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Jul 19, 2012 A plea for global harmony from Obama's sister By Dinesh Sharma Almost four months before the first multicultural president of the United States seeks re-election, Barack Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng last week talked about the need for peace education and harmony in a world torn by war and terrorism. The July 10 event had the distinct feeling of a peace powwow on New York City's Park Avenue, where mainly supporters of the president gathered to be in the presence of his sister. This president, who inherited two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has made a concerted effort to live up to his promise to pull US troops out of these long-standing conflicts. The event included a reading of Ladder to the Moon, a children's book by Soetoro-Ng, at the Upper East Side headquarters of the Asia Society in New York City. The sounds of Indonesian gamelan music filled the air along with the chatter about the upcoming election, to which Soetoro-Ng added a mixture of lyrical tranquility, hybridity and civil discourse. The interview, conducted by the chief executive of the Asia Society, Dr Vishakha Desai, who is to retire in September after 22 years of service, having joined in 1990 as the museum director, explored questions about identity, biography, policy, education, and the politics of the upcoming election. The Asia Society provides a 360-degree view of the Asia-Pacific region, ranging from politics and history to art and culture. It is focused on the rise of China and India as major economic powers. Founded in 1956 by John D Rockefeller III, the Asia Society showcased maestro Ravi Shankar's sitar music for the first time to an American audience in 1961, the year Obama was born and well before The Beatles came to the US or the Woodstock concert took place. During the 1970s, '80s and '90s, the Asia Society opened offices in Washington, DC, Houston, Hong Kong, Australia, the Philippines and Los Angeles. It formed the China Council, and moved into the landmark Park Avenue office and art gallery. The mid-'90s also witnessed the rise of interest in Asian-American studies and immigrant population, led partly by the Asia Society. In 2004, Desai became the first woman and the first Asian-American to head the prestigious New York-based institution. During her tenure, it established new offices in India and South Korea and today its global reach extends across 11 cities in Asia and the US. This expansion culminated in the opening of two architecturally important multimillion-dollar centers with gallery exhibition space in Hong Kong and Houston. The Asia Society has hosted Maya Soetoro-Ng during previous election campaigns to discuss wide-ranging issues. However, the discussion has invariably centered on "a singular woman" missing from the room, namely the mother of Maya and Barack, Ann Dunham, whose presence is strongly felt in their lives. An anthropologist and world traveler as well as a mother, Ann Dunham was 52 years of age when she died prematurely of cancer in 1995. She had lived in 13 places around the world. "She felt at home in all of them," said Maya, who was named after the American poet Maya Angelou. Both Maya and Barack credit their mother for giving them a global perspective and outlook on life, something much needed as the US faces the challenges of the 21st century. In addition to campaigning for her brother, Soetoro-Ng works on global competence, public education and peace initiatives across different communities through various non-profit organizations. She is making her impact felt through her own life and work, said Desai. Soetoro-Ng said: "The reason I like coming to New York City is that the city makes me feel like I am in a very intense multicultural place." As a volunteer in the city's public schools, while studying at Barnard College and New York University, she traveled to all the boroughs and learned to speak Spanish fluently. She claimed that the city gave one the power to name oneself however one chooses. She found herself in New York City, she said, while living and working there as a student for almost eight years. She was able to discover who she was in the city, apart from Indonesia and Hawaii, the two other places she identifies with most significantly. Stressing what anthropologists and sociologists call the universal aspect of urban culture, Soetoro-Ng talked about the value of hybridity, collisions of different cultures, and the way we negotiate identities in post-modern cities that are hubs of information, technology and commerce. Are humans becoming more comfortable with multiple layers of self both within and without our bounded personalities? Clearly, we are all virtual nomads in the information age, I would agree. Have we truly become gypsies in our minds, always moving, traveling, pushing ahead, and fearful of staying in one place for too long? "Yet your brother, the president, chooses to define himself as an African-American [of] the city of Chicago," Desai said. The president we know today emerged from his earlier self, Barry Obama, while living near Columbia University in the Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights. He only lived in the city for two or three years before settling in Hyde Park, Chicago, as a community organizer and civil-rights lawyer. When asked about policy and day-to-day decision-making, Soetoro-Ng said, "I have very little impact on policy, on education or any other matter." She doesn't give advice and doesn't have meetings with the Obama administration on any policy-related matters. "I keep [Education Secretary] Arne Duncan abreast of things I am doing in Hawaii on education, but other than that I don't have any input on education. "I give him [Obama] support mostly. I give him family support like Michelle does," she said. An audience member asked when the president was going to change his policy toward Cuba. Soetoro-Ng talked about grassroots change and the people-to-people contacts between Havana and Honolulu, for instance, as the real bases of change. Another attendee asked how she balanced corporate interests with her emphasis on global education. Soetoro-Ng gave several examples of public-private partnerships that can be very beneficial for educational reform. Another questioner wanted to know about her Indonesian father, Lolo Soetoro. Soetoro-Ng replied that she never knew her father well because her parents divorced when she was young. In some ways, "my brother, who is older than me by nine years, got to know him better than I did, and Lolo figures much more prominently in my brother's book", she disclosed. Lolo Soetoro died in 1987 at 52. Maya Soetoro-Ng, who was home-schooled by her mother during early childhood, has dedicated her children's book to her elder daughter Suhaila as a way for the granddaughter to get to know her late grandmother, who was truly a remarkable person for all that she did in the short span of her life. Ann Dunham used to joke with her friends that her long black hair and jet-black eyes were evidence that she had Cherokee blood running through her family line. Given her independent mind, she may not have agreed with all of her son Barack's policies. However, like many of the attendees who came to be in the presence of Maya Soetoro-Ng, she would have been proud of his evolution into a worldly-wise president, albeit with some graying hair, which all US presidents display during their years in office. Dinesh Sharma is the author of Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia: The Making of a Global President, which was rated as one of the top 10 black history books for 2012. His next edited book, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Religion, is due to be published with Oxford Press. (Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
