President Obama January 20, 2009
Posted by bookncurls in A Comment.Tags: Barack Obama, Highlights, Innauguration, Washington DC
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My highlights of the innauguration:
Teenagers: I saw it with a cafeteria full of teenagers. We stood together, clapped together, got excited together.
2 Million people: I loved the scope of people that were on the Mall watching the innauguration in DC; like an army of ants. A commentator said it was like participating in an expensive movie complete with snipers on the buildings.
To the Muslim World: Since I spend a lot of time teaching and talking about tolerance for the Muslim world, Obama’s shout out for Muslims was refreshing and his comments humanizing.
The Closing Prayer: The whole room of high school students erupted in laughter at the unexpected end of the closing prayer. I’m not sure if I remember it right so if you know the correct version, please comment. He asked for a blessing–Something like: Blacks to come back, Browns to stick around, Reds to get ahead, Yellows to mellow, and Whites to do right.
Barack and Michelle dancing: I love watching Barack and Michelle interact with each other in general. When I watch them dance, I feel their chemistry.
It was just reported that this may have been the most watched event ever in our lifetimes. If you missed it, find someone who taped it. Very cool.
Dreams from My Father October 5, 2009
Posted by bookncurls in A Comment, Book Review.Tags: Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father, Indonesia, race
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Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance is an autobiographical look at Obama’s life written while he was in his 30’s. It’s a book of discovering himself and the influences that race and inheritance play in that make up. Several conversations he relates reminded me of similar conversations I was party to while working as an interpreter in the heavily black or nearly all black neighborhoods of Maryland just south of DC. I also felt some connections with his past in my own life living abroad as a child in Japan. His book gives a perspective of the black experience I think everyone should taste some time in their life.
There were, however, a couple places where I am not totally convinced that race was the primary cause of certain explanations mostly due to my own experiences living abroad as a child. I could relate to some of the feelings myself which for me didn’t have to do with race but had more to do with shifting from one culture to a another trying to learn new rules and being made fun of because you don’t already understand how to participate in the new society. This happened to me when I moved back to the United States at ten years old.
I also felt that his recolections of Indonesia are very abstract making me a little wary of his conclusions from those experiences. There were a couple times I felt like he was telling me how to feel about a certain event to lead me to his conclusion ultimately making me less likely to accept his version.
Or the part about Africa not being pure. That he discovers, for example, that tea comes from the Europeans without acknowledging that the Europeans got tea from the East. We’re all polluted. In this sense, it is more a tale of discovering how the world works irrespective of race.
I liked the detail of his Chicago and Kenya interactions, though. These seemed more authentic. I liked his conclusions at the end. I started to get a little worried he would dissapoint me until I got to the very end and even into the Epilogue before realizing that I could generally agree with his final conclusions. Overall it was a good read.