my story actually began was about 50 years ago when my father, barack obama, sr., went to hawaii and that's where he met sally ann dunham, the president's mother, and they fell in love and got married. shortly after that, barack was conceived, my brother, barack. my big brother, barack. after that they divorced as you

know, and barack obama, sr. went to harvard to pursue his doctorate in economics. at that time he met my mother in boston where she was teaching, and they fell in love. love is a powerful thing because in 1964 there were all across current that were very, very difficult to maneuver and to deal with in terms of black and white and racial relations in the united states. anyway, my father went back to kenya later that year and invited my mother to follow him, to get married, which she did. she tells me she remembers, you know, mark, when i decided to go to kenya, my grandma said you can't go there. they are all black.

[laughter] but love was a powerful thing and they went and they were married in december of that year. she had never been on a plane before, but she was a dream. i think there are dreamers but all over, and they have a tremendous force, power and for telling. shortly after that i was born. i was born in 1965. so my book starts with kenya. i call it my personal odyssey of self-discovery across three coulters, a person with a bumpy road, kenya, china, and america. so i will start with a couple of readings and i welcome, welcome any comments or any questions that anybody has. thank you.

i was just saying i can walk with us. this is not working, right? can i use this? i will use this one. thank you. kenya, where it all began. africa is a place of sublime contrast and savage indifference. but you for the first time of lions hunting and killing, muscles rippling in the sun. to see a -- to see pick up the body of opponents with justice deep alternate of blue sky that stretches for infinity. of sampling experience. how do i can do what it means to grow up in such beauty and harshness? i can only show the vignettes and memories the pass in and out of my consciousness like

sunlight through a diamond facets. the years, days and hours shift in bloor like a mirage hovering over a burning hot road. born in 1965, i lived in kenya until i was 18. the scene of potent defense of the bard before life also furnish me with the bricks from which i later bill nye spiritual house. growing up there was both wonderful and terrible. because they came from mixed raced family, africans denied me their brotherhood. to my face, children my own age called me up at its i hated, have cost, chicago, and white him on the. at one point i grown to believe have cast was a term of the purest abuse rather like son of a like or a whole multiplied 1000 times. some people use it with a casual familiarity with which one might say rose picture. representative had the same effect on me.

you're a half caste, aren't you? a man would casually asked me. leave that chotara alone. i don't like them, my schoolmates would often say i was blocked to all whites get white to all blacks with no middle ground. unable to bond with my black brothers i quickly adopted the culture of my white mother and her more polite caucasian brethren but although there was a point beyond which most would not let me befriend them, others let me to make social advances. for a long time that was enough. once stroked lightly, i put the pedal to the metal and zoomed ahead, alone and self-reliant. the next session, just to give some context, talks a little bit about kenya and we used to visit my father so instead near the

lake. it was a fascinating place. every now and again, now, has anyone been to kenya? yes, yes to maybe there are some kenyans in the eye. are there any kenyans in the audience? yes, sir. [speakin [speaking in native tongue] that means hello, how are you? there's a sense that i don't change africa. africa changes you. that said, when i was young my mother, my father and i and my younger brother david would drive about 400 miles from nairobi and was our traditional obama homestead.

this section starts you. every now and again we would visit, set up a car early in the morning and after a day like drive arrived at our ancestral home. there was a time when the roads were too dangerous for many travelers to use come where the driver having every like what a smashing good parka broken down bus or falling into huge bottle or veering off and on surface track. the police might ask for bribes and robbers wouldn't bother asking. these days the roads are considerably better, and tourists can cut across the road and bypass. our car would pass by the great rift valley and mystic mouth. our members spotting by the side of the road almost hidden behind thick bushes the remains of the old chapel will buy a column of pows and the second world war which is now a refurbished tourist attraction. the land would return richer,

and would appear in a shimmering waves of gold. with tea pickers and the children and the emerald fields where white colonial farmers once used circle and, develop an industry that produced the best tea in the world. i was about five or six years older than. my brother david was just a baby. i do not think he came with us on these long trips. except for once we've got very sick with malaria. in general someone would care for him back home and my mother would tell the base until she could hold them in her arms again. i never understood why we had to leave our home in nairobi to travel to this set of thatched huts were people in sheep clothes and sandals proclaims i could understand the i was never, i felt i was never accepted by the african children. it was all very strange, typical in intimidating the however they

