chapter 1

Obama introduces the important themes of the memoir in these early chapters, including the impact of the relationship between fathers and sons, dreams versus reality, and how his confrontation with race and identity played out in Obama's early life. Obama's unusual origin is the decisive factor in each of these aspects of his life.

The central fact of Obama's early life is that his father left him when he was just two and only spent time with him for a month when Obama was ten. Here and throughout the narrative, Obama tries to explain how it is that he is so much his father's son when his father was absent for much of his life.