The last couple of years, we have seen a lot of tabloid-grade pseudobiographies by people who claim to have dug into history and discovered another “sad” aspect of President Obama’s childhood. Only the content of the claims are not new. The latest snippet claims that his parents thought of putting him for adoption.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/07/barack-obama-adoption-father_n_892205.html
For me, a man who has struggled with the more fundamental historical, philosophical and spiritual aspects of this man’s improbable Luo journey, I feel great pain for him whenever I read another screaming banner about another aspect of his parent’s life. Yes he was raised by a single mother; yes he grew up in Indonesia among a people unlike him; yes he played basketball in a Hawaiian High School, yes he dreamed and did everything on earth through Occidental and Columbia and Havard; yes he found his voice as a Black man amid the struggles for South African Independence; yes he had a father he never knew, and the said father was a polygamist like most of his Luo contemporaries; yes he has cousins and stepsiblings many of whom are scholars like him, a few are unemployed. But these snippets do not define the person of President Barack Obama; they define you and I, American or not; they define any humanity, except they are louder because Mr. Obama is The President of the United States, and that is the point and intent of the various authors in pushing juicy headlines about their books.
My advice: If you want to know Mr. Obama the man, read “The Audacity of Hope” and “Dreams of My Father.”
If you intend to understand the workings of the Luo mind that raised the “tragic figure” known as Barack Obama Senior, why not start with the allegorical historical fiction novel, “THE LUO DREAMERS’ ODYSSEY: From the Sudan to American Power;” because then, truth, hearsay, myth and prophecies are served, “Luo style,” in one huge bowl for the probing mind to sort out. When you are through reading “THE LUO DREAMERS’ ODYSSEY” then you’ll know that, in this man of our times, you are dealing with a complex historical figure who cannot be defined by individual snippets of events in the past. http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-R.-Alila/e/B002QD5TDM
In the historical novel, THE LUO DREAMERS’ ODYSSEY: From the Sudan to American Power, a journey that started more than five centuries ago in the Sudan, has ended in the White House . Along the way, a child and a troubled dreamer, Ajwang’ the Dreamer (a.k.a. Ramogi) survives the knife of ire of a man robbed of his bead of wisdom. The sons of Ajwang’ must part ways with a child dead between them because of vengeance over a bead and a spear. Centuries later, an orphan must “develop wings,” fly out of Colonial Kenya to Alaska, and plant his seed, a boy, and dreamer, named Hassan Ajwang’. This boy lives to be the President of the United States of America. 
Author, Poet and Novelist Joseph R. Alila is a native of Kenya. A Chemist by training, JR Alila considers creative writing to be a natural consequence of the aging process. JR Alila has written extensively on his Luo people’s marriages and other cultural practices, criticizing where criticism is due, and shedding a sage’s light so as to put meaning to old traditions. JR Alila’s mournful caution against the practice of polygamy in the era of the AIDS and other viral diseases comes in “SUNSET ON POLYGAMY” and “THE THIRTEENTH WIDOW.” 
Literary inspiration comes in different shapes and shades and from different sources and places and moments in our daily lives: the screaming graffiti in the public washroom; the screaming mob on freedom square; the spider hanging delicately of on a near-invisible thread by it web waiting for an occasional catch; a weaver bird weaving a new nest before the eggs come; a roaring waterfall down a deep gorge; your first date at fourteen; that math teacher who made your day a nightmare in a middle school, but left you with and A-grade; the disease epidemic that shut down palaces, before sweeping clean small huts in your village; the policeman who stopped you on a deserted highway after midnight, then let you go with, “Madam, your break-lights are dead,” and left you wondering for how long he had been trailing you. All these are inspirational moments for a creative writer depending on what genre, theme or hero or heroin the writer is defining. Grab them when they are still hot.
