即將卸任的美國(guó)總統(tǒng)奧巴馬曾經(jīng)想要成為一名作家。他在1995年出版了一本自傳 Dreams From My Father（臺(tái)譯《以父之名》）。

這本書出版后，反響不差，但是銷量卻不好。直到2004年奧巴馬在參選參議員時(shí)，本書再版，才引起讀者重視。

父親對(duì)奧巴馬來(lái)說(shuō)是一個(gè)復(fù)雜的形象。

Barack Obama Sr.

奧巴馬的父親來(lái)自肯尼亞，是一名經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家。在到夏威夷求學(xué)之前，老奧巴馬曾經(jīng)娶過一個(gè)妻子還有兩房妾室。在夏威夷，老奧巴馬遇到了奧巴馬總統(tǒng)的母親， Stanley Ann Dunham，并與之相愛結(jié)婚。奧巴馬兩歲時(shí)，他的父母分居并離婚。

自父母離婚之后，奧巴馬只在11歲的時(shí)候見過父親一次。奧巴馬在母親和外婆身邊長(zhǎng)大，有一半非洲血統(tǒng)的他成了家族中唯一一個(gè)黑人。

奧巴馬的母親17歲時(shí)在夏威夷遇見了前來(lái)求學(xué)父親

二十歲時(shí)，奧巴馬接到一個(gè)電話，說(shuō)父親在肯尼亞遭受車禍去世了。雖然奧巴馬和父親之間很難說(shuō)有什么深厚的感情，但是父親給自己印上的非洲印記卻無(wú)論如何也無(wú)法抹去。

父親的去世給奧巴馬帶來(lái)了巨大打擊。奧巴馬更曾經(jīng)因?yàn)樯硎兰m葛迷途放蕩。

在1988年進(jìn)入哈佛法學(xué)院就讀之前，奧巴馬曾經(jīng)見過自己同父異母的姐姐一面。奧巴馬萌生了去肯尼亞尋根的念頭。對(duì)于父親破碎的記憶，在親人的情感交流中逐漸完整。

奧巴馬和外公外婆在紐約中央公園。他是家族中唯一一個(gè)黑人

對(duì)于黑人身份的認(rèn)同使他逐漸產(chǎn)生了政治抱負(fù)。最終，他在年僅46歲的時(shí)候當(dāng)選了美國(guó)歷史上第一位黑人總統(tǒng)。

治國(guó)上的功過是非自有后人評(píng)說(shuō)，但是在一個(gè)種族關(guān)系極為復(fù)雜的國(guó)度成為第一個(gè)黑人總統(tǒng)，奧巴馬的成功更帶有某種象征意義。

母親抱著年幼的奧巴馬

今天，Caleb 將給大家?guī)?lái)《以父之名》一書中奧巴馬在電話中得到父親去世消息的段落。

A few months after my twenty-first birthday, a stranger called to give me the news. I was living in New York at the time, on Ninety-fourth between Second and First, part of that unnamed, shifting border between East Harlem and the rest of Manhattan.

It was an uninviting block, treeless and barren, lined with soot-colored walk-ups that cast heavy shadows for most of the day. The apartment was small, with slanting floorsand irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn't work, so that visitors had to callahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an emptybeer bottle.

None of this concerned me much, for I didn't get many visitors. I was impatient in those days, busy with work and unrealized plans, and prone to see other people as unnecessary distractions. It wasn't that I didn't appreciate company exactly. I enjoyed exchanging Spanish pleasantries with my mostly Puerto Rican neighbors, and on my way back from classes I'd usually stop to talk to the boys who hung out on the stoop all summer long about the Knicks or the gunshots they'd heard the night before. When the weather was good, my roommate and I might sit out on the fire escape to smoke cigarettes and study the dusk washing blue over the city, or watch white people from the better neighborhoods walk their dogs down our block to let the animals defecate on our curbs -- 'Scoop the poop, you bastards!' my roommate would shout with impressive rage, and we'd laugh at the faces of both master and beast, grim and unapologetic as they hunkered down to do the deed.

I enjoyed such moments -- but only in brief. If the talk began to wander, or cross the border into familiarity, I would soon find reason to excuse myself. I had grown too comfortable in my solitude, the safest place I knew...

It must have been a month or so later, on a cold, dreary November morning, the sun faint behind a gauze of clouds, that the other call came. I was in the middle of making myself breakfast, with coffee on the stove and two eggs in the skillet, when my roommate handed me the phone. the line was thick with static.

'Barry? Is this you?' 

'Yes....Who's this?' 

'Yes, Barry...this is your Aunt Jane. In Nairobi. Can you hear me?' 

'I'm sorry -- who did you say you were?' 

'Aunt Jane. Listen, Barry, your father is dead. He is killed in a car accident. Hello? Can you hear me? I say, your father is dead. Barry, please call your uncle in Boston and tell him. I can't talk now, okay, Barry. I will try to call you again....'

That was all. The line cut off, and I sat down on the couch, smelling eggs burn in the kitchen, staring at cracks in the plaster trying to measure my loss.

At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me, both more and less than a man. He had left Hawaii back in 1963, when I was only two years old, so that as a child I knew him only through the stories that my mother and grandparents told. They all had their favorites, each one seamless, burnished smooth from repeated use. I can still picture Gramps leaning back in his old stuffed chair after dinner, sipping whiskey and cleaning his teeth with the cellophane from his cigarette pack, recounting the time that my father almost threw a man of the Pali Lookout because of a pipe...

You gotta read the book to get that story, which continues with 'A fearsome vision of justice' and ends with the following:

My grandfather would shake his head and get out of his chair to flip on the TV set. 'Now there's something you can learn from your dad,' he would tell me. 'Confidence. The secret to a man's success.'