A Home Elsewhere: Reading African American Classics in the Age of Obama by Robert Stepto

This book looks back at the African American canon and contrasts scenes in writers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Frederick Douglass to scenes in Obama's Dreams of My Father. It's perhaps not surprising that these scenes are often educational--for example, set in a school--because of Stepto's earlier thesis, that African American literature is driven by freedom and literacy narratives. While the book offers persuasive readings, and the comparisons to Obama are interesting, it doesn't have the heft, examples, or theoretical grounding to be a major work.