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A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother
by
Janny Scott
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A major publishing event: an unprecedented look into the life of the woman who most singularly shaped Barack Obama-his mother.
Barack Obama has written extensively about his father, but little is known about Stanley Ann Dunham, the fiercely independent woman who raised him, the person he credits for, as he says, "what is best in me." Here is the missing piece...more
A major publishing event: an unprecedented look into the life of the woman who most singularly shaped Barack Obama-his mother.
Barack Obama has written extensively about his father, but little is known about Stanley Ann Dunham, the fiercely independent woman who raised him, the person he credits for, as he says, "what is best in me." Here is the missing piece...more
Hardcover, 384 pages
Published
May 3rd 2011
by Riverhead Hardcover
(first published April 25th 2011)
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The theme of this biography of Barack Obama's mother is that she was more complex, more interesting and had more depth than the various different perceptions that people have of her today. The book succeeds in that goal, her work in her anthropology studies in Indonesia and her later work with the banking community in providing credit to rural women in 3rd world copies anticipated the development of the microcredit movement.
The author, Jenny Scott, also writes of Obama's mother early life includ...more
The author, Jenny Scott, also writes of Obama's mother early life includ...more
wow. indeed a singular woman, worthy antecedent of our current president barak obama, and a woman of integrity. she had a deeply held conviction to her principles and led her life as seamlessly as possible and instilled in her two children (barry and maya) a deep respect for others and a life of action on behalf of others. i also found a surprising affinity with stanley ann dunham. she was three years older than me and had to make hard decisions and "keep on keeping on" in the face of others ser...more
I thought this biography of Stanley Ann Dunham, the mother of Barack Obama, was interesting on the whole, but ultimately unsatisfying. The professional portion of Ann's life, the well-documented part, is covered in stultifying detail. I put the book aside for six months or more to recover from the endless facts about which villages she went to and what interviews she did. Ann Dunham deserves to have her working life recognized. She was intrepid, thorough, tenacious and successful, ultimately mak...more
On the plus side, the impression unveiled of this previous mystery woman is fascinating, even very telling v-a-v her son.
Equally important, this woman's story is very much the story of the 1969s-70s liberated woman who was not burning her bra or marching for rights - thoroughly necessary activities - but the more typical young woman, one who found herself in an immeasurably expanded world and went out into it, with determination, smarts, and considerable personal difficulties. Stanley Ann was v...more
Equally important, this woman's story is very much the story of the 1969s-70s liberated woman who was not burning her bra or marching for rights - thoroughly necessary activities - but the more typical young woman, one who found herself in an immeasurably expanded world and went out into it, with determination, smarts, and considerable personal difficulties. Stanley Ann was v...more
Aug 09, 2011
Gary Null
added it
Because I grew up in Kansas, I was intrigued to learn more about Barack Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who President Obama described, rather simply and succinctly, as “… a white woman from Kansas.”
I was disappointed to discover that although Stanley Ann Dunham was born in Wichita, and her parents and grandparents had Kansas roots, Stanley Ann’s Kansas roots were very shallow. She spent her childhood in Kansas, California, Oklahoma and Texas, then lived her formative teen years in Mercer Isl...more
I was disappointed to discover that although Stanley Ann Dunham was born in Wichita, and her parents and grandparents had Kansas roots, Stanley Ann’s Kansas roots were very shallow. She spent her childhood in Kansas, California, Oklahoma and Texas, then lived her formative teen years in Mercer Isl...more
As the title depicts, Stanley Ann Dunham (to be referred to subsequently as Ann), was indeed a “singular” individual. It takes a lot of drive and personality force for a woman to remove herself from her cultural roots and go and live in an entirely different country (Indonesia). As the author suggests, Ann found her niche in Indonesia and thrived. She learnt the language (well one of the main languages) and spent close to half her life there. She became part of Indonesia – but never forsook her...more
2 likes · like · see review
WHAT AN APT title: A Singular Woman, a biography of Stanley Ann Dunham, the mother of Barack Obama. Janny Scott has given us a detailed, concise overview of Dunham's formative childhood, her career, and her character: taken together they provide a portrait not only of the woman, but of one important aspect of the times she flourished in, roughly the mid-sixties to the end of the century.
