Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity

to come"

Wisdom of my Mothers
Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, tells the story of Barack Obamas relation to his brilliant and charismatic African father, Barack Obama Sr.1As the pictures on the book jacket indicate, Dreams likewise tells of Stanley Dunham, Obamas maternal grandfather, like Obama Sr., a dreamer of sorts. But alongside these and other figures of the masculine persuasion, are influential women in Baracks life: his mother Ann, maternal grandmother Toot, his Kenyan mother and grandmother, Kezia and Granny, a sister, aunts, colleagues, friends. Insofar as Dreams narrates Obamas relation to their wisdom, Dreams is a feminist memoir, a contribution to feminist scholarship. To be clear: Obama, an attorney practiced in anti-discrimination law, is a proponent of equality for women. Numerous passages in Dreams speak to the imperative of ensuring womens rights, above all in Kenya. Nevertheless, unlike so-called second-wave feminists, in Dreams Obama is not primarily concerned with the assertion of individual rights (again, without denying their importance). His contribution to feminist scholarship is in his exemplification of what bell hooks terms feminist masculinity, most basically, "a vision of masculinity where self-esteem and self- love form the basis of self-identity," not "domination over another.2 Feminist masculinity is not anti-male, nor effeminate, but a sign of healthy masculinity; it is just as essential to the well-being of men as it is of women. In Dreams Obama appears as just such an exemplary feminist; in his own person, he speaks to the importance of gender equality for men as well as for women.
1 Barack Obama, Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance Three Rivers Press New York NY 1995, 2004. Hereafter cited parenthetically in text. 2 bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics South End Press Cambridge MA 2000. See chapter 12, "Feminist Masculinity" p. 70.

Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come"

At the same time, Obama is clearly in conversation with the great thinkers on race in America (and in post-colonial literature) and Dreams is a virtuoso offering to the genre. Obama recounts his "fitful interior struggle" as he began confronting the fact of his race when still a teenager in Hawaii.(76) Pouring over the literary titans of race he engaged in a "desperate argument, trying to raise myself to be a black man in America."(76) Obama recalls that his early frantic labor of self-creation left him dissatisfied with the masters of black letters, with the possible exception of Malcom X: In every page of every book, in Bigger Thomas and invisible men, I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBois's learning and Baldwin's love and Langston's humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art's redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels. Only Malcom X's autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me; the blunt poetry of his words, his unadorned insistence on respect, promised a new and uncompromising order, ...All the other stuff, the talk of blue-eyed devils and apocalypse, was incidental to that program, I decided, religious baggage that Malcom himself seemed to have safely abandoned toward the end of his life. And yet, even as I imagined myself following Malcom's call, one line in the book stayed with me. He spoke of a wish he'd once had, the wish that the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged. I knew that, for Malcom, that wish would never be incidental. I knew as well that traveling down the road to self-respect my own white blood would never recede into mere abstraction. (85-6) Malcom is promising to the young Barack as only he seems to indicate the possibility of genuinely positive self-feelings, an overcoming of anguish, doubt and self-contempt. But can we situate Obama and his self-imposed task of raising himself to be a black man in America within Malcoms political trajectory, his acts of self-creation? One path at least is closed to us, for Obama makes emphatically clear in Dreams that, while previously since reading Malcom Xs autobiography he had kept an open mind, he no longer entertains the possibility that

Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come" separatism, i.e. some notion of racial or color purity, can serve as the basis for the typical black Americans self-esteem.(204)3 But nationalism is not the only way to read Obamas connection to Malcom X. His selfimposed task can be situated in the trajectory of Malcom's "repeated acts of self-creation" via the wisdom of the mothers. If we follow bell hooks' speculative analysis of Malcom's rapidly transforming standpoint after his break with the Nation of Islam, we are reminded that race was not the only sphere in which Malcom was radically decolonizing his mind: the "break with the patriarchal father embodied in Elijah Muhammad...created the social space for him to transform his thinking about gender."4 According to his biographer Cohen, after his break with the Nation and subsequent trips to the Middle East and Africa, Malcom began to think about women, less in religious terms, and more from "the standpoint of mobilizing the forces needed to revolutionize society."5 Moreover, given Malcom's ongoing commitment to personal change, it makes sense "to see him as someone who would have become an advocate for gender equality."6 We might imagine it this way, having renounced the project of separating oneself both physically and psychically from all connections to white culture, and having embraced a new, more universal struggle for human rights, Malcom would have found a new ground for self-esteem. As such,
3

