BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: HISTORICAL, POLITICAL & MILITARY. Barack Obama reveals the real story of Obama's beginnings: child of a black man from Luoland and a white woman born in Kansas. At the heart of Obama's psyche and his political beliefs - and therefore his presidency - is his life-long struggle to understand the extreme duality of his identity. Maraniss explores his extraordinary journey from a mixed race boy raised by white grandparents in laid-back Hawaii to an African America with a burning political vision and vocation. Maraniss reveals here previously unpublished love letters written by Obama as a young man in a search of an identity: black or white, writer or a man who could lead. The story wrought here is one of fierce ambition, survival, and love.