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May

23

An NYT interview w/Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng


This New York Times Magazine interview with Barack Obama’s half-sister was published on 1/20/08.  I don’t like the way Deborah Soloman has been editing and asking questions lately, and this was one of the first ones that made me uncomfortable and feel that she was editing in a slanted way.  So here are the few questions that I liked the best (though the entire piece is still worth reading).

Q: Let’s talk about the Democratic presidential caucuses taking place on Feb. 19, in Hawaii , where

Barack Obama was born. Will you be campaigning for your brother? Yes, of course. I have taken time off from my various teaching jobs in Honolulu and just got back from two months of campaigning. I have a bumper sticker on my car that says: “1-20-09. End of an Error.”

What kind of bumper sticker is that? It doesn’t even mention a candidate by name. That’s just one bumper sticker. I have three others on my car, including one that says, “Women for Obama.”

 

…

 

Barack’s father was Kenyan, and yours was Indonesian. Your mom was what used to be called a freethinker, a white anthropologist from Wichita, Kan., who moved to Jakarta after her second marriage. My mother was a courageous woman. And she had such tremendous love for life. She loved the natural world. She would wake us up in the middle of the night to go look at the moon. When I was a teenager, this was a source of great frustration because I wanted to sleep.

 

…

 

You were ahead of the multicultural curve. That’s one of the things our mother taught us. It can all belong to you. If you have sufficient love and respect for a part of the world, it can be a meaningful part of who you are, even if it wasn’t delivered at birth.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:20 pm May 23rd, 2008 in Barack Obama 

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