Wednesday, Dec. 07, 2011
A Singular Woman by Janny Scott
She became known to America, during her son's meteoric rise to the presidency, as "a white woman from Kansas." But to New York Times reporter Janny Scott, that shorthand didn't suffice for the girl with a boy's name who grew up in the heartland and on the west coast, married a Kenyan and then an Indonesian, raised a multicultural family well before the age of multiculturalism and pursued a career in anthropology with dogged devotion. A Singular Woman, Scott's biography of Stanley Ann Dunham, is a perfectly titled page turner about an unconventional American life, one governed by curiosity, ambition, perseverance and passion. If you think Barack Obama is a pioneer, you haven't met his mother.