Brought up peripatetically — her father alternated between salesman and student, moving his household from El...more
Brought up peripatetically — her father alternated between salesman and student, moving his household from El...more
Author Janny Scott spent 2 years in research that spanned the US mainland, Hawaii and Indonesia. She interviewed over 200 friends and colleagues and read Dunham's field reports, letters and research papers. She had the cooperation of the Payne family, Maya Soetoro and even interviewed President Obama.
The result; however, is not as impressive as the effort. I think this is because the approach is that of a reporter and not a biographer. Interviews are dutifully reported. Some say that Ann boasted...more
The result; however, is not as impressive as the effort. I think this is because the approach is that of a reporter and not a biographer. Interviews are dutifully reported. Some say that Ann boasted...more
3 likes · like · see review
This book is very difficult to read but still rewarding as it tells a story of an extremely interesting woman's life. The author is very detail oriented and fills the books with quotes. Getting starting is particularly challenging and could have been helped by a genealogy chart of her family. She likely never will be in the news since she was felled at an early age of 52 by a painful cancer. But .. what a fascinating life she led. She made bad choices when it came to love, but she did so very m...more
I was attracted to this book because of the tie-in with President Obama, but also because his mother was adventurous. The book present biographical information in very human terms and addresses the various situations and ultimately the choices that its subject, Ann Dunham faced while trying to balance her own needs with those of her family. Since she was intelligent and game to try anything, the situations she found herself in were unique, but there was a universality about them to which anyone...more
Making this book entailed many interviews and reading of histories, letters, and anything else that Janny Scott could get her hands upon. As a result, there are many references to people to whom she talked. That made the beginning 80 pages almost turn me off for I wanted to get to know Barack Obama's Mother, not her antecedents. Stanley Ann Dunham was a strong unusual woman as the other book reviews in Goodreads.com detail here. What interested me most was trying to envision what made Barack the...more
Stanley Ann Dunham was an academic with many interests, and a sympathizer of the underprivileged, while she influenced the young Barack. She was not impressed by social status and the players of power games around her. She was out to help government become the instrument for changing the status of women in all parts of the world. Personal gain was not her objective, but redistributing power and wealth was. (Sound familiar?) Public policy became her subject of choice. In that regard, and for her...more
Janny Scott's research and rendering of Ann Dunham's life and her work as a microcredit queen in Indonesia is perceptive, matter-of-factly and makes an excellent read. The story would have been equally interesting even without knowing that she at the age of 18 gave birth to the current US President, but it does add depth to know that all this time she instilled in Barack Obama many of his values. He has just a minor role in the book, along with his sister Maya. The focus is on Ann Dunham's achie...more
Scott reveals many aspects of Stanley Ann Dunham’s life, which for the most part have escaped general public knowledge prior to this book.
There’s a huge focus on Dunham’s career as an anthropologist and her work in Indonesia. I would have liked to have known a bit more about what was really going on in her personal life, but it seems that that information is lost forever with the woman. My tendency is to be judgmental about her choices to leave her children at various points in their lives, but...more
There’s a huge focus on Dunham’s career as an anthropologist and her work in Indonesia. I would have liked to have known a bit more about what was really going on in her personal life, but it seems that that information is lost forever with the woman. My tendency is to be judgmental about her choices to leave her children at various points in their lives, but...more
We heard about Stanley Ann Dunham during Barack Obama's run for President in 2008. We knew that she had been a young single mother in Hawaii in the early 1960s with a black son that she had to support.
By emphasizing this part of his mother's history, Barack Obama assured people that, yes, he understood their economic pain. He told us of his determination to provide universal health care stemmed from his mother, fighting with her insurance company to not cut off her coverage while fatally ill wi...more
By emphasizing this part of his mother's history, Barack Obama assured people that, yes, he understood their economic pain. He told us of his determination to provide universal health care stemmed from his mother, fighting with her insurance company to not cut off her coverage while fatally ill wi...more
Oct 10, 2011
Darlene
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
women
Recommended to Darlene by:
the Library
What a woman! I was very impressed with this book. I do not usually read non-fiction. But this was the first book available for Kindle from my local library. I downloaded the Audible version to help hold my attention to the text.
