, he is able to stand again.