Dreams from My Father: Preface, Intro, Ch.1

This book, originally published in 1995, is President Barack Obama's first book. As "A Story of Race and Inheritance", the author insightfully depicts the author's ancestry and the challenges his parents and grandparents faced involving race. Throughout the first chapter, Obama, after finding out that his father died, traces his roots back to his father as a Kenyan immigrant and his mother as a white liberal from Illinois. He recalls his earliest childhood memories in Hawaii after his father left the family. Lastly, he sets the stage for his later childhood years, where he will inevitably face prejudice, and begin his journey to self-discovery.
While I was reading the book, it was hard to imagine the future president in 1995 writing a book well before he was even the Senator from Illinois. However, the thought keeps me interested in the book because it establishes his credibility as the author of the story.
The context around this story is the publicity following his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Obama took a year off to write his thoughts about race relations on paper, but book tuned out to be very different than as planned. The purpose of this book is to give a perspective on racism by telling the story of a very successful person who went through racial hardship while growing up. His audience is a very broad base of readers who are interested in inheritance, race, and how they relate to each other.
A rhetorical element that stuck out to me was the terrific imagery Obama uses when describing his family members and anecdotes. His words are very appealing and allow the reader think about how the author must feel about these people and events. Using these rhetorical strategies helps Obama successfully accomplish his purpose.