18 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biographyhe rejected the Christian religion...For a brief time, he converted [to Christianity], and even
changed his name to Johnson. But he could not understand such ideas as mercy towards your
enemies, or that this man Jesus could wash away a man’s sins. To [him] this was foolish sentiment,
something to comfort women. And so he converted to Islam — he thought its practices conform
more closely to his beliefs,” Barack is told by his grandmother. (Dreams 407) According to some
accounts, he had been exposed to Islam during some time spent in Zanzibar. It was upon converting
to Islam that Grandfather Obama took the name Hussein, which lives on as the middle name of his
grandson, the current presidential candidate. Much of what we learn about Grandfather Obama
comes from Sarah, his third wife; this is the person Obama calls his grandmother. She is not,
however, a blood relative. Sarah Obama describes herself as a devout lifelong Muslim: “I am a
strong believer of the Islamic faith,” she has told interviewers.
Until his first visit to Kenya in the 1990s, candidate Obama had known very little about his
grandfather. The one thing he did know was that his grandfather had opposed his father’s decision
to marry the white woman Stanley Ann Dunham in Hawaii around 1960. Around this one incident,
the future candidate Obama has built an image of his grandfather as a proud Afrocentric race
patriot. Barack Hussein Obama, as the thorough postmodernist that he is, attempts in his writings to
derive his sense of personal identity not so much from his own achievements as an individual as
from his family and ethnic group. In Dreams from My Father, he tells of his bitter disappointment
with the reality of his grandfather’s life: “I knew that, as I had been listening to the story of our
grandfather’s youth, I, too, had felt betrayed. My image of Onyango, faint as it was, had always
been of an autocratic man — a cruel man, perhaps. But I had also imagined him an independent
man, a man of his people, opposed to white rule. There was no real basis for this image, I now
realized — only the letter he had written to Gramps saying that he didn’t want his son marrying
white. That, and his Muslim faith, which in my mind had become linked with the Nation of Islam
back in the states. What Granny had told us scrambled that image completely, causing ugly words
to flash across my mind. Uncle Tom. Collaborator. House n****r.” (Dreams 406)
FATHER: BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA SENIOR, “DRUNKEN LECHER”
Of all of Grandfather Obama’s wives, it was Akumu who asserted herself the most, constantly
contradicting her husband and arguing with him. Because of this, Akumu was frequently beaten,
and made several attempts to run away. She disappeared for the last time when Barack Obama
Senior was nine years old. She went back to her family, found a new husband, and went away with
him to what was then called Tanganyika. Obama Senior was therefore raised by Sarah, another of
Grandfather Obama’s wives.
Several weeks after Akumu had fled from her harsh life with Grandfather Obama, Obama Senior
and his elder sister attempted to rejoin their mother. For almost two weeks they trudged along the
primitive roads of rural Kenya, sleeping in the fields and begging for food. They were both starving
when a passerby took them in and sent for Grandfather Obama. This was their last attempt to find
their mother, Akumu. Obama Senior was profoundly traumatized by losing his mother at the age of
nine; he “could not forgive his abandonment, and acted as if Akumu didn’t exist. He told everyone
that I [Grandmother Sarah] was his mother, and although he would send Akumu money when he
became a man, to the end of his life he would always act coldly towards her.... Barack [Senior] was
wild and stubborn like Akumu.” (Dreams 413)
Barack Obama Senior is described as highly intelligent and quick to learn, but also very
mischievous. After Senior’s first day at the Mission school in the village, he told grandfather