Interestingly, Obama marshals Malcom making his case against nationalism: What in the hands of Malcom had once seemed a call to armscame to be the very thing Malcom has sought to root out: one more feeder of fantasy, one more mask of hypocrisy, one more excuse for inaction.(201) In Obamas self-explanation, he had kept an open mind on the faint hope that nationalism could deliver on the promise of self-respect. (200) In Chicago Obama discovers that while the nationalists could help certain individuals ground themselves and find discipline, they did not deliver a wider sense of a collectively meaningful self-esteem. They were not interested in grass-roots mobilization, but rather engaged in all manner of racist conspiracy theories. Ultimately Obama sees the fabric of the community fraying in so many public lies. A dangerous gap between talk and action emerged; it eventually eroded our ability to hold either ourselves or each other accountable. (204) 4 bell hooks, "Malcom X: The Longed-for Feminist Manhood" in Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations Routledge New York NY 1994 p.192. 5 Ibid. p.189. 6 Ibid. p.188. For further exploration of Malcom Xs transforming views on gender see the online lectures of Professor Farah Griffen at the Malcom X Project at Columbia University: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/mxp/griffen.html.

Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come"

masculinity would no longer be based in the need to assert domination over women, but would be rooted in an experience of political empowerment, effective participation in the human revolution. Young Baracks self-imposed task fits nicely within such a progressive interpretation of Malcom X. To be more precise: in Dreams Obama goes past his venerable predecessors in black letters and presses toward Malcom's distant hope of racial reconciliation and ever widening political horizon by narrating himself as a figure of feminist masculinity. Were this a longer essay, it would be possible to develop Obamas thoughts in several directions, certainly in relation to his later explicit exhortations regarding a full-grown manhood that strives to be more emotionally available to women.7 One might methodically follow, chapter by chapter, a series of masculine-feminine pairs narrated in Dreams: Gramps and Toot, Ann and his Indonesian stepfather Lolo, Ann and Barack, black nationalism and the feminist wonders of Ntozake Shange, Barack and Coretta, the loneliness of his old uncle in Kenya waiting to join the ancestors and the wisdom of Granny bearing the living knowledge of the past. Taking a shorter path, the first of the following three sections follows an illuminating discussion in which Obama, a virtuoso of the moral imagination, dramatizes his self-transcendence accepting the wisdom of the mothers and simultaneously first finds his own voice, as a black man in America. The second section articulates a critical moment in Obamas development: his confrontation with
7

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (New York: Crown, 2006) is notably dedicated to the women who raised me. It concludes with a discussion of masculinity, introduced by Obamas self-reflection on the extent to which he himself measures up to the ideal of full-grown manhood he espoused in a Fathers Day Speech at Salem Baptist Church in South Side Chicago. Attentive readers will note a subtle, even psychoanalytically profound, narrative as he not only finds respect in relation to the working mothers demand for equality (an at times angry wife Michelle) but bends to her wisdom and authority, sharing the deepest concerns and anxieties of his masculine self. It seems that Obama argues that his success in becoming a full-grown man is rooted not only in the negotiations of equity, respect and partnership, but in his opening himself emotionally as he trusts her awareness of his most intimate feelings. (351-2)

Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come" African patriarchy and the tragically hard masculinities produced therein. Following Obamas repeating contrast between silence and storytelling, the final section explores feminist masculinity in his wider political vision. Obama's narration of his two years of college at Occidental College is an elegant vignette: a memory of a series of memories, imaginatively compressed, but encompassing much psychic terrain, all within the span of a single Billie Holiday album. With a flair for the dramatic, Obama begins at the abyss, a youth standing indifferently on the brink of a dismal future, the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man.(93) Bravely, he recounts his constant anxiety in proving himself black enough, like a kid from the suburbs without the certainty of the tribe, the vigilance he exhibits protecting himself from the dangers of assimilation.(98-9) At Occidental Obama has his first taste of political activism, participating in a small campus action for university divestment from Apartheid South Africa. He finds, not surprisingly, that he some oratory talent. There is something missing, however, a kind of emptiness in his soul. Feeling the connection he makes in his one-minute oration, young Barack immediately falls into despair; he sees the campus action as paltry, the event itself a farce. He views the pleasure he takes in his own capacity as a nice, cheap thrill.(108) His friend Regina, at this crucial point in his life a repository of motherly wisdom, chastises him for his masculine narcissicism, for thinking, just like all the other brothers out there, that everythings about you: The rally is about you. The speech is about you. The hurt is always your hurt. Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Obama. Its not just about you. Its never just about you. Its about people who need your help. Children who are depending on you. Theyre not interested in your irony or your sophistication or your ego getting bruised, and neither am I.(109) Lest we imagine this imposition of guilt sufficient, Obama recalls that just after Reginas 5

Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come"

pointed speech, his friend Reggie affords him the opportunity to experience deep shame. Drunk, Reggie joins the conversation, celebrating a recent partys grandeur. Reggie takes particular delight recounting the horror of the maids hired to clean up the debris and vomit: Shit was so bad, those little old Mexican ladies started to cry. Dios Mio, one of them says.(109) Regina, responds: her voice shaking, barely a whisper. is that whats real to you, Barack making a mess for somebody else to clean up? That could have been my grandmother, you know. She had to clean up behind people for most of her life. Ill bet the people she worked for thought it was funny, too.(109) In Obamas recollection, he does not immediately accept Reginas wisdom. He rather withdraws into a familiar shell of fatalism and disaffection, numbing himself so that he might not feel the burden of responsibility. Regina was acting like he was somehow responsible for the fate of the entire black race.(92) The trick he needs, he at first thinks, is Billie Holidays, The trick is not caring that it hurtsit was in that torn-up, trembling voice of hers.(93) But Reginas words, it turns out, are too close to his mothers and grandmothers words: the simple maxims of decency and responsibility he had somehow come to associate with being white, but now hears in the voice of his black friend, a woman with more excuses for bitterness than he would ever have. (110) In this youthful revelation Obama recognizes a truth that will return to him repeatedly; it is always his fear of not belonging, his fear that he would forever remain an outsider, that is the source of slips in judgment. Exercising his remarkably fit moral imagination, Obama recounts the moments of an act of self-creation and ethical transcendence: he first imagines, Reginas grandmother somewhere, her back bentas she scrubbed an endless floor. He then finds her image replaced by the copper-skinned face of the Mexican maid,

Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come" straining as she takes out the garbage. Then the face of his Indonesian stepfathers mother appears, drawn in grief as she watches the Dutch burn down her house. He sees the face of Toot as she boards the six-thirty A,M. bus.(111) The similarity of the images is striking. For it seems that they all asked the same thing of me, these grandmothers of mine. They ask Obama for the simple virtue of determination, the will to resist whatever power kept her stooped instead of standing straight.(111) Obama finds his own voice only with the deepening of such moral reflection. He does not, we mark, narrate this act of self-creation in light of the dream from his father, although considering that both men share this strange power, such an equation must have been nearly irresistible.(67) Instead he finds his voice in relation to the wisdom of his mothers, here his grandmothers. To be more specific: Obama finds his voice as a black man in America first recognizing the unity of his grandmothers experiences suffering under power, and second by understanding that his identity might begin with the fact of his race, but it didnt and couldnt end there.(111) Obama concludes his vignette with a further gesture of feminine selfidentification. Having transcended his previous fatalistic feeling of racial injury, he notices that Billies voice sounds different. No longer does it seem she has a trick to hide the pain, suddenly, beneath the layers of hurt, beneath the ragged laughter, I heard a willingness to endure. Endure and make music that wasnt there before.(112) Such is the virtue, we may suggest, that Billies friend Malcom (Detriot Red) came to recognize, the virtue of feminist masculinity, a masculinity that finds itself grounded in self-esteem and self-love (a williness to endure and make music) rather than in domination over another.8

