Dreams from My Father

Barack is nine years old. He’s in a taxi with Ann, on the way to the embassy in Djakarta. After answering questions from Ann’s boss, Barack sits in the library while Ann works. He browses the stacks and flips through Life magazines, looking at the pictures and trying to guess what each story is about. He gets to a photograph of a man whose skin has a ghostly, unnatural pallor to it. Barack figures he’s a radiation victim, but he’s shocked by what he reads: the man paid for a skin lightening treatment. The effects are irreversible, and many other Black people in America have done the same thing. Barack anxiously wonders if Ann knows about this, but as though in a dream, he can’t voice his fears.

By this time, Barack and Ann have lived in Indonesia for three years, since Ann’s marriage to Lolo. They began dating when Barack was four and they married two years later. After this, Lolo returned to Indonesia, leaving Ann and Barack to sort out visas. When Ann and Barack arrived in Djakarta, Lolo was heavier and had a moustache. He was friends with the soldiers manning the customs table, so Ann and Barack climbed right into Lolo’s borrowed car. Barack suck his head out the window and stared. When they arrived at a modest bungalow, Lolo introduced an ape as Tata, a gift for Barack, and then showed off a menagerie of wild animals. Lolo let Barack watch a man butcher a chicken for dinner, and Barack went to sleep thrilled.

Two years later, Lolo teaches Barack to box, which Lolo feels is necessary, since boys recently threw a rock at Barack’s head. Barack marvels at how familiar Lolo is to him now. It only took Barack months to adapt to Indonesia. Life there is one long adventure and Barack faithfully records his adventures in letters to his grandparents. He leaves out his growing understanding that the world is violent and cruel. Since Ann can’t always help Barack understand what he sees, Barack turns to Lolo. Lolo always introduces Barack as his son, but he engages Barack with some distance. He teaches Barack how to deal with beggars (don’t give them money and keep oneself from ending up a beggar) and servants (help the ambitious ones, fire those who are clumsy or forgetful). He says it’s fine for Ann to be soft, but as a man, Barack will need to be sensible.

After the boxing lesson, Lolo and Barack sit. When Barack sees scars on Lolo’s leg, Lolo explains that they’re from leeches in New Guinea. Barack asks if Lolo has ever seen a man killed. Lolo says he has, but the victim was weak. He explains that men take advantage of weakness in other men, and he encourages Barack to either be clever or strong himself. From inside, Ann watches her husband and son and thinks back to how innocent she was when she arrived in Indonesia. Ann had been prepared to live in a poor country, but she hadn’t been prepared to be so lonely. Lolo used to be full of life, but in the year between when he left Hawaii and when Ann arrived in Djakarta, he changed. He doesn’t talk like he used to—or much at all—anymore. She suspects that he’s depressed; his job is boring.

Ann got a job teaching English at the American embassy. There, she learned about Sukarno, the nationalist leader of Indonesia who was deposed in a coup. She eventually realizes that she and Barack arrived in Djakarta less than a year after one of the most brutal suppression campaigns in modern history. Lolo refuses to talk about it. Eventually, one of Lolo’s cousins tells Ann that Lolo, like all Indonesian students studying abroad, was ordered home and had his passport revoked. Many students are still in jail or have disappeared. Ann realizes that she’s dealing with naked power of a sort that isn’t visible in America, and Lolo has made peace with this power. He sometimes says that guilt is a luxury only afforded to foreigners. Ann thinks he’s right, but she realizes with panic that “power [is] taking her son.” Barack doesn’t think Lolo had any idea what Ann was going through, since he concentrated so fully on his job.

Over time, the family moves up in the world, though Ann often refuses to attend company dinners with Americans. Ann and Lolo are cordial through the birth of Barack’s sister Maya, but then they divorce. Lolo dies 10 years later. But from the moment Ann realizes that she wants Barack to be American (not Indonesian) for the opportunities this would provide, she throws herself into the effort of Americanizing her son. She teaches him English for three hours in the mornings and tries to instill values like honesty, fairness, and good judgment in him—but few back her up in this, as the poverty, corruption, and struggle for security in Indonesia make it difficult to buy into those values.

The story of Barack’s father, however, backs Ann up: he grew up poor, worked hard and followed the rules, and he became successful. Ann gives Barack books on the civil rights movement and recordings of Dr. King’s speeches, and she insists that being Black is a “special destiny.” This is how Barack sees the world when he finds the Life photograph. He suspects that many Black children have these moments of revelation earlier than he did. While Barack already knew about bigots and death, the photo makes it clear that there’s a “hidden enemy” in the world. That night, he stares at his face in the mirror and wonders if there’s something wrong with him. Following this night, he begins to notice that Black characters never get the girls on shows, and that Santa is white. Barack tells no one about his observations, but he wonders if Ann mischaracterizes the world on purpose.