...Barack Obama Dreams from My Father “For we are strangers before them, and sojourners, as were all our fathers. 1 CHRONICLES 29:15 PREFACE TO THE 2004 EDITION A LMOST A DECADE HAS passed since this book was first published. As I mention in the original introduction, the opportunity to write the book came while I was in law school, the result of my election as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. In the wake of some modest publicity, I received an advance from a publisher and went to work with the belief that the story of my family, and my efforts to understand that story, might speak in some way to the fissures of race that have characterized the American experience, as well as the fluid state of identitythe leaps through time, the collision of cultures-that mark our modern life. Like most first-time authors, I was filled with hope and despair upon the book’s publication-hope that the book might succeed beyond my youthful dreams, despair that I had failed to say anything worth saying. The reality fell somewhere in between. The reviews were mildly favorable. People actually showed up at the readings my publisher arranged. The sales were underwhelming. And, after a few months, I went on with the business of my life, certain that my career as an author would be short-lived, but glad to have survived the process with my dignity more or less intact. I had little time for reflection over the next ten years. I ran a voter registration project in...
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...Copyright Salman Rushdie, 1988 All rights reserved VIKING Published by the Penguin Group Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23rd Street, New York, New York 10010, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd. Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R 1B4 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190, Wairau Road, Auckland ro, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Published in 1989 by Viking Penguin Inc. For Marianne Contents I The Angel Gibreel II Mahound III Ellowen Deeowen IV Ayesha V A City Visible but Unseen VI Return to Jahilia VII The Angel Azraeel VIII The Parting of the Arabian Seas IX A Wonderful Lamp Satan, being thus confined to a vagabond, wandering, unsettled condition, is without any certain abode; for though he has, in consequence of his angelic nature, a kind of empire in the liquid waste or air, yet this is certainly part of his punishment, that he is . . . without any fixed place, or space, allowed him to rest the sole of his foot upon. Daniel Defoe, _The History of the Devil_ I The Angel Gibreel "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die. Hoji! Hoji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly. Tat-taa! Taka-thun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love, mister, without a sigh? Baba, if you want to get born again...
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