Ann Dunham's time in Indonesia was spent as a programme officer for women's work
Posted on 11/22/2008 3:51:07 PM PST by bruinbirdman
A cache of private letters attained by The Sunday Times reveals the influences that helped shape the young Obama
Ann Dunham's time in Indonesia was spent as a programme officer for women's work
In his autobiographical memoir, Barack Obama’s mother is almost as distant a figure as his absent Kenyan father: America’s president-elect was largely brought up by his grandparents in Hawaii. But a trove of private letters obtained by The Sunday Times highlights her devotion to her son and her struggle to make ends meet as an anthropologist in Indonesia.
It was as a free-spirited student in Hawaii that Ann Dunham fell pregnant and married Obama’s father at 18, at a time when interracial unions were still illegal in many parts of America. They divorced when Obama was two and she later married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian. It was the start of a long love affair with his country, although the marriage did not last.
Dunham died at 52 of ovarian cancer in 1995, leaving behind a 1,000-page doctoral thesis on peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia, which friends still hope will gain her academic recognition. They believe her support for micro-financing projects and women’s work in Indonesia influenced Obama’s determination to build a grassroots campaign for president - and may yet shape his economic agenda in office.
Alice Dewey, a professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii, was Dunham’s close friend and thesis supervisor. For her, Obama will always be “Barry”, as his mother called him. Dunham also had a daughter from her second marriage, Maya Soetoro-Ng, who is now a teacher in Hawaii.
“I have a vivid picture of Ann on a couch, Maya going and sitting on her lap and Barry, not wanting to be left out, sitting on Maya’s lap -
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
. Ouch. I hope not.
Guess white chick perpetual grad students make good bucks in Asia.
yitbos
Why else would grandpa take O to Frank Marshall Davis' home?
Because the grandparents and FMD were both caring for a half-black child.
On what do you base that comment?
I don't think that his sister, who is half Indonesian, qualifies as white.
Her son’s job, according to Dunham, was to write reports for a consultancy on social, economic and political conditions in the Third World. In those days Obama was a young radical. “HE CALLS IT ‘WORKING FOR THE ENEMY’ BECAUSE SOME OF THE REPORTS ARE WRITE FOR COMMERCIAL FIRMS THAT WANT TO INVEST IN THOSE COUNTRIES,” Dunham wrote. “He seems to be learning a lot about the realities of international finance and politics . . . that information will stand him in good stead for the future.”
____________
I really don’t think anything else needs to be said to that.
The one-armed man clapped.
And no, that doesn't make Stanley Ann a "ho." She was in exactly the same position as Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol: fell in love, slept with her boyfriend, got pregnant, got married. It's not the right order in which to sschedule these events, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that evey single one of us has ancestors who did it exactly that way -- or did it ourselves.
A little irresponsible? Sure. Shocking? Hardly.
Aloha BIGLOOK, do you suppose we will have to learn Javanese in order to read it? LOL
Thanks for explaining that. We have British friends who would always call their babies, toddlers, children all “stupid.” “How *stupid*!” We helped them to understand that while they were in the U.S., our backwards government might likely send CPS to take their children due to emotional abuse. Stupid to them I guess means something akin to silly or goofball.
Re: the topic of the mother....does anyone know if the photos taken of the lady (in her birthday suit at Christmastime), purported to be her, are actually her?
Ann and Lolo never lived together again after she returned to Hawaii in 1972. She filed for divorce in 1980 but a Freeper found the divorce records in the Hawaii court system. The divorce was never finalized until 1988, however Lolo died of a liver ailment in 1987. As far as we can figure out they married in 1966 before Lolo returned to Indonesia, recalled by the Indonesian government.
That is ture. However, Stanley Ann was not ill or drugged up. A sad thing for a child nonetheless, but the photos of he and his grandparents say they loved him dearly.
Cue the violins, and pass me the thunder bucket.
A mother who was devoted to her son, would find a way to "make ends meet" in Hawaii, or have her son with her in Indonesia. Her mother and father, managed to put out the effort, and certainly would have helped her as necessary.
A communist bank officer? Hmm, that's different.
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