The forty-fourth president of the United States and the first African American to serve in this role, Barack Obama II is the narrator of Dreams from My Father. Obama is the child of a cross-racial union between a Kenyan father and an American mother. Despite his accomplishments, Obama represents himself in his autobiography as a young man who struggled to claim an African-American identity and to come to terms with the legacy of his father, who left Obama when he was a toddler.

At the start of the memoir, Obama is a child who has little understanding of his racial identity and the impact of his father's absence from his life. As Obama grows older and moves in with his grandparents, he comes to understand that these two aspects of his life mark him as different from most people he encounters.

While Obama initially chooses to respond to these challenges by underperforming academically and abusing drugs, his experiences while a college student—including the significance of his relationships with other African Americans—eventually convince Obama that he can find meaning in his life and a keen sense of his own identity through service to others.