Garen Thomas | Live on Sound Authors

February 27, 2009

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors! My next guest on the show is Garen Thomas. She’s written a beautiful book called Yes We Can: A Biography of Barack Obama. It’s full of pictures beautifully laid out and it’s done very well recently for obvious reasons. We now have President Barack Obama and he’s been doing some incredible things over the past few weeks. So welcome to the show Garen Thomas.

Garen Thomas: Thank you, thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Kent: So it must’ve been a great last few weeks, last couple of months for you talking about this book and having been part of this historical moment.

Garen Thomas: Well I was really happy to have provided for kids a glimpse into the life of this candidate and now the president of the United States. I thought that his story was really interesting. It’s unique but it’s also one to which many children can relate so I was really proud that turned out to be the case.

Dr. Kent: Of course all of us this is the kind of book that kids bring home and then their parents see laying on the table and say that book looks great and they pick it up and read it themselves.

Garen Thomas: I’ve found that a lot of adults actually have read this book. It turns out it can work at a primer for people who don’t know much about the president and many people, many adults have told me that they read the book and then passed it along to their kids or the kids read it and then they read it so its wonderful that it actually crossed over from the children’s market to the adult market.

Dr. Kent: You’ve been in the New York Times book review and major newspapers everywhere. How has that felt for you?

Garen Thomas: That was actually really wonderful. It was nice to be recognized that way, it was nice to have that attention; however, for me the most important thing was getting the book in the hands of children and to be on the bestseller list is a case that where kids were getting it and adults were getting it and that’s what it means to me.

Dr. Kent: So where did this start for you? When did you look at this guy? I mean for me I didn’t know about him until 2004 and I watched that speech and said oh wow, who is this guy? I wonder if we could have this guy for our president one day. Then I thought no, that’ll never happen. But when did it start for you?

Garen Thomas: It started for me around the same time. I was actually working as a children’s book editor and was looking for positive role models in the African American community and then this person who I had never heard of came out and made this passionate speech and I had my eye on him right at that time. I wanted to have him actually write a children’s book for us and we approached him but it turned out he went with his adult book publisher to publish a children’s book. I kept my eye on him and was very excited to see him enter the race. Oh gosh, how many years ago has it been now and thrilled to have been able to write a part of this historical moment.

Dr. Kent: And that’s so interesting. We have for me as an artist, as someone who has devoted their life to the arts, its so wonderful I heard on the Grammy’s last night, sorry a few nights ago that this is a Grammy award wining president; how neat is that?

Garen Thomas: Yeah, I believe he’s one who grabs you now!

Dr. Kent: For his writing, how he read it of course, but.

Garen Thomas: Absolutely; I think it speaks largely to his writing ability and the message he’s able to convey. That it resonates with people; granted he did explore the spoken award that he won at the Grammy’s, but I don’t think you can win a Grammy without having the meat of material behind it.

Dr. Kent: So tell me, there’s a lot of people out there that are collecting things; this is clearly the president of the last couple hundred years for people to look at and say wow, this is a unique character, in my opinion. What’s your personal sort of relationship to the whole okay now he’s president, how do I look at this now? Earlier you said this is a great primer about the president. How did things change for you when he actually won?

Garen Thomas: Wow; I think similar to you I actually couldn’t believe it. For me it was like magic, it was like the world slightly changed a little bit, something shifted in American history and perhaps world history. It definitely felt that way and I also was, I couldn’t enjoy the moment right at the time because I was writing the final chapters to the updated version of the book.

Dr. Kent: The thing for me, we’re on internet radio so I can be pretty free with my opinions and I was very excited about the candidate Obama and when he gave the acceptance speech I was anticipating that I would be overjoyed and jumping around and excited and actually I sort of joined half of the legions of people across the country that were crying. I was thinking and I don’t know why I was but it was like this is a moment that I was sort of waiting for, for a long time.

Garen Thomas: At the time of the inauguration, it was you know I was still holding my breath after he won the election but for me I still was waiting for that inaugural date to come; anything could’ve happened between the election and the inauguration. I don’t know if I would consider myself a pessimist or just extremely cautious but I definitely wanted to take it slow and make sure that everything went according to plan and during the inauguration at his inaugural speech I was definitely moved and wasn’t blogging it live but was writing down pieces of his speech that really moved me.