There is a poetic convergence between Obamas narration of the discovery of his own voice in the wisdom of his

Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come"

Nearly a decade later, after living in New York and Chicago, Obama visits Kenya to learn about his father and to meet a family already aware of his existence. But his trip is no less an historical adventure. In the epilogue of Dreams Obama reports a conversation with Rukia Odero, a professor of history and a friend of his late father, a wise woman whose perspective, he affirms, indicates his own view (436). Rapidly dispensing with any claim of an authentic Africa, Rukia speculates that, "the worst thing that colonialism did was cloud our view of our past." Where in other circumstances ones judgment might be clearer, "the white man has made us very defensive:" We end up clinging to all sorts of things that have outlived their usefulness. Polygamy. Collective land ownership. These things worked well in their time, but now they most often become tools for abuse. By men. By governments. And yet, if you say these things, you have been infected by Western ideology.(433-4) Rukia succinctly captures authenticity in practice in Africa, too often utilized as an instrument of patriarchal domination; a tool of abuse used by men and by governments. Simply put: African women are often legally disenfranchised amid a welter of traditional rights and prerogatives. Rukia recognizes the need for pragmatism, even in the case of FMG, important to both the Kikuyu and Maasai tribes in Kenya. Tribal loyalty is a value to be affirmed, but not necessarily in every case. Progress involves risk, and sometimes you must choose.(434) In the end, Rukia would prefer her daughter be authentically herself than authentically African.(434) . Rukia is not the only troubled, critically reflective Kenyan in Obamas memoir. His sister

many grandmothers and Malcom Xs loving description of Billie Holiday on the occasion of her death: Lady Day sang with the soul of Negroes from the centuries of sorrow and oppression. What a shame that proud, fine, black woman never lived where the true greatness of the black race was appreciated! The Autobiography of Malcom X: As told to Alex Haley (New York: Random House/One World, 1965 (Haley and Shabazz), 1964 (Haley and Malcom X), p.149.

Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come"

Auma, who often appears as an alter ego to his more politely silent self, is concerned with womens rights and Kenyan womens habitual deference toward men. Obamas uncle Sayid is critical of African patriarchy in several respects: I have been giving these matters some thought. I have concluded that the problem that is most serious for Africa is what? He paused to look around the room. This thing between men and women. Our men, we try to be strong, but our strength is often misplaced. Like this business of having more than one woman. Our fathers had many women, so we also must have many women. But we do not stop and look at the consequences. What happens with all these women? They become jealous. The children, they are not close to their fathers.(386)9 While it might seem that African polygamy is fundamentally different from practices in the west, Obama reports perceiving remarkable similarities: at his aunt Jane's house in Nairobi he recognizes the South Side Chicago projects, "the same noise of gossip and TV. The perpetual motion of cooking and cleaning and nursing hurts the same absence of men." (318) In the eyes of his younger brother Abo, he sees a hardened look that reminds him of "young men back in ChicagoThe look of someone who realizes early in life that he has been wronged."(384) The question of unnecessarily hardened masculinity is the key issue for Obama. Attentive to the tragedy of misplaced strength, to use Sayids phrase, Obama culls from the stories of his father and his grandfather, Onyango Obama, wisdom with broad significance. It is as if his familys tragedy provides a distilled African version of general, but often obscured, truths. As Rukia puts it, perhaps the African, having traveled so far so fast, has a unique perspective on time.(435) Granny, Onyangos last wife, tells Obama the story of his family according to the memory of the Luos oral culture, giving particular emphasis to the impact of British
9

Obama demonstrates characteristic subtlety of presentation by presenting his engagement with African patriarchy and post-colonial literature (and his fathers generation) through this dialogue with his uncle Sayid, who, when questioned in the narrative by Obama, notes that this progressive view is his own, not that of Chinua Achebe, the father of modern African writing, whom Sayid otherwise finds quite important.

Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come" colonialism. According to Granny, Onyango was strange even as a boy. Very serious, sometimes he disappeared for days at a time. (397).According to Luo custom, strangeness was often accommodated.10 But with the arrival of the white man, everything changed. Although the Luo elders had decided to avoid the white men until they were better understood, young Onyango, ever curious, went to investigate them. When he returned months later he was wearing white mans clothes. His father asked why, but Onyango said nothing. His father assumed that either he had been circumcised or that he had a terrible rash. He proclaimed Onyango unclean and told his other sons to shun him. From then on they were estranged.(399) During the following years more whites came and imposed a hut tax and forced men to work. The white man surrounded himself with special Luos, like Onyango, dressed in white mens clothes. Having learned English, Onyango was such an enforcer, working in the new system of land titles.(400) Land reform was a nightmare: there were suddenly no new plots for sons, men were forced to work far away from home. But Onyango prospered. He bought property, built a hut, ate sitting upright at a table, bathed constantly, cleaned his clothing and hut constantly and was very strict about his property. He bought several wives, but they typically ran away as he beat them too much. (402) Before Granny came though, he had acquired two wives: the second, Aukuma, Obamas biological grandmother, was bitterly unhappy and, after several unsuccessful attempts, ultimately ran away, leaving her children traumatized. Onyango, Granny explains, was a tyrant: constantly demanding better cleaning, criticizing Aukumas childrearing. As Granny explains his difficult character, Even when he spoke to you, he would look away for fear that you would know his thoughts.(406) He was contradictory in his
10

In Luo oral tradition there are many stories about strange offspring meant to encourage tolerance. See Neak Sobania, Culture and Customs of Kenya (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2003) pp.68-9.

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Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come"

opinions; he respected the white man for his weapons, machines and organized life, yet he believed him often unjust. Onyango sometimes scorned Africans, saying: for an African to do anything, he must be beaten.(407) What Onyango respected was strength and discipline, respect for elders, authority and custom. Hence he learned the white mans ways, but also could be a stickler for Luo tradition. He at first converted to Christianity, "even changed his name to Johnson," but he quickly found that such ideas as mercy toward your enemies, or the forgiveness of sins, foolish, something to comfort women." It is for this reason, Granny explains, that he converted to Islam: "he thought its practices conformed more closely to his beliefs.(407) She affirms that Onyango was harsh and often brutal with his children; he beat them and tried to prevent them from playing with other children, as he thought them dirty and rude. Unfortunately, although being broken in jail after being imprisoned without cause by the British during the Mau Mau Emergency, he remained to the end hard toward his children; age did not soften his temper.(424) But he was also considered knowledgeable and fair, and was respected by many people. After searching through her things, Granny brings Obama a souvenir, the identification papers Onyango was required to carry as a domestic servant under the British, marked with inevitably condescending evaluations: "Onyango performed his duties as a personal boy with admirable diligence."(426) Obama reports feeling betrayed after hearing Grannys story of Onyango. He had not come to Kenya naively expecting to find an unbroken continuity of tradition and certainty in the ways of the past, but he had not expected to be confronted with such a picture of his grandfather: Uncle Tom. Collaborator. House nigger.(406) Knowing that Onyango had opposed his parents marriage, Obama had imagined him to be autocratic, but his grandfathers pathological

