Dreams from My Father
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995) is a memoir by Barack Obama, who was elected as U.S. President in 2008. The memoir explores the events of Obama's early years in Honolulu and Chicago up until his entry into law school in 1988. Obama published the memoir in July 1995, when he was starting his political campaign for Illinois Senate. He had been elected as the first African-American president of the "Harvard Law Review" in 1990. According to "The New York Times", Obama modeled "Dreams from My Father" on Ralph Ellison's novel "Invisible Man".
Between the World and Me
Coates was inspired to write "Between the World and Me" following a 2013 meeting with sitting United States President Barack Obama. Coates, a writer for "The Atlantic", had been reading James Baldwin's 1963 "The Fire Next Time" and was determined to make his second meeting with the president less deferential. As he left for Washington, D.C., his wife encouraged him to think like Baldwin, and Coates recalled an unofficial, fiery meeting between Baldwin, Black activists, and Robert Kennedy in 1963. When it was his turn, Coates debated with Obama whether his policy sufficiently addressed racial disparities in the universal health care rollout. After the event, Obama and Coates spoke privately about a blog post Coates had written criticizing the president's call for more personal responsibility among African Americans. Obama disagreed with the criticism and told Coates not to despair.