![]() The two years I spent at Occidental represented the start of my political awakening. As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless I found myself in a series of affectionate but chaste friendships. Looking back, it’s embarrassing to recognize the degree to which my intellectual curiosity those first two years of college paralleled the interests of various women I was attempting to get to know: Marx and Marcuse so I had something to say to the long-legged socialist who lived in my dorm Fanon and Gwendolyn Brooks for the smooth-skinned sociology major who never gave me a second look Foucault and Woolf for the ethereal bisexual who wore mostly black. My interest in books probably explains why I not only survived high school but arrived at Occidental College in 1979 with a thin but passable knowledge of political issues and a series of half-baked opinions that I’d toss out during late-night bull sessions in the dorm. This excerpt comes from chapter one, when Obama moves to Los Angeles from Hawaii to attend Occidental College and begins his journey to find a place in the world. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Los Angeles Times Community Book Club is reading “A Promised Land,” the bestselling memoir by former President Barack Obama. ![]()
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