were lighter, more surreal moments. most nights we go to the local bar, in one room house with a single bare lightbulb and rose by just like against the wall. outside of the were flimsy chairs and tables, lots of beer in huge vats and men talking and yelling. the air was thick with elections only smell of congo and people thought to be heard over the sound of rock 'n roll played on the local radio station. my father would forget us as he drank with the villagers into the night. my mother and i would sneak away to a small storage room where there's a tiny iron framed bed. we would try to talk over the din and felt tired, she would get up to leave me. mom, let's go home i pleaded sometimes, when i heard the shots of men, the clicking of their bottles and the beat of music from the radio. hush. you can sleep here and when we leave it will wake you. she would gently tightening in. i didn't want to go back to where we were staying.

i wanted to return to nairobi. which i knew and was used to. i would try to sleep with the noise of the party was deafening. unfazed by the harsh glare of the lightbulb, the mosquitoes would bite me when i dozed off. one night the clamor was so loud i had no choice but to come out of this torture them into the bar. i stood glumly next my father and mother and the women and men who sat happily chattering. wet wooden tables filled with beer bottles and glasses loomed around me. the sound seemed to rise like a ghostly will from the landscape of the child to be. i looked around and saw the source of the sound, a strange musician, the bugler dressed in a long -- loincloth and a hat. is better potbellied and jolly face were a terrifying sight. he was weaving between the rappers like a black santa without reindeer.

i heard the sound again. his cheeks blew up. dizzy gillespie fashion, to an incredible size. it was as though both sides of his face have been hijacked by shining coffee colored soccer balls. i looked in amazement at the two glistening orbs, afraid they would burst, so tight with the bulging skin. about those bulbous cheeks, his small eyes were narrowed to slits that shone with a maniacal intensity, and then the sound issued forth, high-pitched and yodeling asset at the very gates of heaven and hell it was deep, throaty, the my9 and masculine all at once as it flowed out towards the gorgeous valleys thrusting through the streets like a hell driven and she. then just as suddenly the sound would seize and the face which

shrank back to the jovial blubbery vistage of the old bugler. mom, what's wrong with the old man's face? the muscles in his cheeks are worn out. it's normal for from, she murmured smiling at me. identified in some strange way with the old bugler. i wanted to be as free as the sound he made, free, like my father's mother to plot the way over the hills away from this confusing place. the next section talks a little bit about my first meeting with my brother barack, and that was in 1988. it was a very intense meeting. i had just graduated from brown university and was on my way to

stanford and i come back for the summer to nairobi to stay with my parents. barack was on his way to harvard university, harvard law, and i remember, i was actually -- that balmy summer i was in my room reading a book, the devil drives, a great history of, a biography of richard burton, the great colonial adventure. and i heard a crunching sound of gravel outside. i knew the car had arrived. i heard sounds of voices and the door opened. my mother was in the door, and she was trembling. my mother is a big lady. she strong. she's a mountain climber. not literally, but she's a person who has gone through many challenges in life and survived. but she was trembling. it was like there was this

emotion. and what happened was she said to me, mark, your brother from america is here. i said, what brother? i didn't know, there have been memories and rumors and stories sort of nebulous things that have talked about a brother i had in america, but i had never met him. this was a totally unannounced visit. so it was a big surprise. anyway, i said my brother from america, what do you? your brother barack from america, he is here to see. and i all of a sudden, you know, to the divorce i'd shut out a lot about the obama name. i wanted nothing to do with it because of the domestic violence that we suffered for seven or eight years. i refused to even take the name obama at the time because i remembered my mother and the

pain of seeing her and being unable to protect her. but all of a sudden it's like, we hadn't been in contact with other members of the obama family, and after a space like 10, 15 years, and then all of a sudden all these memories and these feelings, they just course through me and i was thinking, all the things i've tried to forget were coming back. i instantly said no, i don't want to meet him. and she said, he's your brother. became all the way from the united states to see. you know how mother sat this way. they can persuade you to do anything. i eventually relented. i stood up and walked to the living room and i saw this person who looked almost exactly like me with this huge, bigger afro than me. and big gangly legs and is sitting on the seat, simple

