ABSTRACT
In Dreams From My Father, President Barack Obama refl ects on his experiences as a Black American male with a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas. In this personal narrative, he describes the internal and external confl icts that occur as one attempts to blend multiple cultures and contexts. At times, he felt that a connection to Black American identity “meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness, or your own defeat” (p. 85), while at other times a refl ection of “survival, and freedom, and hope” (p. 294). Perhaps more than most Black American males, identity development among second-generation immigrants lies between the agonizing push of White racism and inequality and the invigorating pull of Black American pride and opportunity.