11

Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come"

obsessions with order, hygiene and hierarchical forms were beyond his previous imagination. But of course Granny was right: the appearance of the white man did change everything. Drawing out the obvious implication of her story, we see that the advance of the collaborator while the social fabric was tearing signals profound disruption, to say the least. And having just improved his condition so noticeably, without the allegiance of his own family, no wonder Onyango would seek the firmest symbols of order and hierarchical rule; no surprise he felt that he needed to be so hard, to hypostasize his patriarchal authority beyond the (often partially informal and somewhat flexible) bounds of traditional (asymmetric) reciprocity. Or perhaps his brutality and obsessions imply that he himself was a victim of abuse. Certainly it is awful to imagine young Onyango standing silent in front of his father, unable tell him what has happened. Then, years later, to imagine the last visit of Barack Sr. and Onyango; the two of them sat on their chairs, facing each other and eating their food, but no words passed between them. And perhaps worse still is that his son, Barack Sr., didnt escape the pattern: with his children he behaved just as Onyango had behaved toward himhe saw that he was pushing them away, but there was nothing he could do.(424) In Dreams, after Obama has heard Grannys entire story, including the tragedy of his father a man of great vision, but also caught in the contradictions of history he offers the following cathartic prayer at their graves. I quote at length because it conveys such the essential criteria organizing Obamas critique of hard masculinity as well as the implicit theoretical perspective corresponding to feminist masculinity and a more wholesome model of politics. Oh, Father, I cried. There was no shame in your confusion. Just as there is no shame in your father's before you. No shame in the fear, or in the fear of his father before him. There was only shame in the silence fear had produced. It was the silence that betrayed us. If it weren't for that silence your grandfather might have told your father that he could ever escape 12

Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come"

himself, or re-create himself alone. Your father might have taught the same lessons to you. And you, the son, might have taught your father that this new world that was beckoning all of you involved more than just railroads and indoor toilets and irrigation ditches and gramaphones, lifeless instruments that could be absorbed only alongside a faith born out of hardship, a faith that wasn't new that wasn't black or white or Christian or Muslim but that pulsed in the heart of the first African village and the first Kansas homestead -- a faith in other people. The silence killed your faith. And for lack of faith you clung to both too much and too little of your past. Too much of its rigidness, its suspicions, its male cruelties. Too little of the laughter in Granny's voice, the pleasures of company while herding the goats, the murmur of the market, the stories around the fire. The loyalty that could make up for a lack of airplanes or rifles. Words of encouragement. An embrace. A strong, true love. For all your gifts the quick mind, the powers of concentration, the charm you could never forge yourself into a whole man by leaving those things behind. (429) Obamas understanding of his own familys tragedy the shame of silence can be understood on several levels. The first concerns political culture. The shame of silence speaks to the failure to resist the initial colonial incursion, as Granny remarks during her narration: we all now realized that it had been foolish to ignore the white mans arrival.(399) The reliance on rigidity, suspicion and male cruelty rather than faith in other people indicates the need for genuine political organization rather than hierarchically dictated tribal loyalty. That Obama considers the issue of political solidarity, a loyalty that could make up for airplanes and rifles, significant to ordinary black peoples self-esteem, is indicated in his appreciation of Malcom X, and poignantly foreshadowed in his tragic account of his college friend Marcus, the most conscious of brothers, who first began to slip away when confronted with the relative rarity of slave rebellions, the question, why didnt black people fight?(101,116) Soon after, Obama recalls, Marcus became demonstrative, then uncommunicative.(117) On the other hand, Obamas political maxims be guided by faith in other people, fearless speech rather than silence, sociality and reciprocity rather than hierarchy and rigidity

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Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come"

can be critically directed at impoverished political cultures in many places, among all races; the implications are relevant to humanity writ large.11 In fact, all of the elements compactly articulated in the prayer are constituent features of the leitmotif of Dreams: storytelling. Storytelling, is of course, as old as time. It is also at the center of the grassroots campaign that brought Obama to power; is the ground of the legal theory with which he identifies; and goes to the core of his understanding of the constructive role of religion. In law it signals an approach that inspired by feminism and critical race theory believes that the evocation of the stories of the oppressed can make the law something more than a glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.(437) The power of storytelling to redeem suffering by forging ever wider bonds of human meaning and connection is what Obama reports finding most inspiring in the black church, in Jeremiah Wrights capacity not only to unite disparate elements of the community together, but to bind the stories of ordinary black people with the heroic stories of the Bible. Obama sees such unified stories as the cathartic ground of a new self-esteem, a means to reclaim memories that we didnt need to feel ashamed about, memories more accessible than those of ancient Egypt, memories that all people might study and cherish.(294) Yet Obama himself understands very well when Reverend Wright explains that, Nothings harder than reaching young brothersThey worry about looking soft.(282-3) In

