ANN DUNHAM: BIOGRAPHY - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

Stanley Ann Dunham was an American anthropologist specializing in Indonesian economic anthropology and rural development, the mother of former US President Barack Obama. She was born on November 29, 1942 in Wichita, Kansas, USA She died on November 7, 1995, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, where she spent most of her life.

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

Photograph by Stanley Ann Dunham

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

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

Childhood and adolescence

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

For many reasons, Dunham always stood out. First, she was distinguished by the male name by which she 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 a son, did not mind giving him his own name: Stanley. At this time, the feminist movement had not yet expressed itself. 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 just plain after their second divorce.

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

Years later she married an Indonesian and went to live in his country in the middle of the Vietnam War. The anticommunist policy based on the McCarthyite doctrine was just ending.

Despite her two divorces, she took on the hardships that being a single American mother would bring, and raised her children, Barack and Maya, while continuing her work.

Studies and academic life

Dunham studied at many educational institutions throughout his unstable but successful academic life. Between 1961 and 1962, she 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 earned a master of arts and in 1992, a doctorate in Indonesia.

She carried out several investigations focused on blacksmithing in Indonesia and on handicrafts, textiles and the role of women in artisan companies on the island of Java.

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

He became interested in the problem of poverty in rural Indonesian villages. To this end, she 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. Her 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: antecedents of a PPA proposal (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 on her research and Duke University Press.

Around the same time, Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry was published in Indonesia. The book is based on Dunham's original 1992 academic dissertation for her Ph.D.

His textile collection, Indonesian batik, was exhibited in different places in the United States. Ann Dunham's biography A Singular Woman was also published 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 tribute to her in The Ann Dunham Soetoro Endowment. Likewise, the Ann Dunham Soetoro Graduate Scholarship program was instituted, which are awarded to students linked to the East-West Center (EWC) in Honolulu.

The two marriages

From her first marriage to the Kenyan student, her son Barack was born. Although she was a woman who ran away from marriage, as her friends from college remember, Durham married for the first time at 18 years old.

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 soon after, her husband went on a Harvard scholarship.

She then had to take care of the child alone. Her husband suggested that after finishing her doctorate they go to live in Kenya, but Ann refused. Obama Sr. had already been married in Kenya and left his first wife.

The relationship fell apart, and after filing for a divorce in January 1964, Ann went back to college. Without work or money to support themselves, she and her son survived on food stamps provided by the government.

Ann Dunham's parents helped her take care of little Barry, as they called Barack. During that college time, 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 much thought, despite the fact that Indonesia was a very poor country. Her son was just six years old, and Jakarta was a city of uncovered streets and no electricity.

Second divorce

The young anthropologist became interested in Indonesian culture. Instead, her husband became Westernized by landing a job at an American oil company.

Lifestyles began to collide, as Lolo waited for Ann to arrange to accompany him to company events. She, on the contrary, was not interested in fashion or social events.

This caused the estrangement and subsequent breakup of the couple, and in 1980 they separated. Rumors spread that Lolo mistreated Durham, but Barack always denied it.

She was bored with her domestic life and devoted herself to teaching English at the United States Embassy. At the same time she was directly involved in the education of her son Barack Jr., to whom she gave English lessons in the morning. In the evenings, she made 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 (…)". He said that the values ​​she taught him were the foundation of his political activity.

When she was 10 years old, Ann sent Obama to Hawaii to live with her grandparents while he attended 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 Hawaii again. In 1992 she presented her doctoral thesis on peasant smithing in Indonesia.

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

References

1. S. Ann Dunham: Surviving Against the Odds: Indonesian Industry Village ”. Retrieved March 1, 2018 from dukeupress.edu
2. The mysterious mother. Consulted of Semana.com
3. Ann Dunham Biography. Consulted of biography.com
4. The untold story of Obama's mother. Consulted from independent.co.uk
5. Barack Obama's mother was secretly in contact with his estranged father during his entire childhood without his knowledge. Consulted from dailymail.co.uk
6. Dr Stanley Ann Dunham (1942-1995). Consulted from geni.com