Obama's Dreams from My Father

I have been a strong Obama supporter for eleven months, yet I have to admit that I've never read his books.

After dinner, Victor and I stopped by a Barnes & Noble. And after browsing for half an hour, I found a copy of Obama's Dreams from My Father (published in 1995).

I flipped the book open and read a story from Obama's community organizing years. He planned a bus trip for a group of impoverished parents who wanted to meet with the head of the Chicago public housing authority to try to learn if their apartments were contaminated with asbestos. At the meeting, Obama ended up saying nothing: it was the parents who found their voice and demanded an answer.

I read these words and cried:

I changed as a result of that bus trip, in a fundamental way. It was the sort of change that's important not because it alters your concrete circumstances in some way (wealth, security, fame) but because it hints at what might be possible and therefore spurs you on, beyond the immediate exhiliration, beyond any subsequent disappointments, to retrieve that thing that you once, ever so briefly, held in your hand. That bus ride kept me going, I think. Maybe it still does.