Common Experience

• Reviews of Dreams from My Father
• Reviews of Skull Wars

The common readings of the IU Southeast Common Experience for 2007-08 are Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama and Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity by David Hurst Thomas. We invite you to join the campus in reading one or both of the books. See examples of reviews of each book below. Obama´s book will be primary reading during the fall semester and Thomas´s book will be primary reading spring 2008. However, the theme which is addressed in each book, will be discussed both semesters. So join us in reading one or both of the books and participating in an exciting series of discussions about each book fall and spring semesters.

Book Reviews

Reviews of Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama

From Booklist
Obama argues with himself on almost every page of this lively autobiographical conversation. He gets you to agree with him, and then he brings in a counternarrative that seems just as convincing. Son of a white American mother and of a black Kenyan father whom he never knew, Obama grew up mainly in Hawaii. After college, he worked for three years as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side. Then, finally, he went to Kenya, to find the world of his dead father, his "authentic" self. Will the truth set you free, Obama asks? Or will it disappoint? Both, it seems. His search for himself as a black American is rooted in the particulars of his daily life; it also reads like a wry commentary about all of us. He dismisses stereotypes of the "tragic mulatto" and then shows how much we are all caught between messy contradictions and disparate communities. He discovers that Kenya has 400 different tribes, each of them with stereotypes of the others. Obama is candid about racism and poverty and corruption, in Chicago and in Kenya. Yet he does find community and authenticity, not in any romantic cliche{?}, but with "honest, decent men and women who have attainable ambitions and the determination to see them through." Hazel Rochman

From Publishers Weekly
Elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama was offered a book contract, but the intellectual journey he planned to recount became instead this poignant, probing memoir of an unusual life. Born in 1961 to a white American woman and a black Kenyan student, Obama was reared in Hawaii by his mother and her parents, his father having left for further study and a return home to Africa. So Obama's not-unhappy youth is nevertheless a lonely voyage to racial identity, tensions in school, struggling with black literature with one month-long visit when he was 10 from his commanding father. After college, Obama became a community organizer in Chicago. He slowly found place and purpose among folks of similar hue but different memory, winning enough small victories to commit himself to the work he's now a civil rights lawyer there. Before going to law school, he finally visited Kenya; with his father dead, he still confronted obligation and loss, and found wellsprings of love and attachment. Obama leaves some lingering questions his mother is virtually absent but still has written a resonant book.

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Reviews of Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity by David Hurst Thomas.

From Amazon.com
Since its discovery in 1996, the issues surrounding Kennewick Man have grown ever more complicated and controversial. Out of this fracas comes Skull Wars, David Hurst Thomas's masterful contribution to the debate. The book is sure to stir passions even as it seeks to offer a better way for archeologists, anthropologists, and Native Americans to work together in the future. When it was determined that Kennewick Man, a skeleton with Caucasoid features discovered near Kennewick, Washington, was estimated to be more than 9,000 years old, it effectively lobbed a grenade into the already tense arena of the origins of the pre-Columbus peoples of the United States. Thomas, curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, leads the reader through the development of American anthropology and archeology, the many reinterpretations of Native Americans by non-Indians, an assertion of native rights, and the eventual intercession of the federal government, ironically, as protective party. Skull Wars is a gripping account of the way race, scientific practice, history, and politics converged around an ancient skeleton. --Julia Riches

From Library Journal
Any story that includes such a diverse cast of characters as the U.S. government, five Native American tribes (the Yakima, Nez Perce, Umatilla, Colville, and Wanapum), archaeologists, anthropologists, and the Asatru Folk Assembly (a pagan group that worships Old Norse gods) has to be fascinating. Such is the tale of Kennewick Man, whose remains have ignited a maelstrom that has yet to be concluded and will have long-ranging implications as to the ownership, treatment, and study of Native American remains. (Kennewick Man refers to an 8000-year-old skull found along the Columbia River in 1996 that proved to be of Caucasian origin, countering the theory that the earliest humans in North America came from Asia.) Downey, a Seattle-based reporter, presents a blow-by-blow account of the battle so far over Kennewick Man. At its core a sad story, since it does involve human remains, this is also somewhat comical at times. It has more twists and turns than most mystery novels and is an entertaining read. Thomas, curator of anthropology and former chair of the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, uses the legal battle over Kennewick Man in his outstanding scholarly study of the root causes of the distrust between archaeologists and Native American groups. He carefully explores both sides of the issue, showing that while archaeologists have in the past taken great liberties with Native Americans and their culture; their work has sometimes been beneficial. He also attempts to show that it is possible to respect the concerns of Native Americans and conduct good research at the same time. His solution is certainly preferable to settling these issues in courthouses across the country. This important piece of work is highly recommended for all academic collections in the fields of archaeology, anthropology, history, and Native American studies. -John Burch, Hagan Memorial Lib., Williamsburg, KY

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