polyester white shirt and cotton pants. and he had these big hands. and shake your hands, it's like the fingers reached to your elbow, that type of hand. and he was taller than me. and he stood up and he said hi, i'm barack. and i greater him, and that was my brother. you know, that first meeting, it was a little intense because we didn't say very much, but it was like all these of skeletons in the closet were clanking in the background, like the elephant final walks into the room. you have to confront so many things, marriages, relatives you don't know that well. anyway, barack wanted to talk to me privately, with more solitude. and so we set up a meeting for a few days later. and this section talks a little bit about that, is taken from

that section. that's what happens when you write a 372 page book. now that i think of it i wonder why he was waiting for me outside as the you wouldn't enter the house. all of the cassette always, straight in, sometimes surprising as. did he refuse to enter? it was as though there was an invisible barrier between his part of the family and my own. they were the obama clan living in scattered places across my ruby, centered around the old man as many family members later called barack obama senior. of my mother and i went to help come had to skip the squabbling poverty bigamy and domestic violence that it tainted my

earlier life. it was a sign of how secure was, but i faced a second meeting with trepidation to my mind wanted to shut out my past but it'd go into a menacing presence, a hungry lion hidden in elephant grass. barack stood in front of the car. i believe able back and in the summer i could see better than i had the last time. he was taller and thinner than me with the huge mass of unkempt hair. his nose was large and brought him his eyes piercing and direct. his clothes became more frequent, a simple cotton shirt and green pale or blue trash. oh, mark, how are you? he spoke loudly included. he didn't smile. it was as though he recently been upset the i reached out my hand. hello, barack. how are you? we shook hands somewhat awkwardly but at the time as a barack i said baruch hashem what it called our father. many years later i learned that my brother preferred barack.

he didn't correct it and i probably repeated this a number of times during our conversation. i looked more closely at this tall brown apparition that it suddenly appeared in my life. why so serious i thought? had he been dispatched an unwelcome but necessary mission? his was the face of a secret plan and goals but it was discreet, earnest and very weary of me and my immediate family, particularly my mother. perhaps an account of what others had told him. from the way he stood in the driveway that bright afternoon, rigid, his head tilted a little to the side, i saw a person who was searching for something. it was the look of someone who must decide on the verdict but he still struggling with unformed questions and doubts. as we talked later and we discussed it could do, i sensed he was looking for something in me, something deep but simple like a melody among the noise. i want to meet you, he said during the first meeting. let's take a drive. i want to talk to you.

i still remember my brother barack's words to me. what do you think of our father? what do you remember about him? he peered at me earnestly. all these years i kept my memories of my father far from me, sometimes i remembered my siblings, my mother's cries of pain and the bitterness of the family breakup. i would recall the drunkenness of barack obama, sr. and the sounds of whiskey bottles thinking and sometimes breaking on the floor. some strangers walked by bbc. rock looked at him calmly. i felt grateful for the interruption. in a few seconds of silence, my eyes wandered around the empty room. the glossy red and white walls seemed to shout out, and greasy plates still lay on some of the checkered plastic tablecloth. i remember the barack -- thought it ironic that he and i have

located it. the food arrived almost immediately, not hungry, i nibbled on a fried donut i remember how david, my younger brother who, by the way passed away a few years before, and i just to make them together. we would drop spoonfuls of the path into boiling oil to our mouth with water as we watch the golden crispy donuts expand with her sweet smell. as the reading my mind, barack stopped eating and turned his round eyes to me. i'm sorry about david. i think he would've liked and i replied, glad to change the subject. everyone i know here speaks well of him, barack said. is brown eyes suddenly warm. this offkilter image of myself -- weight. i'm jumping all of it ahead.

now it was as though my father refused to let go but no matter where i went there would always be some relative to the. uninvited my life bringing along the memories i had tried so hard to obliterated i was ashamed of myself and my bitterness ever living history overcome what should've been a joy at the moment. despite the tone of our conversation, i truly felt barack was trying to be honest with himself, and with me, focusing on reaching a higher level of self understanding. in the presence of such honesty it is imperative to respond in kind, but the shock of it was like being dipped into a lake of ice cold water. this offkilter image of myself sitting across from me was my brother, barack. barack. i felt i could hide nothing from him, that there was nothing in my life i've experienced that did not go for him the results might have been different. he looked so like me in some ways. i should've been happy to see them but i was not. like me he was mixed race and must of been rejected as i had.

