Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia

[tabatha]

Released December, 2009.

http://www.dukeupress.edu/books.php3?isbn=978-0-8223-4687-6

http://chronicle.com/article/Obamas-Mothers-Dissertation/49279/

The scholarly book getting the most buzz at the American Anthropological Association's annual conference this week is likely to be a doctoral dissertation published 15 years after its author's death. Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia is by S. Ann Dunham, the mother of President Obama, a connection noted on the book's front cover. The publisher, Duke University Press, will unveil the book on December 3 at the conference, to be followed by a special session devoted to Dunham and her life and work.

I spoke with Dunham's daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng, who is President Obama's half-sister, about their mother's life and work and how the dissertation made it from her closet to print. Ms. Soetoro-Ng wrote a foreword to the book. She and Mr. Obama spent some time in Indonesia as children while Dunham worked as a development and microcredit consultant and did fieldwork for the dissertation.

[babylonsister]

1. I'm glad to see Mrs. Dunham getting the recognition it sounds like

she deserves. It's sad she's not here to enjoy it.