A contemporary review in the New York Times was mostly complimentary. The reviewer, novelist Paul Watkins, wrote that Obama "persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither." However, Watkins questioned whether Obama's narrative suggested that people of mixed backgrounds must choose only one culture, which seemed at odds with America's diverse nature, writing "[i]f this is indeed true, as Mr. Obama tells it, then the idea of America taking pride in itself as a nation derived of many different races seems strangely mocked."[11]
After Obama achieved greater national prominence in 2007, Dreams found renewed critical attention. Speaking in 2008, Toni Morrison, a Nobel Laureate novelist, has called Obama "a writer in my high esteem" and the book "quite extraordinary". She praised
his ability to reflect on this extraordinary mesh of experiences that he has had, some familiar and some not, and to really meditate on that the way he does, and to set up scenes in narrative structure, dialogue, conversation—all of these things that you don't often see, obviously, in the routine political memoir biography. ... It's unique. It's his. There are no other ones like that.[12]
In an interview for The Daily Beast, author Philip Roth said he had read Dreams from My Father "with great interests", and commented that he had found it "well done and very persuasive and memorable."[13] The book "may be the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician", wrote Time columnist Joe Klein.[14] In 2008, The Guardian's Rob Woodard wrote that Dreams from My Father "is easily the most honest, daring, and ambitious volume put out by a major US politician in the last 50 years."[15] Michiko Kakutani, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times, described it as "the most evocative, lyrical and candid autobiography written by a future president."[16] Writing for the Guardian, literary critic Robert McCrum wrote that Obama had "executed an affecting personal memoir with grace and style, narrating an enthralling story with honesty, elegance and wit, as well as an instinctive gift for storytelling." McCrum had included the book in his list of the 100 best non-fiction books of all time.[17]
In 2011, Time magazine listed the book on its top 100 non-fiction books written in English since 1923.[18] The audiobook edition earned Obama the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2006.[19] Five days before being sworn in as President in 2009, Obama secured a $500,000 advance for an abridged version of Dreams from My Father for middle-school-aged children.[20]
Accuracy
Obama acknowledges using composite characterizations and adjusted chronology in the book's introduction, writing that the "hazards" of autobiography could not be fully avoided. Noting the book's considerable number of alterations from reality, invented composite characters, and restructured timelines, scholar David Garrow described Dreams as "a work of historical fiction" in his 2017 biography of Obama, Rising Star.[21][22] Sheila Miyoshi Jager, a former girlfriend of Obama's, has objected being combined with another woman into a white character, as she is half-Asian and considers herself mixed-race, like Obama.[21][22]
David Remnick, another Obama biographer (The Bridge, 2010), described Dreams as "a mixture of verifiable fact, recollection, recreation, invention, and artful shaping."[23] A number of factual inaccuracies or exaggerations in Dreams were also discussed by David Maraniss in his 2012 work Barack Obama: The Story; Maraniss describes the book as more akin to fictional literature than true autobiography.[24][25]
