Obama by the books

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This article was published 01/03/2019 (2454 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“In his curious and roundabout way, he seemed destined for exactly this moment. I knew because I’d seen up close how his mind churned nonstop. Over years, I’d watched him inhale books, newspapers, and ideas, sparking to life anytime he spoke with someone who offered a shard of new experience or knowledge. He’d stowed every piece of it.”

So wrote the author of former U.S. president Barack Obama’s favourite book of 2018. The subject? Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (DNC). The author? His wife Michelle.

That Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming, would become last year’s bestselling book speaks to how much the American people, and so many beyond our southern neighbour’s borders, still cherish the thoughtfulness, intelligence and grace of the former first lady — and her husband, the former commander in chief.

More than any first couple, the Obamas’ time in the White House from 2008 to 2016 was intimately intertwined with books, literacy and advocacy for learning.

Those attending Barack Obama’s nearly sold-out Winnipeg talk at Bell MTS Place on Monday will witness a man deeply touched by the written word.

 

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Perhaps the best place to begin an exploration of the impact of books on 57-year-old Barack Obama is with the three titles he’s penned himself.

Obama’s first book was 1995’s Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Published by Three Rivers Press, it was released just as Obama set out on the campaign trail in an attempt to become a member of the Illinois senate.

Modelling the book after African-American author Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel, Invisible Man, Obama’s memoir details his younger years in Indonesia, Hawaii and then Chicago prior to his attending Harvard Law School in 1988.

Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., left his son and his wife, Ann Dunham, in the mid-’60s to attend Harvard himself before returning to his native Kenya, where he died in a car accident in 1982.

In Dreams From My Father the younger Barack recalls growing up in Honolulu with his maternal grandparents after a brief time in Indonesia (where his mother returned after remarrying), his years as a grade-school student in Hawaii and his time in college in both California and then New York before ending up in Chicago.

Crucial to the book are Obama’s ruminations about visiting Kenya and connecting with relatives on his father’s side prior to beginning his own education at Harvard.

Dreams From My Father was reprinted in 2004 shortly after Obama, then an Illinois senator, first caught the wider public eye with his keynote address at the DNC in Boston. The reprinted edition contains Obama’s keynote, as well as a new preface.

Obama’s followup, 2006’s The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, served as a launching point and a touchstone for many of the themes of his 2008 presidential campaign that saw him win the White House with nearly 69.5 million votes, the most ever by a presidential candidate.

The book’s title (which was also the title of his 2004 DNC speech) stemmed from a sermon delivered by Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor in Chicago.

The nine chapters of The Audacity of Hope outline Obama’s political beliefs, the importance of spirituality in his life, and his views on all manner of issues facing the American public.

A bestseller, the audiobook version of The Audacity of Hope won Obama his second Grammy Award for best spoken-word album.

The third book written by Obama was 2010’s Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters, a children’s book illustrated by Loren Long.

The book, completed in 2008 after Obama had been elected president, pays tribute to 13 formative Americans whom he felt shaped the country, including Neil Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Martin Luther King, Jackie Robinson, Helen Keller and more.

 

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Beyond his own books, during his tenure in the White House Barack Obama was widely noted for his affinity for reading that went far beyond policy briefings and the daily news.

In a January 2017 interview with Michiko Kakutani, then chief book critic for the New York Times, Obama outlined the importance of books in his life — from his childhood, where they helped shape the person he became, to his time in the White House, where they’d provide solace and escape from the stress of life as commander in chief.

“Whether they’ve made me a better president I can’t say,” Obama told Kakutani just prior to leaving the White House.

“But what I can say is that they have allowed me to sort of maintain my balance during the course of eight years, because this is a place that comes at you hard and fast and doesn’t let up.”

Obama also noted he would read for around an hour every night while president — a pastime that stands in stark contrast to his successor’s reported habits of flipping through nightly news shows before hitting the sheets.

Obama’s reading habits seem to explore all aspects of the human condition. From historical biographies to contemporary fiction and beyond, the regular reading lists he would share with reporters, and continues to share through social media, span all manner of authors.

In addition to fiction such as Tommy Orange’s lauded novel There There, Tara Westover’s memoir Educated and Lauren Groff’s Florida, Obama’s 2018 year-end list included a pair of Canadian novels.

Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight, which takes readers to postwar London and follows the plight of abandoned siblings, made the list, as did Esi Edugyan’s smash hit Washington Black, which tells the story of a young slave on the run after a man is killed. The book won the Victoria-based author the Giller Prize, and was shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

One of the authors most frequently mentioned by Obama is Iowa’s Marilynne Robinson. The 75-year-old novelist and essayist has won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award (twice) and the Orange Prize for Fiction.

In 2013 Obama presented Robinson with the National Humanities Medal for her contributions to literature; two years later the pair sat down in Des Moines for an in-depth conversation published by the New York Review of Books.

At one point in their exchange, Obama, musing about reading novels, offers insight one couldn’t possibly imagine coming from the current White House occupant: “When I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels.

“It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of greys, but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it’s possible to connect with some(one) else even though they’re very different from you.”

 

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The next definitive tome about Obama will likely come from the man himself. In 2017, Barack and Michelle Obama signed a joint book deal reportedly worth up to US$65 million.

Michelle Obama’s memoir Becoming ruled 2018’s year-end bestseller lists, despite the fact it was only on shelves for the last seven weeks of the year.

Maybe it’s a sign of things to come — that the book yet to be written by her husband, the former leader of the free world, will be able to ride the coattails of her success to the top of the charts.

 

books@freepress.mb.ca