11

Hannah Arendts critique of the Jewish Councils cooperation with the Nazis in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 1992 (1977) originally Viking, 1963) is strikingly parallel to Obamas treatment of the African response to colonialism. In both cases the fateful absence of resistance and impoverished capacity for political judgment is rooted in the preference for obedience to hierarchy (patriarchal traditionalism as well as bureaucratic rational authority). In neither Arendt nor Obamas presentation is the response to the situation determined: resources for resistance existing within tradition were not actualized.

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Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come"

many respects the journey of self-creation he tells in Dreams oscillates between storytelling and silence. Obama recounts his own tendency toward silence, indeed fascination with silence, at times even imagining himself as an African tribesman, unintelligible to whites.(124) In Hawaii he is intrigued by the silence of the neatly dressed old black men who play cards with his grandfather, men for whom everything has its place and who figure they've seen enough not to have waste a lot of time talking about it.(76) It is their mystery that in part leads him to Chicago, and there he finds more groups of old black card players, the type that "didn't talk much."(275) In Harlem one elderly black neighbor particularly touches Obama, although they exchange not a single word, his silence impresses, and Obama thinks him a kindred spirit.(4) Parallel to the tragedy of Onyango and Barack Sr., is the silence Obama recounts between other fathers and sons, including with his own father, before whom he felt mute.(66) And even Johnnie, who was fortunate enough to have a caring father at home, reports, "we're not real good at talking." (261) Storytelling has some problems of its own, not the least of which are an inevitably less than precise relation to empirical truth and an ever present danger that unwholesome accounts of the past will become reified Nevertheless, throughout Dreams storytelling continually counters the isolation and consequent disempowerment of silence. So Obama recounts his profound gratitude that from his earliest years his mother and grandparents mediated the absence of his father through heroic and inspiring tales, preserving his innocence essentially in myth, each story self-contained and as true as the next.(10) Later when Ann decides young Barack is in danger from the influence of his Indonesian stepfather, Lolo, a brutalized man having chosen survival and concomitantly silence, withdrawal and moral compromise over any higher

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Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come"

sentiments, her powers as a storyteller come into full force. Marshalling (essentially true if idealized) stories of his diligent and honest African father, a man who led his life according to principles that demanded a different kind of toughness, Ann inculcates young Barack with a distilled, non-hypocritical version of Midwestern morality and continual celebrations of the Civil Rights Movement; in her stories, every black man was Thurgood Marshall or Sidney Potier.(50-1) Still, in Obamas self-understanding, the seeds his mother plants only germinate in his political work in Chicago, only then does he first come out of himself, beginning to learn to avoid the temptation of silence and withdrawal. It is by sharing stories with his fellow organizers, "stories full of terror and wonder studded with events that still haunted or inspired," that Obama encounters the depth of humanity; seeing his friends struggle and endure, forcing "a larger meaning out of tragedy."(190,189) And in truth he finds nothing less than himself sharing their stories; they helped me bind my world together, they gave me the sense of place and purpose I'd been looking for."(19) There are many further contrasts between the binding power of storytelling and the isolation of silence in Dreams. Certainly phenomena touching on the power of storytelling are of interest: the egalitarian community Obama found on the basketball court as a teenager; the meritocratic attitude he learned talking trash, that respect came from what you did and not who your daddy was. (79) Likewise parallel to the power of storytelling is the unity of tribes on the dance floor in Nairobi, tall, ink-black Luos and short, brown Kikuyus, Kamba and Merus and Kalenjin, everyone smiling and shouting and having a ball.(364) Sadly leaving aside a wealth of such provocative allusions, let us conclude with one archetypal contrast between the potential heroism of silence and the generative power of storytelling, thinking again on the confident,