like me to give an educated and an ivy league university. like me he came from a broken family. unlike me he had wholly embraces african site. unlike me he was attempting some sort of reconciliation that something or somebody come even if not with me and my mother. thoughts tumbled through my mind as i look at this familiar face. if this big brother who's going to harvard and has accepted the obama's, then why can't i? he is probably smart thing and can discern lies from the truth including my. i felt afraid and exposed. like do something dirty about our kinship, that it was founded on a lie, that we been dealt a grubby, fragile deck of cards on which to brace our brotherhood. yet the quest a barack and later i would embark upon required honesty, however brutal it was to ourselves or others close to us. so with all this in the back of my mind, i lashed out at him. weibring of all that garbage about my father?

he was a drunk. he beat my mother and us kids. i've learned to move on. life is hard enough without going on all the problems. iraq seemed to flinch, an almost imperceptible movement. i saw his eyes turn hard as he stared at me to it was as though he did not understand. after a moment of silence continued with his questions. had he not hurt my outburst? i was astonished. a part of them seem to shut out my words as though he was pretending i had that second. in this way we were both blind. brockmeier form high opinions of our father, even idolized him. likely no one had told him the truth, the shameful details of episodes of anger and drink. it was as though he had been conditioned not to explore these matters, having already formed an opinion. clinically and without passion. his demeanor was cold. i felt then he was an arrogant

bastard who was too polite to face -- say so to his face. i did not enjoy being treated as a research subject. i do not want to be pitied or ignored by members of my own family. what i needed was someone to tell me what is being a jerk and needed to straighten up. that would've been okay, and we could still have shared a beer. how i would have loved for him to throw his arms around me and said, brother, your big brother is here. i'm looking out for you, man. i probably would've cast his arms aside i would've broken up inside. instead, brock said, i see. i was succeeding academically but i had already started sowing seeds of my own failure. a big brother's advice might have helped me then but i want to get the ball back to him like a tennis ball off the practice law. that would've woken me up but it was not to be. barack was not made that way. he absorbed by inches and digested them like and the need to in a vat of sugar.

i've talked about music and physics, he rolled his eyes. i see, that's good. but do you see any meaning in it? i love music and philosophy. don't you want more, he said? i stared at him. what more is there? thousands of years of western culture, there's so much more one can learn from them. would you come back t again? of course. my family is here but my home is what family is but if they live in america that would be my home. it would be difficult to get a job as a physicist in kenya. it's hard enough getting telephone service. who knows? i tried to change the topic again. how do you like kenya so far? i like it, i'm having a good time here, he said casually. his eyes on placemat and his hands casually resting on the table like a poker players. the next section talks a little

bit about love and takes place actually in china. let me see if i can grab that. who's been to china over here? wow, a lot more people. the gentleman in front, where did you go? do you know some chinese? oh, great. another international family. that's great. you know, china is an amazing place. you know, the people are amazingly warm and welcoming. and in many ways, sometimes you have to be away from the things you're very close to come and for me, although i'm american, i

love america in kenya, at that time in my life for this was wonderful to go to china because everything was so strange and wonderful and curious. let me see if i can find this year. be right with you. like i said, 372 pages, but it's somewhere here. actually, i will tell you what.

while i'm looking forward maybe we could take some questions, and i'd be curious to hear about your experiences, too. and also, i think we can just leave it open to the floor. what do you think? [inaudible] >> have you ever visited the president at the white house? >> yes. yes, i have a. the first time we went to the white house was, i think it was the first inauguration and the whole family was invited. and i remember, it was a wonderful feeling. there was this tremendous sense of energy in the air. it was optimistic. it was just such enthusiasm.

and i remember we went to the white house with members of our extended family, and barack was there. it was new for him. this was right after he had been inaugurated as president. you've got a lot on your mind at that moment. he still had time for us. and so he gave us like a tour of the white house about 30, 40 minutes. i remember we went to the various rooms that we didn't really know what rooms these were. he said, i would never barack sang i think this is called the reagan. and everything was red. [laughter] and then i waited for more but there was no more. and we went into another room and it was all green and then barack said, and this is the green room. you know? it was very, it was interesting because, you know, he really wanted us to be part of that special day. i remember even walk up to the steps of the oval office.

