In 1982, Barack Obama Jr. – then an undergraduate at Columbia University – received word that the father he had barely known had died in a car accident in Nairobi. For the younger Obama, this sudden tragedy motivated a journey that took him from Kansas to Kenya and points beyond to learn the truth of his father’s life and reconcile the disparate elements of his own family experience.
The story that sprang from that journey prompted SMU’s Common Reading Selection Committee to choose Obama’s 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, as the book every member of the University’s Fall 2009 incoming class will read and discuss. The students will receive the book at this summer’s AARO sessions.
Faculty, staff and returning students already have begun discussing the book in preparation for the small-group conversations with new students that take place before Rotunda Passage and Opening Convocation.
• Watch a video of students discussing Common Reading 2009 
• Read more about Common Reading 2009
