And Then Life Happens
A Memoir
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A moving account by Auma Obama about her life in Africa and Europe, and her relationship with her brother, Barack Obama.
While her younger brother Barack grew up in the U.S. and Indonesia, Auma Obama's childhood played out at the other end of the world in a remote village in Kenya, the birthplace of the siblings' shared father. Barack and Auma met for the first time in the 1980s, and they built a lasting relationship which lead to travels together in Kenya, research into their family history and finally Auma's support for her brother's political career and eventual bid for the U.S. presidency.
Auma spent sixteen years studying and living in Germany, moved to England for love, and gave birth to a daughter there. The tension between her original and chosen worlds and cultures was a constant challenge, and eventually Auma returned to Africa and worked to support young men and women in shaping their futures.
In And Then Life Happens, her candid and emotional memoir, Auma shares her own story as well as recollections of and experiences with her famous brother, who says about their first encounter: "I hugged her, we looked at each other, and laughed. I knew right then that I loved her."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
No doubt much of the interest in this engrossing memoir stems from the fact that the author is President Barack Obama's half-sister. As covered extensively in the news, the two spent their childhoods with different parents, in different parts of the world, and met for the first time in the 1980s, when they were both in their 20s. But stories about that now-famous brother who, as a child, Auma was "never particularly curious about," make up only a small part of the book. Most of it focuses on Auma's life growing up in the remote, "unassuming" Kenyan village of Alego Nyangoma; attending college at both the University of Heidelberg and University of Bayreuth in Germany; and later making the decision to return to Africa to help Kenyan children achieve the same "possibilities" she saw available to children in Britain. Especially poignant are the sections that tell how, as a college student, Auma finally got to know the mother who relinquished her as a baby. Despite the level of recognition Auma achieved during the 2008 presidential election, there are no airs here. The prose is simple, and Auma's honest, straightforward storytelling makes her an instantly likeable narrator. Originally written in German the language Auma said came "more easily" because of the "formative adult years" she spent in Germany the book was smoothly translated by Ross Benjamin who, as Auma notes, successfully captured her voice and vision. Color photos.