you know, my father's first wife, you know, had a little bit of a leg problem. i remember walking up the steps and she was walking slowly and i remember barack turning and sing, trying to help her up the steps. it was just this humility that i thought was absolutely wonderful. at the end of the day, you know what happens is even in the presence of such a hallowed institution as the white house, there's nothing more powerful than family in all its contradictions and all of its learnings and teachings. so yeah, that was an amazing experience. i remember it very fondly. thanks for asking that question. hi. how are your? thank you for coming today. >> i'd like to ask you, you told us not that got you told you

were part of the special day, but since then do you still feel the connection with the president? and i have another question that is, when did you realize that your brother have become the powerful person in america? >> there are two parts to the. the first one refers to the relationship. what happens when your president things change. i don't know. when we met before, we had a tremendous meeting in austin. he was warm and very welcoming. i think, you know, at that time i gave him some of my calligraphy and he said, how do you think this? this way or that way? because of foresaw or vertical, you know? and gentlemen, this is so you spell your name in chinese, and he was like oh, okay.

i remember it was the person we've met in about 20 years, and it was a very powerful experience. but at that moment as i saw him walking towards me it was like i was saying to people. there was this confluence of tremendous energy. this is the potential president of the united states, and then at the same time this is my brother. it's difficult because i see them as my brother, and many others see them as the president. and so when i write in my book that i see, coming after beijing when he met his, he looked a little tired and i see the wrinkles in his face and he looks older. i removed some people saying how can you write about somebody like that? but that's what you see when your loved one comes in after a hard day of work. because they are family and you see these details. but come to terms with brother

and president it'll difficult. the second part of your question was? spin when did you realize it was the president? >> well, to me i knew it way before many of my other friends, for example, in china and also in kenya knew it. the way i knew it was, and maybe others did, too, were a little less skeptical. at the time of the debates and even before the nomination, there was just a sense of motion, the sense of momentum here and it was a sense of millions of people moving in a direction towards change. it wasn't about barack but it was about all the people around him. that was a moment when i actually decided i became proud of being an obama. that was the moment when it became proud of being an obama because you see all these millions of people and you see

this movement towards something at the time, which is tremendous inspiring. and i said, this is, he made me proud of my family. at that time i would never chinese friends saying he can never be elected, these black. not all chinese releases, but this friend of mine who is a very different set that, and i was so disappointed. it was as though to me it was so obvious, but too much of the world it was almost an inconceivable thing. it was a game changer. i hope that answers your question. high. the gentleman in the back. >> had to come to terms with quotes like professor cornell west, icon of political correctness, who's going to stand in that spot in two weeks calling your brother a counterfeit? or michael moore, icon of d.c., how do you come to terms with the following quotes speak with

sure, sure. things are coming. >> michael moore saying the side effect of the first black elected president, barack obama will be remembered for nothing by history. or clint eastwood, icon of political correctness saying breezily that barack obama is the greatest fraud ever perpetrated upon the american people? >> well, i will play -- thank you for your question by the way. i don't get too much into politics because i'm a pianist. i'm a writer. i'm a musician, and a calligrapher and i know there are people who know much more about politics and details of politics than i do. that's what we've teams of people in government to do these things. but that said, i think to meet its demands in america you can stand up and you can see these things. the fact we can still do it and many of the country we can do it i think it's a wonderful thing.

that said, i think that in many cases people expect, you know, one man to solve many problems and it's very difficult to do that. the one thing which i think we can get my brother credit for, maybe you agree or maybe you don't, is he is able to inspire people and he has inspired people. a lot of people who perhaps were less fortunate than you and me to go to good schools and perhaps also to do things in a beautiful city like new york at the barnes & noble. but the thing is that in many cases, people like that need something. i've gone around the world and i've seen many people who have been inspired by him. now, of course the our problems and things in which he was not able to do, and people with strong opinions. that's america. but i'll tell you what, i believe he believes in what he is doing and i think he's trying to do something with it.

for me, i would say that, you know, we have lots of differences. my politics and my brothers politics are not very similar, but we have, and also our grandmother is grandmother probably couldn't say -- like mine could but the thing is we still come together. i hope that maybe in the future, but two more years, you know, you will have an opportunity to make another choice. that's also a wonderful thing about the united states. [applause] >> i will take some more. i really enjoy this. >> how are you? >> fight, how are you? >> well,. >> which culture are you the most comfortable with? >> you know, that's one reason