Barack Obama: A Promised Land Review

In William Edward Burghardt Du Bois’ magnum opus, the souls of Blackfolk, the preeminent African American scholar of the 20th century, writes of a double consciousness, the sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

Even though, nothing about the final sentence of the previous paragraph could ever be said to be applicable to the 44th President of the united states, The theme of a double consciousness pervades, the philosophic approach that Barack Obama has taken in writing the first volume of his political memoirs.

A promised land, is without question, the most anticipated memoirs in recent times; Going back to August 2004, when My life released, The flagship Waterstones bookstore on Jermyn street, in London, had queues stretching all the way from the green park tube station, waiting for the 42nd President to autograph copies and yet, one suspects, that if it weren’t for Covid 19, Britain’s premier bookstore would have had a hard time in managing the crowds, wanting to have their copies signed by the first Black President of the United States of America.

A promised land carries on from where dreams of my father and audacity of hope left off, touching briefly on his university dalliances- the successful and not so successful, here we see references to Frantz Fanon, Virginia Woolf and Michel Foucault. Also briefly, he retells meeting his wife at Sidney Austin and his foray into…