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At nine years old, Barack Obama sees a photograph in Life magazine of a Black man who used skin-lightening cream, an image that prompts Barack’s realization that racism is lurking everywhere. The photograph and accompanying article introduce Barack (who’s biracial) to the racist notion that being Black is something to be ashamed of, a horrible notion that has never occurred to him before this point. In this sense, while the photo explicitly showcases the damage that racism does to Black people by making them feel ashamed of their skin color, it also represents Barack’s loss of innocence as he encounters this internalized shame for the first time. Seeing the photo thus symbolically marks the beginning of his struggle to navigate his racial identity as a Black man in America.
The Life Photograph Quotes in Dreams from My Father
The Dreams from My Father quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Life Photograph. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 10
Quotes
That’s what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions people carried within them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of terror and wonder, studded with events that still haunted or inspired them. Sacred stories.
And it was this realization, I think, that finally allowed me to share more of myself with the people I was working with [...]
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Get the entire Dreams from My Father LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Life Photograph Symbol Timeline in Dreams from My Father
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Life Photograph appears in Dreams from My Father. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
...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...
(full context)
...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....
(full context)
Chapter 10
...black people still hate themselves.” Barack explains that this isn’t exactly correct—since seeing the Life photograph, he’s learned about the divisions between “good” and “bad” hair, lips, and skin color among...
(full context)