Dr. Kent: I remember there was a moment where I was at home for the holidays with my parents and we were watching some speeches and I guess Obama gave his now famous speech in Iowa and I remember just sitting there actually giving responses and this will kind of bring up another question. I didn’t grow up in a church or in a community that sort of responds freely to a speaker but I’ve heard a lot of it of course in both music and different speakers, but when Obama speaks, people evoke responses involuntarily. When he gave that speech in Iowa I was talking to the television. He would say things and I would go mmm, he’d say something else and I’d go yeah. What does it mean to have an African American man in the white house who studied how to do that honestly? He’s so well studied and developed that his style of connecting to people.

Garen Thomas: I think what it means is that he’s connected with, he’s able to connect with our core emotions, he gets people from the core. I think that sort of call on response is or when you feel compelled to talk back to the TV because somebody said something that really ignites a passion in you or a fire in you and you want to respond, you want to say yes or whatever. I think it’s amazing that style that he’s got translates so well across all of America and it looks like globally.

Dr. Kent: So let’s go back to the book itself. Now he has such an interesting story and you know it’s not often that any character in public life had that deep of a story. We’ve all been sort of in love with this fellow Sully who saved all these people in New York and he’s a wonderful story and we sort of cling to characters. Barack Obama is an especially sticky character. When we hear his story we’re drawn to it, even before he was president, he was selling millions of books. Why is he so sticky and why is he so important to us?

Garen Thomas: When he initially published his first book it did okay but it didn’t sort of take off until he became senator. That was a momentous thing as well and people revisited his initial story and found a unique person behind it, somebody who was able to live in several worlds literally and figuratively and find a place for himself to fit. I think it was amazing.

Dr. Kent: In your book what I love about the book especially and what obviously all of the press loves about it is that it is for children but I find myself really drawn to it because of the pictures in it and it’s such a neat thing when you write books for younger people, you’re allowed to put pictures in.

Garen Thomas: Yes it’s true. I don’t know when we decide that we’re too adult to have images in our books but I feel like they help tell the story. We’re still drawn to pictures and movies and I don’t know why we can’t still have something like that in our books for adults but the pictures help tell his story. He’s got an amazing life story and there are bits and pieces of it that probably we wouldn’t have a full sense of unless we actually saw him, like in Hawaii with his grandparents or saw him graduating from Harvard or Columbia. It has a real, you’re able to connect more I think with him as a human being when you have those pictures to hold onto.

Dr. Kent: So, I have kind of two questions. What surprised you about Barack Obama’s story and the second question is what has surprised you since you published this book since Obama has become president and you’re getting reactions from readers? Has anything surprised you?

Garen Thomas: I think I didn’t realize how close he was with his grandparents and his mother and how interesting and exceptional a woman his mother was. She basically I think she gave him the tools to be president at a very young age. She instilled in him a desire to learn and the necessity to learn and to not have excuses for things that you feel are unfair but to find a way to make changes happen. as far as what surprises me since the book and the inauguration when he became president; I think I ran into an article online about a woman who read the book with her daughter and then went to her school and told the teacher there that she wanted the book as part of the curriculum and apparently its become a part of the curriculum and they got hundreds of copies and the kids are reading it. That means so much to me, the fact that the mother saw that and saw the value in it and I think she actually said that she wanted the children to see if he could do it they could do. That means more to me than any best seller list or anything like that.

Dr. Kent: And that really has been surprising to me and many people is this shift that happened on January 20. People said wow, I could really be somebody and that’s really wonderful. Let me ask you this. One of Obama’s biographers David Mendell who I chatted with just before Obama was elected actually. The beginning to his book, the quote before the book begins was I’m Lebron’s baby.” And I was really amused by that because this was what Obama said as he went on stage in 2004. He had this confidence and I wanted to ask you about that and then the beginning of your book, which you talk about the quote he said “In the end that is God’s greatest gift to us, a belief in things not seen.” And then your first line of the introduction, “His father was a legend, like John Henry.” There’s this real mystery and a sense of forward thinking, future thinking in Obama and he says these really wonderful lofty things.

