Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama

This is a coming of age account by a man who grew up between cultures and racial groups wondering how to understand himself. He just happens to be our president now but I don't believe that achieving that office was in his five year plan when the book went to print even though I think he did intend to advance politically through various elected offices. I'm a few years older than the president and I grew up in a WASP family in New York City very aware of the Civil Rights Movement, racial discord, riots, assassinations and flower power juxtaposing with black power but not having to deal with it directly. Like Obama, I lived and even briefly (for my senior year of high school) went to school abroad - not in a madrasa but in a British boarding school that served the children of politicians from all over the Commonwealth. My room-mate, from Nigeria, plied me with questions that I was unable to answer about the African American experience. Later, a college student in St. Louis, I lived in a blighted African American neighborhood within walking distance from the university because the rents were low. Years later still I taught in the St. Louis inner city public school system where I discovered the lack of parity that is so often defined as the achievement gap between black and white students in America. That was when I became the most engaged with the heart of the issues that Obama describes in his book - fear, anger, inequality, and in general a lack of hope that often masquerades as bravado. The book is written as well as the man speaks - it exposes his own journey with its discomforts probably made worse by the fact that so much of the truth was unexplained and interpreted within the framework of a child's, adolescent's, newly emerged adult's shifting perspectives. It echoes the struggle for a sense of personal-cultural identity that I have heard many missionary kids whose first encounter with their home culture starts when they are sent to college but who grew up fluent and friends in a very different cultural context. I find the book an authentic, honest attempt to narrate his experiences against America's racial backdrop. Interestingly, the person who insisted I read it isn't even an American.

Obama, Barack. Dreams From My Father. c. 1995. Three Rivers Press. NY

Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson

Yesterday I listened to all nine CDs as author, Rupert Isaacson, read his own account of the search for healing for his autistic son, Rohan. The quest took them on horseback through Outer Mongolia to expose Rohan to powerful shamans. Last of all they visited Ghost, the shaman of the Reindeer People in Siberia. Rupert is transparently, painfully honest about his own fears, embarrassments, cynicism, exhaustion, disappointment, and passionate love for his son. Hearing him read is a treat because of his British accent and the way he is able to capture the intonations and timbre of his son's voice. A travel writer by trade, he has a fabulous ability to paint with his words so that we hear, taste, smell, touch and see the textures and vastness of the beauty of the steppes and the squalor of the broken down Soviet-built cities. He knows horses and indigenous culture too from growing up partly among the bushmen of South Africa and learning to ride and hunt foxes in England.

I've read a lot of books about autism but this one may be the first one written from the father's perspective. The narrative oozes with Rupert's love for Rohan. The perspective, incorporating American experts including Temple Grandin, along with the ancient wisdom of past cultures challenges our usual one to enlarge, consider spiritual causes and effects, and explore the hidden giftedness within autists.

From a spiritual perspective I was alternately fascinated and grieved. I understand how to function in the spirit and I know the High God and King of the Universe by name, personally. Unfortunately, few people on spiritual quests expect to find Him more powerful, and able to trump the gods of this world. This book is an indictment against the Judeo-Christian religious community through the ages for failing to take our God's name and reputation seriously.

Isaacson, Rupert, Horse Boy