Ann Dunham: biography

Stanley Ann Dunham was an American anthropologist specializing in economic anthropology and rural development in Indonesia, mother of the former president of the United States, Barack Obama. He was born on November 29, 1942 in Wichita, Kansas, USA. UU He died on November 7, 1995, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. UU., Where he spent most of his life.

She was a revolutionary woman for the time she had to live, because despite her two divorces she managed to get her two children ahead without neglecting her professional work. She recognized herself as an atheist, but her children said she was an agnostic.

Photograph by Stanley Ann Dunham

His research in Indonesia contributed to the creation of the world's largest microfinance program, implemented by Bank Rakyat.

After Barack Obama won the presidency, there was renewed interest in his work. His research and the academic work he developed during his short but productive life were reedited.

Childhood and adolescence

The first years of Dunham's life were between California, Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas; his family was going from one place to another. As a teenager, she lived in Mercer Island, Washington and in Hawaii and Indonesia as an adult.

For many reasons, Dunham always stood out. In the first place, it was distinguished by the masculine name by which it was known: Stanley Ann Dunham. Then she stood out for being a brilliant student little given to follow social conventions, like her parents.

His father, Stanley Armor Dunham, a furniture salesman who always wanted to have a son, did not mind putting his own name: Stanley. At this time, the feminist movement was not yet expressed. His mother was Madelyn Dunham, a simple housewife, who raised her son and had great influence on him.

Then she was named Ann Dunham, then Ann Obama, Ann Soetoro, Ann Sutoro and finally Ann Dunham, after her second divorce.

She was considered a revolutionary woman by the time she lived, as she challenged the establishment American. In the midst of debate in the United States on segregation and when interracial marriage was prohibited in many states, he married a black man.

Years later he married an Indonesian and went to live in his country in full Vietnam War . The anti-communist policy based on McCarthy doctrine was just ending.

In spite of her two divorces, she assumed the difficulties that being a single American mother would bring her, and she brought out her children, Barack and Maya, while she continued with her work.

Studies and academic life

Dunham studied in many educational institutions throughout his unstable but successful academic life. Between 1961 and 1962, he attended the University of Washington in Seattle.

He studied at the East-West Center and later at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, where he graduated in anthropology in 1967. Then, in 1974, he obtained a master's degree in arts and in 1992, a PhD in Indonesia.

She carried out several investigations focusing on the blacksmithing in Indonesia and on handicrafts, weavings and the role of women in the artisanal companies of the island of Java.

She was an activist and defender of women's rights and was cataloged as an academic of the cultural Marxist current.

He was interested in the problem of poverty in the rural villages of Indonesia. For this purpose he created microcredit programs while serving as a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development.

Dunham also worked for the Ford Foundation in Jakarta and with the Asian Development Bank in Gujranwala, Pakistan. His research helped Bank Rakyat implement the largest microfinance program in the world.

Some of his publications

• Civil rights of Indonesian women who work (1982).
• The effects of industrialization on women workers in Indonesia (1982).
• The work of women in rural industries in Java (1982).
• Economic activities of women in the fishing communities of the north coast: background of a proposal for a PPA (1983).
• Peasant smithy in Indonesia: surviving against all odds (Thesis - 1992).

Dunham's work regained academic interest after his son Barack Obama was elected president. The University of Hawaii held a symposium about its research and Duke University Press.

In this same period, the work was published Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry In Indonesia. The book is based on Dunham's original academic dissertation in 1992, to obtain his doctorate.

Its textile collection, Indonesian batik, was exhibited in different parts of the United States. The biography of Ann Dunham was also published A singular woman in 2011, written by writer Janny Scott, a former New York Times reporter.

The writer reveals in this book unpublished details about Dunham's relationship with his son and the childhood of former President Obama.

The Department of Anthropology of the University of Hawaii, created in homage to her in The Ann Dunham Soetoro Endowment . Likewise, the Ann Dunham Soetoro Graduate Scholarship program was instituted, which is awarded to students associated with the East-West Center (EWC) in Honolulu.

The two marriages

From his first marriage to the Kenyan student, his son Barack was born. Although she was a woman fleeing marriage, as her college friends remember her, Durham married for the first time at age 18.

Barack Obama Sr. was the first African to enter the University of Hawaii. His romance with the Kenyan began in a Russian class. The couple married in February 1961 but, shortly after, her husband went on a scholarship to Harvard.

She then had to take care of raising the child alone. Her husband proposed that when they finish their doctorate they went to live in Kenya, but Ann did not want to. Obama Sr. had already been married in Kenya and left his first wife.

The relationship collapsed and, after asking for a divorce in January 1964, Ann resumed her university studies. Without work or money to support herself, she and her son survived with the food stamps granted by the government.

Ann Dunham's parents helped him with the care of little Barry, as they called Barack. During that university era, Ann and Lolo Soetoro, her second husband, met in Honolulu. Lolo was an Indonesian exchange student. In 1965 they got married and went to live in Jakarta.

Ann accepted the proposal without thinking much, although Indonesia was a very poor country. His son was only six years old and Jakarta was a city with streets uncovered and without electricity.

Second divorce

The young anthropologist was interested in the Indonesian culture. Instead, her husband became Westernized when he got a job at a US oil company.

Lifestyles began to clash, as Lolo hoped that Ann would arrange to accompany him to the company's events. She, on the other hand, was not interested in fashion or social events.

This caused the estrangement and the subsequent rupture of the couple, and in the year 1980 they separated. There were rumors that Lolo mistreated Durham, but Barack always denied it.

She was bored with her domestic life and dedicated herself to teaching English at the Embassy of the United States. At the same time he dealt directly with the education of his son Barack Jr., who taught English lessons in the morning. At night, he had him read Martin Luther King books and listen to gospel songs by Mahalia Jackson.

Barack Obama, in an interview revealed that his mother was"the dominant figure in my formative years (...)". She said that the values ​​she taught him were the foundation of her political activity.

When she was 10 years old, Ann sent Obama to Hawaii to live with her grandparents while attending high school. A year later, Ann and her daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng, also returned.

Death

For several years Ann and her daughter lived in Pakistan, New York and finally in Hawaii again. In 1992 he presented his doctoral thesis on peasant smithy in Indonesia.

In 1994, while he was dining in Jakarta, he presented with abdominal pain. After several tests, she was diagnosed with ovarian and uterine cancer. On November 7, 1995, he died at the age of 52 years due to liver failure.

References

1. S. Ann Dunham: Survive against the odds: Industria Village in Indonesia". Retrieved on March 1, 2018 from dukeupress.edu
2. The mysterious mother. Consulted of semana.com
3. Ann Dunham Biography. Consulted by biography.com
4. The untold story of Obama's mother. Consulted by independent.co.uk
5. Barack Obama's mother was secretly in contact with his estranged father during his entire childhood without his knowledge. Consulted dailymail.co.uk
6. Dr Stanley Ann Dunham (1942 - 1995). Consulted by geni.com