Want to know more about the re-elected US President?

This was the first book written by Barack Obama while he was he was preparing to launch his political career in a campaign for an Illinois office. The memoir included stories of his childhood, life in college, work as an organizer, his first visit with his African families in Kenya, his study at Harvard Law School and the marriage with his wife Michelle.

I was fairly surprised to see how well the book was written. Perhaps due to my stereotypical views of politicians in general, I wasn’t expecting much from this book. As with many books I’ve bought along the way, I bought this book merely out of curiosity and because it was sold for only RM 8.00 at the Big Bad Wolf Books sale.

The book showed some of the first signs on how he got into politics. As with many black people in the US around that time, Obama experienced many facets of racial discrimination since early life. His experience was more different than many black people though, being half-African and half-Caucasian. Since his early years, he was unsure of his own identity.

He started to understand more about the black societies when he worked as an organizer in Chicago to fight for their benefits, unsurprisingly experienced many ups and downs. Later he finally get to know his families during his stay in Kenya, hearing stories about his father whom he met once in Hawaii. He also found unfairness happened even in an African country heavily influenced by the presence of white men.

Perhaps it’s because of the book’s general focus on issues related to being African-Americans in white-dominated society, while I do understand racial discrimination that still exist even today, it wasn’t easy for me to place myself in their positions, even through imagination. It took me longer than what I estimated to finish this book, as I read and studied the story. It was educational nonetheless, gaining more understanding of something that I may never experience in my life.