Garen Thomas: I also believe that comes across that he has that. I guess people don’t expect it. It’s a surprise to them that he can be conscious of that, that he can fill himself with enough knowledge to be confident and get out there and put form and to convey his message that’s going to connect with people. It turns out that it relates to the Lebron James comment. When I chose the quote about Gods greatest gift to us is the belief in things not seen, I was thinking about his father. The fact that he grew up without his dad and that yet he had to somehow believe in his dad and believe in himself so that he could reach great heights. That was what really I wanted to get at in the book was his relationships with his parents and his grandparents and the people in his life. It really was important to me to spend a lot of time on his childhood in his formative years and find out what his relationship was like with individuals, the people who helped make him into the person that people are looking up to today.

Dr. Kent: I guess my final and favorite question for you is what makes Barack Obama so cool in two ways? The first way of course is I as well as many people were swept up in who is this guy around 2006. I thought wow, how amazing would it be if he could get elected and I was amazed by the things he said; to me it felt cool. He was this incredibly popular character. In the other sense where everyone says how does he stay so calm? And that’s part of what got him elected and what’s so reassuring now to see in this president is this coolness. I think I lost Garen Thomas! I will hang on the line for a minute and see if we can get her back. The book is called Yes We Can: A biography of President Barack Obama and I’m going to put a commercial on for a minute while we get her back. So we’re back on the line with Garen Thomas. I think we dropped her call for a minute there but we’re talking about Yes We Can: A biography of President Barack Obama. Welcome back to the show.

Garen Thomas: Thank you.

Dr. Kent: Sorry I lost you there but I was asking about our cool president and he’s both cool in a very popular sense and cool, calm, collected, reassuring – so talk about our president’s coolness.

Garen Thomas: It’s funny that you should mention that. I’m actually in business school now and one of the people in our admissions department talks about swag and how some people have just a little of a swagger about them and I think our current president has that. I think he has an air about him; it’s not a conceited air but I think he gives a level of confidence and calm. I don’t think I’ve seen him open to anger or lose his cool. He just sort of has a measured approach to things and a reasoned approach. I think it helps put people at ease and it’s really a fun thing to see. Part of that might come from Michelle to because I think she’s got some of that as well.

Dr. Kent: And at the same time he’s cool for kids, for young people, for Gen-Xers and he’s also cool for boomers. Why is this character politically so cool?

Garen Thomas: I think because people have grown tired of the same type of politician and he brings a new style to politics. I think he’s actually made people more engaged and more excited about policy and about what can be done. There is a lot going on in the United States and across the globe that really needs fixed and this is somebody who’s standing up for principals and working to fix it. In terms of what makes him cool to younger kids, I know one of my close friends has a three year old and helped sway his dad to vote for Obama because that’s the candidate who’s name he could say. And I think he has a fun name as well; Obama is a fun name for kids to say.

Dr. Kent: Right and its true and I recall before he was elected about a week before I was on a walk with my dog and we passed a younger woman with her child and we introduced my dog to the child first and then I remember her saying tell him what you think? I think I must’ve been wearing some kind of Barack Obama shirt and the kid said bawack Obama and I won’t forget; it’s the funniest thing but the kid just loved saying his name.

Garen Thomas: It has a nice little ring to it. I definitely think kids like that plus I think he just it’s a generational thing. He’s a new kind of politician and Colin Powell talks about a need for generational change in the white house and I think we see this person as that shift in policy and just a new face that’s something that’s bringing America into the 21st century.

Dr. Kent: It’s been such a pleasure chatting with Garen Thomas, she’s the author of Yes We Can. It’s a new York Times best seller and it’s a biography of our new president Barack Obama and it goes from his kindergarten essay “I Want to become President” all the way back to his childhood and to the present day in the new edition so thank you so much for chatting with me.

Garen Thomas: Thanks very much it was fun.

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show is Nina Burleigh and she’s the author of Unholy Business: A true tale of faith, greed and forgery in the holy land. Come on back for that one.

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