Homeland: An Extraordinary Story of Hope and Survival »

George Obama lives and works in the ghetto in Nairobi, Kenya, under the auspices of the Huruma Centre Community Youth Group, and The Mwelu Foundation. He is presently setting up the George Hussein Obama Foundation to further his ghetto work.

Damien Lewis has reported from war and conflict zones and aid and conservation projects across Africa for twenty years for the BBC, Channel 4, abc, cnn, and others. In 2007 he won the B BC one world popular feature award for his reporting on the Darfur crisis. He is the co-author of Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur with Halima Bashir and Slave with Mende Nazer.

Homeland is the remarkable memoir of George Obama, the youngest son of the Obama clan and President Obama's Kenyan half-brother.

The father that the brothers shared was as elusive a figure for George as he had been for Barack Obama; he died when George was six months old and George was raised by his mother and stepfather. But after his mother and stepfather separated, he drifted into gangs and petty crime. Arrested for robbery, restless, willful, and troubled, he lost himself in Nairobi's vast Mathare ghetto. After being framed for an armed robbery he did not commit and spending time in jail, he represented himself at trial and won the case. Vowing to turn his life around, he finished his education and set up the George Hussein Obama Homeland Foundation to help street kids overcome the miseries surrounding them.

George Obama's story describes his unique struggles with family, tribe, inheritance, and redemption and the seminal influence his brother had on his own future.

Library Journal

The author recounts his inspirational journey of change, bookended by his first childhood meeting with his half-brother, Barack Obama, and his 2006 encounter with the man who would be President. Throughout, the 27-year-old Kenyan discusses both his life's influences and his darker moments, including the time he served in a Nairobi prison for armed robbery. Having vowed to turn his life around upon his release, Obama is today a community activist in Kenya and ambassador for the Kenyan slums. Narrator Dion Graham (see Behind the Mike, LJ 11/1/09) reads in an accent clearly denoting Obama's origins. Though the accent is convincing, listeners knowing it's not the real thing might wonder why Obama himself couldn't have narrated his own memoir. For those who enjoy memoirs and inspirational nonfiction as well as anyone interested in African politics and familial insights into the President.—Lance Eaton, Peabody, MA

Prologue xvii

Chapter 1 The Beginning 1

Chapter 2 The Last Son 13

Chapter 3 Our Father 23

Chapter 4 Mudfish Madness 35

Chapter 5 For Jennifer 47

Chapter 6 In the Shadow of Mount Kenya 61

Chapter 7 The Drinking Den 75

Chapter 8 No Second Chance 87

Chapter 9 The Gulf Between Us 99

Chapter 10 Dagoretti High 111

Chapter 11 Crash and Burn 125

Chapter 12 They Call Me the Mamba 135

Chapter 13 In the Ghetto 149

Chapter 14 The Hood 165

Chapter 15 Gangland 175

Chapter 16 Imprisoned 191

Chapter 17 Absolute Zero 205

Chapter 18 Survivor 221

Chapter 19 The Awakening 235

Chapter 20 From the Streets 247

Chapter 21 The Brotherhood 259

Chapter 22 Barack, My Brother 269

Chapter 23 Slaying the Shame 279

Epilogue 291