History from Below in Obama’s Dreams from My Father

Abstract

This research paper explores the autobiographical memoirof Barack Obama from theoretical perspective of ‘new historicism ’. The paper begins with short introduction of the book Dreams from My Father connecting it with the research topic ‘History from Below’and digs out the context in which the book was written. Then the study attempts to analyse how Obama has finely experienced the same level of prejudice as his father and forefathersand it also attempts how his experiences of racial prejudice can also be counted under collective experience of people from margin. The paper explains how Obama’s autobiography gets meaning as part of the larger black community’s story in white dominated society that dominates black people’s history and its racial past.The writer’s motive behind recollecting his racial past in the memoir is actually an attempt to investigate his inheritance and the history of deeply grounded racial prejudice in America. Key words: History from below, racial identity, the blacks; inheritance, prejudice