Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro

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Obama's Mother Shaped His 'Essence'
 Obama's Mother 
 Shaped His 'Essence' 
OPINION
May 12, 2012 8:23 AM CDT

Obama's Mother Shaped His 'Essence'

He is his mother's son: David Maraniss

(Newser) - Barack Obama titled his memoir Dreams From My Father, but "Dreams From My Mother better evokes his story," writes Washington Post editor and Obama biographer David Maraniss. The president is very much a reflection of his mom, the Kansas-born Stanley Ann Dunham who married a Kenyan and later...

Book Scuttles Obama's Health Care Story

His mother had health insurance when she died, and it paid up

(Newser) - A recent book on President Obama’s mother undermines his oft-told story that his mother spent the final years of her life battling insurance companies over her medical bills. The book, by New York Times reporter Janny Scott, reveals that Ann Dunham actually had health insurance that readily paid her...

Obama's Dad Told Feds Baby Would Be Adopted Out

His father told immigrations officials he'd be given up at birth

(Newser) - Barack Obama’s father once told immigration officials that he and Ann Dunham were planning to give their then-unborn child up for adoption, writes Sally Jacobs for the Boston Globe . The elder Obama had been under scrutiny from federal immigration officials, who feared that he had another wife in Kenya....

Stanley Ann Dunham: Barack Obama Reflects on Mom's
 Obama Reflects on 
 Dogged, Flawed Mom 
Profile
Apr 20, 2011 1:05 PM CDT

Obama Reflects on Dogged, Flawed Mom

Reminiscing comes in profile about his time in Indonesia

(Newser) - Barry Obama was just 6 years old when Ann Dunham decided to take him to war-torn Indonesia, and Sunday’s New York Times Magazine examines the reverberations of that decision. On the surface the answer is simple: She was following her second husband, Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian native who’d...

For Census Purposes, Obama's African-American

In response to question about race, president checks one box

(Newser) - When he filled out his census form yesterday, President Obama identified himself as African-American. The son of a black Kenyan and a white Kansan, Obama had the option to check more than one box. He didn't hesitate before choosing "Black, African Am., or Negro," White House press secretary...

Scott Brown Is Obama's Cousin
 Scott Brown Is Obama's Cousin 
Jan 31, 2010 5:31 AM CST

Scott Brown Is Obama's Cousin

Both their mothers descended from 17th-century Massachusetts man

(Newser) - A genealogy group has discovered that Barack Obama has an unlikely branch on the right wing of his family tree—Massachusetts senator-elect Scott Brown is his 10th cousin through a 17th-century Bay State ancestor from whom both men's mothers descended. The New England Historic Genealogical Society had previously found the...

Dems Roll Out Brown Clip Suggesting Obama Mom Unwed

Mass. Senate candidate compared Obama's mother to Bristol Palin

(Newser) - Frantic Democrats are circulating a 2008 interview in which Scott Brown insinuated that Barack Obama was born out of wedlock. While discussing Bristol Palin's pregnancy during the Republican convention, Brown drew a parallel to Obama's mother, who was 18 when he was born. When another interviewee on the program noted...

Obama's Sister Moving to DC
 Obama's Sister Moving to DC 
Jul 31, 2009 8:10 AM CDT

Obama's Sister Moving to DC

(Newser) - Barack Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng is moving with her family from Hawaii to Washington for the next several months, reports the New York Times. Soetoro-Ng, the daughter of Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham and an Indonesian father, has quit her job as a high school teacher to write a book....

Anthropology Book By Obama's Mom to Hit Shelves

Study of Indonesian craftsmen will hit shelves 14 years after her death

(Newser) - Barack Obama's mother died before she finished revising her Ph.D dissertation for publication, but two of her fellow anthropologists have now completed the job, reports the Chicago Tribune. Stanley Ann Dunham's Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia—the study of blacksmiths and other rural craftsmen she completed...

Obama Is a Son of Hawaii, but a Man of Chicago

Island looms large among the forces that shaped him

(Newser) - Hawaii and Chicago shaped the Barack Obama we know today in very different ways, David Maranis writes in a detailed look at the candidate's formative years in the Washington Post. Hawaii, multiracial but with its own social stratification, helped form the young Obama's outlook on life, but he found himself...

Meet Obama's Free-Spirited Mom

How a single white woman from Kansas shaped a presidential contender

(Newser) - In Barack Obama’s stump speeches, his mother is little but a single mom, a cancer victim, a white woman from Kansas. But in life, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro was a fascinating figure, a globe-trotting free spirit desperate to help the world. Soetoro never lived to see her son’s...

Obama Draws on the Audacity of Mom
Obama Draws on the Audacity of Mom
Feb 11, 2008 4:15 PM CST

Obama Draws on the Audacity of Mom

Kansas-born Ann Dunham worked to uplift the poor in the world's most fractured places

(Newser) - Barack Obama’s mother is sometimes described just as “a white woman from Kansas,” but Ann Dunham possessed an indomitable spirit and fierce open-mindedness that profoundly shaped her son. Dunham was a single mom and social activist who worked in Indonesia and Pakistan, and consulted for the World...

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