If there were any books that could bring the plight of women to light it is this book. Here we have a woman who had family who were college educated and encouraged their offspring to seek the highest education possible. This woman went to Indonesia to study the poor, es...more
If there were any books that could bring the plight of women to light it is this book. Here we have a woman who had family who were college educated and encouraged their offspring to seek the highest education possible. This woman went to Indonesia to study the poor, es...more
Oct 10, 2011
Darlene
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Women
Recommended to Darlene by:
the Library
What a woman! I was very impressed with this book. I do not usually read non-fiction. But this was the first book available for Kindle from my local library. I downloaded the Audible version to help hold my attention to the text.
If there were any books that could bring the plight of women to light it is this book. Here we have a woman who had family who were college educated and encouraged their offspring to seek the highest education possible. This woman went to Indonesia to study the poor, es...more
If there were any books that could bring the plight of women to light it is this book. Here we have a woman who had family who were college educated and encouraged their offspring to seek the highest education possible. This woman went to Indonesia to study the poor, es...more
Even though I read this book because of Barack Obama, I should be very clear that this is not a book about Barack Obama. In fact, except for some passages from Dreams From My Father and some excerpts from an interview the author did with the president, Barack Obama is nearly absent from the text.
This is a book about Stanley Ann Dunham. It's a well-written and fast-paced read that covers her entire life, which is an impressive feat for Scott, since Dunham was not much of a diarist. Scott tracked...more
This is a book about Stanley Ann Dunham. It's a well-written and fast-paced read that covers her entire life, which is an impressive feat for Scott, since Dunham was not much of a diarist. Scott tracked...more
This is a story of a fascinating and yes - singular - woman. We learn about Stanley Ann Dunham's remarkable life, and at the same time gain insight into the somewhat confusing succession of locations where our president grew up. I have not read the book about Obama's father, but he most certainly was raised by a brilliant, compassionate and independent woman who lived life on her own terms. Ann lived about half of her life in Indonesia and achieved her PhD in Anthropology while working and livin...more
Stanley Ann Dunham struggled as a girl to keep friends because her Father moved the family often in search of jobs. He needed help to support them, so her mother, Madelyn got a banking job. Madelyn eventually worked her way up to Vice President of a bank.
This book details the lives and personalities of President Obama's family several generations back. Madelyn and Stanley Dunham settled for a few years during Stanley Ann's high school years on Mercer Island Seattle. She made friends there and w...more
This book details the lives and personalities of President Obama's family several generations back. Madelyn and Stanley Dunham settled for a few years during Stanley Ann's high school years on Mercer Island Seattle. She made friends there and w...more
Having read Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama, I was very interested to read the story of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham's life. Ms. Scott does a wonderful job describing the logistics of Ann Dunham's life and I found her to be a fascinating person. She made choices in her life (especially regarding the raising of her children) which I would not be comfortable with but she comes across as an open minded, caring and adventurous spirit. Reading about her life and her...more
When I read Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father, I came away strangely unsatisfied. (You can see that review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88....)
I wanted more about what made him the man he became. This book provides some of that missing information and describes a woman who was very interesting in her own right.
Stanley Ann Dunham was born in Kansas but raised all over the United States, landing in Hawai'i in 1960 with her parents. She met an African exchange student at the Universi...more
I wanted more about what made him the man he became. This book provides some of that missing information and describes a woman who was very interesting in her own right.
Stanley Ann Dunham was born in Kansas but raised all over the United States, landing in Hawai'i in 1960 with her parents. She met an African exchange student at the Universi...more
3 likes · like · see review
376 pages
Page 133
President Obama said of his mother:
she taught me to disdain the blend of ignorance and arrogance that too often characterized Americans abroad.
Page 146
When Ann overheard Barry’s school friends commenting on the limited refrigerator inventory an his mother’s unimpressive housekeeping, he says she would take him aside an let him know that as a single mother back in school, baking cookies was not at the top of her priority list. She was not, she made it clear, putting up with “any...more
Page 133
President Obama said of his mother:
she taught me to disdain the blend of ignorance and arrogance that too often characterized Americans abroad.
