ewee (14/26): Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama

It's because of luckyduck that I read this book, that I even heard of Senator Obama...so read her review. It's far more detailed and insightful than I could put together. So for this book report, I bring you random inspirational bits from the book itself, and various other links...

This is as good a creed as any I've ever found:

"Look at yourself before you pass judgment. Don't make someone else clean up your mess. It's not about you."

More from the book that reached right out and grabbed/slapped me:

You've lost your way...your ideas about yourself--about who you are and who you might become--have grown stunted and narrow and small. How had this happened? I started to ask myself, but before the question had even formed in my mind, I already knew the answer. Fear.
...The constant, crippling fear that I didn't belong somehow, that unless I dodged and hid and pretended to be something I wasn't, I would forever remain an outsider, with the rest of the world, black and white standing in judgment.
...

What was she asking of me, then? Determination, mostly. The determination to push against whatever power kept her stooped instead of standing straight. The determination to resist the easy or the expedient. You might be locked into a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.
...

My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn't, couldn't, end there. At least that's what I would choose to believe.
...

Beneath the layers of hurt, beneath the ragged laughter, I heard a willingness to endure. Endure--and make music that wasn't there before.
...

...that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions, people carried within them some central explanation of themselves. ...As time passed, I found that these stories, taken together, had helped me bind my world together, that they gave me the sense of place and purpose I'd been longing for.
...

It was the sort of change that's important not because it alters your concrete circumstance in some way (wealth, security, fame) but because it hints at what might be possible and therefore spurs you on, beyond the immediate exhilariation, beyond any subsequent disappointmens, to retrieve that thing that you once, ever so briefly, held in your hand.
...

Without a power for the group, a group larger, even, that an extended family, our success always threatened to leave others behind.

And (finally) will he run? We'll know soon...

1/16/07: Barack announced he will file papers to create a presidential exploratory committee. He also said on February 10, 2007, he would announce his final decision.

More reviews:

• wikipedia
• new yorker review