This would sit perfectly on any literature course focusing on migration / diaspora / transnational or transcultural identities. The anthropologist James Clifford in Routes (1997) suggests a transition from fixed, unearthable 'roots' to 'routes' that we more dynamically create and continue to 're-member' (to echo Toni Morrison). Similarly, the absent centre to Obama's narrative - his Kenyan father - inspires a return to Africa, but that transatlantic itinerary has already been complicated by the white mother and maternal grandparents who raise him, childhood friends and a stepfather in Indonesia, and friendships that grow out of modest grassroots projects on Chicago's South Side. The result is a schema of local, national and diaspora communities that splinter almost infinitesimally - particularly when resources are unevenly available, as within Obama's extended Kenyan family - but, conversely, also offer multiple lines of intersection and overlap. The last image in the past narrative, of baobab trees seen from a bus to Nairobi, encapsulates a personal vision arrived at by the end of the journey that the book represents: 'They both disturbed and comforted me, those trees that looked as if they might uproot themselves and simply walk away, were it not for the knowledge that on this earth one place is not so different from another - the knowledge that one moment carries within it all that's gone on before'.
This 'ethos' grows out of, and sustains, another aspect that struck me throughout: the ordinariness of The Man. He is at the centre of his own memoir and not only as the running thread that joins multiple pasts with the present. But there is little sign of what is to come... we see a secure if sometimes confused kid, a teenager who smokes a lot of pot and contemplates dropping out of school, a rather ascetic young man committed to working with the poor, the marginalised, the young men on the streets with hardened eyes. There are no great personal ambitions on display. And little speechifying. The most resonant words are reserved for his paternal grandmother, who articulates the full complexity of his inheritance near the end of the memoir.
It seems, too, that The Man can write. For the most part his style tends toward accessible (if with a quiet elegance), although I agree with his later assessment that the book could have been shorter. But there are moments when poetry sneaks quietly in:
' It took him a while to puzzle out my grandparents' old stereo, but finally the disk began to turn, and he gingerly placed the needle on the groove. A tinny guitar lick opened, then the sharp horns, the thump of drums, then the guitar again, and then the voices, clean and joyful as they rode up the back beat, urging us on.
"Come Barry", my father said. "You will learn from the master".
And suddenly his slender body was swaying back and forth, the lush sound was rising, his arms were swinging as they cast an invisible net, his feet wove over the floor in off-beats, his bad leg stiff but his rump high, his head back, his hips moving in a tight circle. The rhythm quickened, the horns sounded, and his eyes closed to follow his pleasure, and then one eye opened to peek down at me and his face spread in a silly grin... I took my first tentative steps with my eyes closed, down, up, my arms swinging, the voices lifting. And I hear him still: As I follow my father into the sound, he lets out a quick shout, bright and high, a shout that leaves much behind and reaches out for more, a shout that cries for laughter.'
We don't know if this man can shape a historical cusp that everyone is so urgently wishing into being. But neither, perhaps, is it a time for premature and cynical conclusions.
*This might need glossing for US readers. In the UK, the morning after the election, I found Dreams on the bottom of a rather obscured book display. I don't know anyone else here who's read it, even though Obama hysteria reached - temporarily - a fairly acute pitch this side of the Atlantic as well. I'd put this down to a misleading disjunction between this humane, modest and surprisingly literary book and its cheesy packaging.
A thoughtful article on post-election realities & possibilities.
