To Obama : with love, joy, anger, and hope

Resource Information

The work To Obama : with love, joy, anger, and hope represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Missouri University of Science & Technology Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

To Obama : with love, joy, anger, and hope

Title remainder

with love, joy, anger, and hope

Statement of responsibility

Jeanne Marie Laskas

Creator

• Laskas, Jeanne Marie, 1958-

Author

• Laskas, Jeanne Marie, 1958-

Subject

• American letters
• BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Presidents & Heads of State
• LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Letters
• Obama, Barack
• Obama, Barack
• POLITICAL SCIENCE / American Government / Executive Branch
• 2009-2017
• Presidents
• Presidents -- United States -- Correspondence
• United States
• United States -- Politics and government -- 2009-2017 -- Sources
• Politics and government
• American letters

Genre

• Sources
• Correspondence

Language

eng

Summary

"Every evening for 8 years, at his request, President Obama received a binder containing ten handpicked letters from ordinary American citizens -- the unfiltered voice of a nation -- from his Office of Presidential Correspondence. He was the first to President to save constituent mail, and this is the story of how those letters affected not only the President and his policies, but also the deeply committed people who were tasked with opening the millions of pleas, rants, thank yous, and apologies that landed in the White House mailroom. Based on the popular New York Times article, 'To Obama,' Laskas now interviews the letter writers themselves and the White House staff who sifted through the powerful, moving, and incredibly intimate narrative of America during the Obama years emerges: There is Kelli, who saw her grandfathers finally marry -- legally -- after 35 years together; Bill, a lifelong Republican whose attitude toward immigration reform was transformed when he met a boy escaping M-16 gang leaders in El Salvador; Heba, a Syrian refugee who wants to forget the day the tanks rolled into her village; Marjorie, who grappled with disturbing feelings of racial bias lurking within her during the George Zimmerman trial; and Vicki, whose family was torn apart by those who voted for Trump and those who did not. They wrote to Obama out of gratitude and desperation, in their darkest times of need, in search of connection. They wrote with anger and respect. And together, this chorus of voices achieves a kind of beautiful harmony: here is a diary of a nation. To Obama is an intimate look at one man's relationship to the American people, and the the intersection of politics and empathy in the White House"--

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

PUL

Dewey number

973.932

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

no index present

LC call number

E907

LC item number

.L35 2018

Literary form

non fiction