Page 146
When Ann overheard Barry’s school friends commenting on the limited refrigerator inventory an his mother’s unimpressive housekeeping, he says she would take him aside an let him know that as a single mother back in school, baking cookies was not at the top of her priority list. She was not, she made it clear, putting up with “any...more
This is a captivating biography on the unconventional life of Stanley Ann Dunham, President Barack Obama’s mother. She is a woman who lived life to the fullest and shunned normal standards in order to follow her true calling, a profoundly tolerant education. We are allowed a glimpse of an exuberant and joyful woman who cared for the plight of all people, regardless of race or religion. Ann Dunham spent the majority of her life in academic circles in pursuit of a PhD in Cultural Studies. She was...more
The title of this book is perfect, because Stanley Ann Dunham was an utterly unique woman. Janny Scott does an incredible job exhaustively detailing her life, having spoken to hundreds of Ann's colleagues and family.
That exhaustive research contributes to one of the problems I had with this book - there is so much attention to chronicling every aspect of Ann's professional life that it becomes overwhelming at times. The bombardment of technical details of Ann's work and the seemingly hundreds o...more
That exhaustive research contributes to one of the problems I had with this book - there is so much attention to chronicling every aspect of Ann's professional life that it becomes overwhelming at times. The bombardment of technical details of Ann's work and the seemingly hundreds o...more
(2011, 367 pgs.) This is a presentation of the untold story of Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. Apparently in Obama's first book, "Dreams from My Father", he didn't include much about his mother. And the research that Janny Scott did for two and half years gives a much more in depth description of her, her ways, her decisions, her way of life and also commented on her mothering. I picked this book up at the airport on my way home from Hawaii, and it was an interesting read. She had alw...more
I'm glad to have read this book finally. Stanley Ann Dunham is a pretty fascinating person, and learning about the choices she made regarding her career and family were very interesting to me, especially in light of Anne Marie Slaughter's recent article in The Atlantic about why women (arguably) cannot have it all, which I've been thinking about a lot lately. Ann Dunham accomplished a ton of impressive work and was a role model for many of her younger female colleagues, but she definitely didn't...more
This book is very revealing and explains a lot about how our president got to be who he is. He is a lot like his mother who was a lot like her father. The one who kept everything afloat was his brilliant, hard working and responsible grandmother. Without her the whole family would have fallen apart. To me, she seems the true hero of the story.
I see this as a tragic story. His mother had a difficult childhood, moving cross country 7 times before she was 14. Never belonging, never fitting in, she...more
I see this as a tragic story. His mother had a difficult childhood, moving cross country 7 times before she was 14. Never belonging, never fitting in, she...more
1 like · like · see review
You'd think a woman who was born in Kansas, moved to Hawaii, married an African national in 1961, gave birth to the first African American president, then left the country for Indonesia would have a life more interesting than the one portrayed here.
I very nearly did not finish this book. As it is, I have to confess to skipping over several pages of detailed descriptions of Dunham's field work among the peasants in Indonesia and her various job duties and recollections of her many coworkers.
The a...more
I very nearly did not finish this book. As it is, I have to confess to skipping over several pages of detailed descriptions of Dunham's field work among the peasants in Indonesia and her various job duties and recollections of her many coworkers.
The a...more
Janney Scott’s A Singular Woman, her well-researched and warm but objective look at the life of Stanley Ann Dunham, President Barack Obama’s mother, is a thoroughly enjoyable read. The book stems from an earlier piece by Scott in the New York Times. Dunham, however, was not a subject that could be done justice in an article and thus the book a few years later. Readers of the article clamored to learn more about the woman with the unconventional life so often referred to as a “white anthropologis...more
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Janny Scott has been a reporter for The New York Times since 1994. She is currently assigned to the metropolitan news section, where she has covered demographics, regional economics and housing. She has also written cultural news as well as articles for the Week in Review and The Book Review.
Ms. Scott was a member of the team awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for “How Race Is Lived In America,” a 15...more
More about Janny Scott...
Ms. Scott was a member of the team awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for “How Race Is Lived In America,” a 15...more
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Another friend had already recommended this book to me. Ann sounds an interesting, free-thinking and strong woman.
26 de Ene 10:36