Description

On January 20, 2009, a couple of hundred men, women, and children collected under trees in the twilight at K’obama, a town on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya. Barack Obama’s increase to the National presidency had fascinated people around the globe, but users of the collecting took an unique delight in the swearing in of America’s first black leader, for they certainly were all Obamas, all the president’s immediate African-American household.  In the very first in depth background of the Barak household, Peter Firstbrook recounts a trip that begins in a mud hut from the White Nile and stops eight generations later in the White House. Interweaving dental heritage and tribal lore, interviews with Barak family members and other Kenyans, the documents of Kenyan historians, and unique genealogical study, Firstbrook sets the intriguing story of the president’s family from the background of Kenya’s rich tradition and complicated history. He shows the story of farmers and fishers, of healers and predators, of households lost and found, creating for the very first time early genealogy of the Obamas.