By Barack Obama (2020)
Barack Obama made history as the first African-American President of the US A and winner of the Nobel Prize. In this engaging memoir, the 44th U S President recaptures his life and career. Obama speaks about his political and personal life. Coming from a most unpromising background, of mixed ethnicity, brought up by a single mother in Hawaii, Obama’s formative influence was his Scottish grandparents. He admits with a sense of embarrassment that during the college days he cultivated a kind of pseudo-intellectualism to impress women than anything else. At Columbia and Harvard, he developed a desire for social change which led him to undertake community leadership in Chicago that evolved into political engagement. After his initial defeats in public life, he almost completely withdrew from public life. As a lawyer he engaged with civil rights and married his fellow lawyer Michelle. His speech at a Democratic Convention shot him to national popularity. He saw political corruption that increased his desire to fight it. Race prejudices notwithstanding, Obama made history by being elected the first African-American President. He successfully handled the economic crisis of 2008. The Nobel Prize came as a surprise. On the personal side he makes note of how his public life put strains on his family and how he and Michele handled it. Obama reflects that he had trained himself to “take the long view, about how important it is to stay focused on your goals rather than getting hung up on the daily ups and downs.” Aware of his own limitations, he notes how “Enthusiasm makes up for a host of deficiencies.” He also offers this piece of wisdom: “I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is, works on a scale too large to admit our mortal tribulations; that in a single lifetime, accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit; and that the best we can do is to try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grace and nerve play at each moment the hand that we’re dealt.”
The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State
by Nadia Murad and Jenna Krajeski (2017)
Nadia Murad shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Dennis Mukwege in 2018 and is UN Good Will Ambassador. This harrowing yet inspiring memoir draws attention to the horrors experienced by the victims of recent persecution and genocide by the Islamic State, most of whom are women and children. Murad recounts how the ISIS enslaved, raped, tortured and murdered the Yazidi minority in Iraq. The Yazidis are an ancient people, a barely one million strong ethno-religious minority in Northern Iraq. Nadia Murad was the youngest of a large Yazidi family in Kocho, a village in Mosul region. A close-knit community of 200 Yazidi families lived here. Nadia’s father was a respected man in the village. She was a bold and courageous schoolgirl who dreamt of becoming a teacher. When Iraq’s peace was shattered with the rise of the ISIS, life took a more violent turn for them. Soon they were given ultimatum to convert to Islam or face death. On 3rd August 2014, the village was raided by ISIS militants and the people started to flee. Many died of hunger and exhaustion on the way. The ISIS executed those who refused to convert. This included six of Nadia’s brothers. She witnessed the massacre of old women. The bodies were buried in mass graves. The young women and girls became sex slaves subject to unimaginable cruelty. The ISIS militants took Nadia to Mosul to join the thousands of other Yazidi girls to be auctioned off in the slave market. She became the sex slave of an old man named Haji Salman and was exchanged among several men who repeatedly gang-raped and tortured the teenager. She escaped and found refuge in a friendly Sunni family. From there she eventually reached Germany and was able to contact other refugees with similar experiences. With the help of human rights activists, she sought to draw attention to the plight of the persecuted people in Iraq. Murad’s story drew world attention to the continuing ethnic extermination going on in the Middle East and led to the Nobel Prize.
Prof Gigy Joseph
To subscribe to the magazine, click Subscribe
