Conversation

I just finished reading our President-Elect's autobiography, Dreams from My Father, his first and least political book, and it's an extremely engaging story of a young man's search for his identity, compounded not only by being of mixed race but of mixed nationality.

The book begins in New York, his walk-up in Spanish Harlem, a key moment in his life, and then the first of three major sections, his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, adolescence in Hawaii, Occidental College in SoCal, transfer to Columbia. The second section is Chicago, his start and growth as an organizer in pretty tough conditions. The third is his first visit to Kenya where he meets his whole family, including his step-grandmother, grand uncle, half-sibling. His father's absence informs the book, but it never kills his spirit.

What I find most interesting today about how frankly Obama speaks about the challenges facing our country is how natural it is, not just in style, but in substance. He's not giving speeches, he's in a steady conversation with us. He's been part of the conversation ever since he connected with his African sister, Auma. He's been part of the conversation ever since he went to college and made his first public political speech, against apartheid in South Africa. He's been part of the conversation ever since he tried to process the way his black friend on the high school basketball team referred to white as well as other black people. It's a conversation his/my generation has been having ever since we got deep into our teens in the 1970's and now, thirty years later, it's the mainstream conversation.

Barack then per the friend who named him.

Barack now:



Eleven more days.