Backward Through the Veil: Individual and Group Identity in Dreams from My Father

Abstract

This essay proposes that there is a common identity progression that structures the narratives of many works of Afro-American autobiography and fiction. This progression starts with a hegemonic Black group identity
designed to contain and constrain a liberated conception of individual identity for the protagonist. After recognizing the falsity of this socially prescribed racist group identity, the protagonist cycles through alternative, ostensibly counter-hegemonic, group identities with the ultimate realization that these too are false and constricting. The affirmation and social recognition of a stable individual identity is seen as impossible in the context of the US racial identification system. Death, exile, or exit from the system in some other form is therefore the common resolution to these narratives. Barak Obama’s autobiography Dreams from My Father is treated as a negative case in this proposed trend. It is argued that Obama’s narrative basically reverses the traditional progression. This is claim is based on the idea that Obama’s work culminates not with his own
affirmation of self-identity independent of the constraints of the US’s system of racial group identification, but with the affirmation of a self that is determined by Obama’s choice to identify and be identified with AfroAmericans as a group.