Dreams from My Father Summary

At 21, Barack gets a call from his Aunt Jane in Nairobi informing him that his father is dead. Barack barely knew his father, who met Barack’s mother Ann when he was studying in Hawaii. They had Barack in 1961, but Barack’s father left them two years later to attend Harvard and then he returned to Kenya. Because of this, Barack doesn’t have memories of his father—only fantastical stories of the man’s exploits.

Despite some initial misgivings, Barack’s white grandparents, Toot and Gramps, approved of Ann’s decision to marry Barack’s father and grew to love their Black son-in-law and biracial grandson. Toot and Gramps are fairly progressive about race and they’re generally kind and adventurous people. Barack spent his early years feeling loved—it wasn’t until later that he wondered why his father left him.

When Barack is six, Ann marries an Indonesian man, Lolo, and they move to Indonesia. Lolo treats Barack like a son and, and Barack turns to Lolo for advice and information about his new home. As Ann learns more about Indonesia and her husband, however, she becomes concerned about Barack’s future. She throws herself into teaching him English and making sure that he grows up to be an American who’s proud of his Black heritage. But when Barack discovers a photograph in Life magazine of a Black man who used skin lightening creams, his world changes forever. He begins to suspect that Ann is keeping things from him and that being Black might not be something to be proud of.

This feeling persists as Barack returns to Hawaii at age nine. He is one of only two black kids at his school and his peers are frequently racist. Late in the fall, his father sends word that he’s coming to visit Hawaii over Christmas. Meeting his father is a surreal experience; Barack is at once terrified and intrigued. He finds that he prefers his father from a distance, though, since the man is overbearing and controlling.

As Barack grows, he dedicates himself to basketball and makes more Black friends. His best friend in high school, Ray, introduces him to Black parties and challenges Barack’s belief that white people are inherently good. After a disastrous party, Barack realizes that Ray is right; he comes to think that Black people can either fall into line and do what white people want them to do, or they can be angry. Barack chooses anger and apathy, so he turns to drugs and alcohol. At several points, he seeks out one of Gramps’s elderly Black friends, Frank, for advice. Frank tells Barack that Gramps doesn’t understand what it means to be Black, and that while it’s important that Barack go to college, college will simply train him to be a nonthreatening Black person.

In college, Barack meets other Black students and, insecure about his Hawaiian upbringing surrounded by white people, he feels the need to prove that he’s sufficiently Black. He’s mean to Black classmates who act “too white” and befriends the most radical students. His attitude begins to change when he meets a woman named Regina and gets involved with protests against apartheid in South Africa. Regina insists that he has to think about others and be kind, and he eventually realizes that she’s right. He transfers to Columbia University and decides to give up drinking and drugs.

After graduating, Barack hopes to become a community organizer, and eventually a man named Marty Kaufman hires him to organize on Chicago’s South Side. He arrives in Chicago a few months after the election of Harold Washington, the city’s first Black mayor. Barack meets Marty’s community leaders—Angela, Shirley, Mona, and Will—and begins conducting interviews. From the interviews, he learns that many Black Chicagoans are proud of to have ascended to the middle class, but they’re worried that their homes are losing value and their neighborhoods are getting more dangerous. When he tries to pull in local religious leaders, he finds it difficult; some leaders take issue with Marty’s willingness to work with Catholics, whom many Black Chicagoans find racist. The first community meeting that Barack organizes is a disaster, and he learns that Black Chicagoans don’t want to admit that Harold Washington becoming mayor won’t fix all their problems.

Next, Barack turns his attentions to the Altgeld Gardens housing projects. In his attempts to find jobs for Altgeld’s residents, he finds an issue: there’s no employment center that’s accessible to Altgeld. As Barack works on the employment center issue, he becomes close friends with his fellow organizers, but he also becomes discouraged by the complex reality of trying to make change; there’s no one clear enemy to fight, only a diffuse tangle of petty greed, bureaucracy, entrenched interests, and structural racism.

When Barack’s half-sister Auma visits Chicago, he loves her instantly. Auma tells him about their father, whom she calls the Old Man. The Old Man did well for a long time—but after he returned from the U.S., married a white woman named Ruth, and had four more sons (two with Ruth and two with Kezia, Auma’s mother), everything fell apart. The Old Man spoke out against the tribalism and corruption in the government, so the president blacklisted him. He then became homeless and violent, and he alienated everyone—Auma has thrived only because she threw herself into school. The Old Man had just begun to reconnect with his children when he died.

When the employment center near Atgeld finally opens, Harold Washington himself comes to cut the ribbon. Washington wows the crowd, but Barack still isn’t satisfied. He begins working with young mothers to advocate for better services and tries to organize tenants to clear asbestos from Atgeld’s apartments. While their efforts gain momentum and culminate in a community meeting of several hundred people, the Altgeld director refuses to guarantee basic repairs and the meeting is a failure. Disheartened, Barack applies to law school.

When Barack travels to D.C. to visit his half-brother, Roy, Roy says that their father’s actions have made him hate himself. He can’t handle the responsibility of being the oldest son. Depressed, Barack goes home early and begins to connect with local religious leaders again. Several point him toward Reverend Wright of Trinity Church. As Barack gets to know the church and Reverend Wright, he realizes that most Black people aren’t as judgmental as his father was. Soon after Harold Washington’s unexpected death, Barack announces that he’s leaving for law school.

In the summer, Barack travels to Europe and then to Nairobi. He’s immediately struck that people recognize him as his father’s son. While staying with Auma, he meets many family members, including his aunts Jane, Zeituni, and Kezia. Auma introduces Barack to the idea that, in Kenya, family is everything—something their father never understood. Later, Barack tries to coach his teenage brother Bernard on choosing a career path, meets the semi-estranged Aunt Sarah, and begins to understand the tensions that pervade his family, all of which makes him wonder what family really means.

At the family homestead in Alego, Barack meets more family members and Roy shows him the graves of Onyango and the Old Man, whose tomb doesn’t even have a marker. Slowly, the family reveals bits and pieces of Onyango and the Old Man’s stories. But it’s not until Barack returns from an overnight trip to see one of Onyango’s brothers that Granny tells the whole tale. Onyango, who was born in 1895, was the first Obama to adopt Western ways of dressing and farming. He worked for white men, served in the First World War, was notoriously strict, and married Helima and then Akumu. Akumu gave birth to Sarah and the Old Man but she was deeply unhappy, so she ran away.

The Old Man was wildly intelligent but consistently brought shame to his father with his independence and his antics. Onyango didn’t approve of the Old Man’s marriages to either Ann or Ruth because he didn’t think that white women would understand Luo customs or accept being one of multiple wives—and the Old Man’s two divorces proved his point. Onyango never let his son forget this, so the Old Man consistently tried to hide his struggles. Onyango was closed off and exacting with his son, and the Old Man was the same way with his children. As Barack cries at his father’s grave, he realizes that this was their mistake: they shouldn’t have hidden their confusion and their struggles. Barack feels that he’s finally home.

Barack goes on to attend Harvard and, after graduating, he returns to organizing in Chicago where he marries Michelle. He remains connected to his Kenyan family and many of them attend his wedding. At the wedding, Auma cries and Roy (who converted to Islam and now goes by Abongo) insists that Toot and Ann are his two new mothers.