Obama Is a Son of Hawaii, but a Man of Chicago

Island looms large among the forces that shaped him

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Aug 23, 2008 2:32 PM CDT

(Newser) – Hawaii and Chicago shaped the Barack Obama we know today in very different ways, David Maranis writes in a detailed look at the candidate's formative years in the Washington Post. Hawaii, multiracial but with its own social stratification, helped form the young Obama's outlook on life, but he found himself as a man in the rough world of Chicago politics.

An influence on Obama's life as big as geography was his extraordinary, peripatetic mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. The candidate's complicated feelings toward this open, loving, but sometimes seemingly naive woman are "central to understanding his political persona today," writes Maranis. "The contrast of an embracing, inclusive sensibility accompanied by an inner toughness and wariness."

[Images (2)]

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This 1960's photo shows Obama with his mother, Ann Dunham. (AP Photo/Obama Presidential Campaign)

Barack Obama walks the beach with his daughters Malia, 10, left, and Sasha, 7, during his vacation in Hawaii Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008. (AP Photo/Marco Garcia)

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Those who come from islands are inevitably shaped by the experience. For Obama, the experience was all contradiction and contrast. - David Maranis

Of all the relationships in Obama's life, none has been deeper, more complex or more important. - David Maranis on Obama's relationship with his mother

She wanted us to think of it as a gift that we were multilayered and multidimensional and multiracial. This meant that she was perhaps unprepared when we did struggle with issues of identity - Obama's half-sister on their mother

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Obama Is a Son of Hawaii, but a Man of Chicago