An American Dream (book)

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Barack Obama (2005)

An american dream. The story of my family is the autobiography of Barack Obama , the original English version of which was published in the USA in 1995 under the title Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance . In it he describes his life up to the beginning of his law studies at Harvard University .

history

Barack Obama, former US President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, wrote the autobiography of his young years after becoming the first African American editor-in-chief of the legal journal Harvard Law Review in 1990 . A work on racism was originally planned , with which it failed. The autobiography was on bestseller lists around the world , including the Spiegel and Focus non-fiction bestseller lists in Germany . In the Spiegel annual bestseller 2009 in the hardcover category , it reached 19th place in the non-fiction category . Together with his political non-fiction book The Audacity of Hope (German title Hope dare ), the autobiography made Obama a multi- millionaire .

The first edition of Dreams from My Father was published in 1995 in New York by Times Books, an imprint of "The New York Times Company". This was followed by other English-language editions and translations into at least 24 languages. In 2004 a new edition was published, which Obama added a foreword in which he went into the genesis of the book and described his further life since it was first published, such as his election to the Illinois Senate , the consequences of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , and starting a family with Michelle Obama and the death of his mother Stanley Ann Dunham.

In Germany, the autobiography was published in 2008 as a hardback edition by Carl Hanser Verlag in a translation by Matthias Fienbork and in 2009 as a paperback in licensed edition by Deutsches Taschenbuch Verlag . Audiobook Hamburg published the book in a shortened version in 2008, read by Leon Boden .

The German tabloid Bild printed several excerpts from the German translation as a series in 2008.

In 2009, Obama signed a contract for an abridged and simplified edition of the book, which is intended to address young people in particular. For this he received an advance payment of $ 550,000.

content

Obama divided his work into three parts, Childhood , Chicago and Kenya .

He started the childhood chapter with a call from his aunt Jane from Nairobi , who informed him about the accidental death of his Kenyan father Barack Hussein Obama senior, who had only lived with Barack Obama and his mother until 1963. He describes his maternal grandparents, with whom he lived temporarily, the life in Hawaii , in Indonesia after his mother had married an Indonesian for the second time, the efforts of his mother to provide an adequate schooling for her son, when he returned to the USA and the last meeting of the ten-year-old with his father. Attending the Occidental College in Los Angeles , which was mostly attended by whites, gave him the experience of not being in demand on dates , but also aroused his interest in the anti- apartheid movement.

In Chicago, Obama worked in the district after his exams and came into first contact with his older half-sister, Auma Obama . Together with the residents of Altgeld Gardens, he initiated a campaign against asbestos , developed a support program for young people at risk, dealt with Christianity and finally made his decision to study law.

A trip through Europe made Obama realize that it had "nothing to do with me". He flew to Kenya, where he met his half-siblings, his aunts, uncles, cousins ​​and cousins ​​and learned of the conflicts within the family over his father's inheritance. Eventually he also met his grandmother, with whom he could hardly communicate because she only spoke Luo .

Reviews

Nils Minkmar described the book in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung as a “tough self-portrait”: “It is a hesitant, thoroughly tentative work that weaves the history of his family into a more comprehensive reflection on race, society and education in America. It's a pretty harsh self-portrait too: young Barry is ambitious but also vain; and in between he keeps hanging. […] The most beautiful passages in the book touch on Obama's time as a community organizer in Chicago, a kind of emergency doctor for half-dead neighborhoods. [...] He observes that there are precise and rather funny portraits of the residents, all of which lead to an overall conclusion that the social texture has also been worn out in the de-industrialized neighborhoods. "

The Berliner Zeitung wrote: “That Obama tells from his life and his image of America without the smoothed political language that one is looking for the much-conjured person in the politician, that is the special charm of the 'American Dream' - like the Hanser Verlag Obamas Biography titled with this kitsch term. 'Dreams from my father', the book is more aptly called in the original. "

Engelbert Washietl wrote in the Wiener Zeitung : “Sometimes it is lengthy, but never uninteresting. He knows his stuff, and you share his horror when he learns how some black people try to artificially get a lighter skin color and suffer severe damage in the process. You learn something from the - whites mostly foreign - reality in colored communities and try to understand why a black mother calls her black child 'nigger' in anger and wants to say that she thinks it is unbearable. "

The Zürcher Tages-Anzeiger wrote about his books Daring Hope and An American Dream : “You have a precise eye that is capable of color - for smells, voices or brief expressive descriptions (for example one of a wolf-sized dog with a beer bottle in its mouth ). And the subtle punch line, for example, when 10-year-old Obama flies to his stepfather in Indonesia, sees the jungle and the slaughter of a chicken for the first time: [...] But above all, the gaze is directed at people: a gaze that goes ahead Abysses does not look away. "

expenditure

English language editions

German-language editions

German audio books

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Obama's cash register . In: n-tv from April 16, 2009; Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  2. ^ Bestseller lists from December 22, 2009 of the Berlin literary criticism ; Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  3. ↑ bestseller list 4/2009 of the magazine Focus ; Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  4. ↑ Spiegel annual bestseller 2009  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at book report ; Retrieved January 11, 2011.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.buchreport.de  
  5. ↑ Obama becomes a multimillionaire through books . In: Handelsblatt of March 20, 2009; Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  6. ↑ Russian ice cream company advertises with Obama . On: Spiegel Online from March 20, 2009; Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  7. ↑ The future US president tells his life , part 2 of the series in picture from November 6, 2008; Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  8. ↑ Barack Obama, who is mad about writing . In: Tages-Anzeiger from March 19, 2009; Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  9. ↑ Barack Obama: An American Dream . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2009, p. 309.
  10. ↑ Nils Minkmar : Sure, I inhaled . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung from December 16, 2007, p. 25; Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  11. ↑ Lutz Lichtenberger: Aus Milch und Pech  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Berliner Zeitung of March 27, 2008; Retrieved January 11, 2011.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.berlinonline.de  
  12. ↑ Engelbert Washietl: Obama, Barack: An American Dream . In: Wiener Zeitung of May 6, 2008; accessed on April 15, 2015.
  13. ↑ Constantin Seibt : Obama - a politician, a president, a poet . In: Tages-Anzeiger from January 19, 2009; Retrieved January 11, 2011.