WE LIVE BY the paradigms we know. In Barack’s childhood, his father disappeared and his mother came and went. She was devoted to him but never tethered to him, and as far as he was concerned, there was nothing wrong in this approach. He’d had hills, beaches, and his own mind to keep him company. Independence mattered in Barack’s world. It always had and always would. I, meanwhile, had been raised inside the tight weave of my own family, in our boxed-in apartment, in our boxed-in South Side neighborhood, with my grandparents and aunts and uncles all around, everyone jammed at one table for our
...more
