Questions for Discussion

Family & Community

1. Throughout the book, the author speaks of the dreams of his grandparents, parents, siblings, and others, and the ways in which those dreams were realized or not. What purposes do dreams serve in our lives? What effect have your dreams and the dreams of those close to you had on your life and on their lives?

2. Consider the titles of the three parts of the book: Origins, Chicago, and Kenya. If you were to write your own memoir, how would you organize it? What would the section or chapter titles be?

3. Family stories play a large part in the narrative. What purposes do family stories serve? How do the stories change over time? What effect do stories have on those who tell them and those who hear them?

4. Can you identify any customs, attitudes, or worldviews in your own family that have been passed on by older relatives, or even ancestors? How have these influenced or affected you? What difficulties might arise when family traditions are challenged or rejected?

5. Community is defined simply as a group of people living in the same place, but many of us use the word to express a more complex idea that includes shared interests, beliefs and values. How do you define community? What are the advantages and disadvantages of belonging to a community? Is it possible for a community made up of individuals with diverse characters, personalities, and backgrounds to survive and thrive?

6. The author’s personal search for identity and a sense of belonging are major themes in the book. Have you ever had to deal with questions of identity or belonging in your life? How did you resolve these questions? What have been the defining influences (people, events, or circumstances) that have helped shape your identity?

Society, Culture & Values

1. Why is the book titled Dreams from My Father? Consider how the dreams of Obama's parents, grandparents, siblings, and the people he worked with in Chicago were realized or thwarted. How did this affect Obama?

2. The three sections of the book are titled Origins, Chicago, and Kenya. What is the significance of this structure?

3. Obama says in the Preface to the 2004 Edition that he sometimes thinks he “might have written a different book—less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life… what is best in me I owe to her.” How well do we get to know Ann in the book? Why did her marriages fail? How did Ann’s background, influence, and life choices contribute to her son’s character?

4. In what ways were Gramps and Toot conventional Midwesterners? In what ways did they defy prevailing Midwestern attitudes? How did their lives influence their grandson's?

5. As a child, how does Obama become aware of racism? What affect does this revelation have on him? Could or should his mother have prepared him better?

6. How would you characterize the relationship between Obama and his father? How is Obama’s image of his father formed, and how does this image change over time? Is Obama able to reconcile the image and the reality of his father? How does he do this?

7. Why does Obama begin the book with learning the news of his father's death? Is it a turning point for him? Does he recognize it as a turning point when it happens?

8. Obama’s personal search for identity and belonging is a major theme in the book. Like many multi-racial and multi-ethnic individuals, Obama had to learn, as he says, “to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds, understanding that each possessed its own language and customs and structures of meaning, convinced that with a bit of translation on my part the two worlds would eventually cohere." Discuss some of the instances when Obama was forced to negotiate this divide. What strategies does he use? How do these experiences affect him? Is he ultimately successful at finding a comfortable place for himself?

9. What challenges does Obama face in his work on the South Side of Chicago? To what are his initial failures due? Consider the various interests that come into play. What does Obama learn and how do his tactics change over time as he deals with these disparate interests?

10. How did Obama's upbringing and life experiences influence his decision to become a community organizer? How might his early work in Chicago have influenced his decision to enter politics?

11. Obama writes that, at least for blacks, “Communities had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens.” How was this evident in his work in Chicago? Compare this to the communities Obama experienced in Kenya.

12. Discuss the widely different worldviews and strategies for negotiating race issues that are detailed in the book. Consider Obama’s schoolmate Ray; Gramps’ friend Frank; Joyce, Tim, Marcus, and Regina at Occidental; Will, Rev. Smalls, Mary, Rafiq, Dr. Collier, Asante Moran, and Johnnie in Chicago.

13. At Trinity Church, Obama sees a brochure that encourages members to pursue "middleincomeness" but condemns "middleclassness." What do these terms mean? Is this a realistic or fair philosophy?

14. Compare the social, cultural, and economic pressures experienced by African Americans in the United States and post-colonial Africans in Kenya. In what ways are the legacy of slavery and the aftermath of colonialism the same or different?

15. Compare Obama's relationships with his African and American families. What is different and what is the same?