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Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come"

trusting feelings indicated in feminist masculinitys promise of healthy self-esteem as well as the political dimension of storytelling that Obama characterizes as faith: the faith in other people that pulsed in the heart of the first African village and the first Kansas homestead. The Maasai warriors are the most fascinating emblems of silence in Dreams. Given that the Maasai are Nilotic cousins of Obamas own Luo tribe, we may trust that they are fascinating to him as well. On the safari which he and Auma take he has occasion to meet two Maasai, recently moran, the young warriors who famously hunt lions. The two Maasai, hired as guards, are quiet and handsome, their faces silent and watchful. (358) Obama wonders what they think of him and the people on the safari. He imagines that they are amused. He knows that their courage, their hardness makes him question his own noisy spirit.(358) Obama answers the question he imagines the Maasai put to him with an amazing description of the stillness of the Great Rift Valley, a silence to match the elements. (356) He first describes a savage scene, a tribe of hyenas feeding on the carcass of a wildebeesta row of vultures waited with stern, patient gazeswe stayed there a long time, watching life feed on itself, the silence interrupted only by the crack of bone or the rush of wind.(356) Obama imagines that this silence, the quintessential characteristic of the Maasai warrior, is the stillness of Creation, in a metaphorical sense, before language. For humans among so many predators, the experience on the plain is fundamentally, fear, the anticipation, the awe he feels at the sky, the glimmering knowledge of his own death.(356) Obamas hypothesis regarding the silence at the core of the warriors experience reflects the majesty that silence can convey. But as such silence indicates human life in survival mode be it the warring world inspiring Thomas Hobbes, submission to the extremity of colonial

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Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come" oppression or the hard knocks of the inner city one must consider its limitations. Without language there is no internal reflection, no temporal dimension, no memory, reflective imagination, or hope. This means that there is no need for a human purpose in the world, no need for meaning, no need to feel connected, that is, to have trust in other people. Such silence is for good reason we can imagine, for men on the plain are likely safer in a non-linguistic state, watching rather than reflecting, as if the predators might hear them think. When at the end of the trip Obama hears the guide Francis singing a familiar Christian hymn in Kikuyu, he feels he can understand the song, imagining it transmitting upward, through the clear black night, directly to God. (358) The Maasai warriors (although not the Maasai women, who have a different story) apparently do not experience such a communicative impulse. Without language (in their most characteristic activity) they are radically individuated, communicating neither with each other, nor with any god; hence the Maasai warriors famous atheism. Moreover, if Obamas hypothesis that the warrior stands nevertheless in fear and awe, with a nascent awareness of death, is correct, then we must doubly underscore their experience of individuation. If we wonder how it is that they are so cavalier about their lives, perhaps the answer is that living so frequently in a non-linguistic state, they already have an experience of death. In vital contrast to the silent Maasai warriors is Obamas recollection of the Ntzozake Shange play that he and a friend see in Chicago. Unlike the hard world of the silent warrior, the Shange play is noisy. Happening in human language and time, the play features seven black women, a chorus of many shades and shapes, soft in flowing skirts and scarfs. The women dance, at times in awkward contortions, singing the song of the life of a black girl. Sharing a feast of storytelling, they take turns singing their lives and their pains. As Obama recounts, their

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Rachael Lauren Sotos November 2008 "Wisdom of my Mothers: bell hooks, Malcom X and Barack Obama, the masculinity to come" songs span the entire range of human emotions; they sing about lost time, about men who loved and betrayed them, about their children, their bodies, injuries, scars, their beauty, waning, ascendant, allusive. They dance every imaginable dance, double-dutch and rhumba and bump and solitary walz, but in the end, it appears to Obama, they all seemed one spirit. The chorus of women does not feel highly individuated, and they are not presently aware of their own deaths. Rather, in an experience of overflowing self-affirmation spontaneously generated through their sharing of stories, they have a collective epiphany of faith, and express a consequent impulse to communicate with god. At the end of the play, Obama recalls, the chorus begins with a simple verse: I found god in myself/and I loved her/ I loved her fiercely.(205-6)

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