REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
It's not the kind of line you usually read in a presidential memoir.
(Soundbite of Barack Obama reading from "Dreams From My Father")
President-elect BARACK OBAMA: Winter came and the city turned monochrome - black trees against gray sky above white earth. Night now fell in mid-afternoon.
ROBERTS: That, of course, is Barack Obama, the writer in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father." He wrote the book in 1995, well before his presidential campaign. Since then, he's published one other book. Both have been bestsellers. So, Mr. Obama never quit his day job, but the man can write and what might that mean for his term in the Oval Office? To find out, we have assembled a panel of literary pundits - authors who have all read his memoir. Here they are in their own words.
Dr. AZAR NAFISI (Iranian Academic and Writer): My name is Azar Nafisi. I come from Iran. I'm a new U.S. citizen, and I know myself mainly as a writer and a teacher.
Mr. RICK MOODY (Author, "The Ice Storm"): My name's Rick Moody. I'm a novelist. I'm the author of "The Ice Storm."
Ms. EDWIDGE DANTICAT (Author, "Brother, I'm Dying"): My name is Edwidge Danticat. and I'm a writer. And my most recent book is a memoir called "Brother, I'm Dying."
Dr. NAFISI: The essence of a writer is curiosity.
Mr. MOODY: Many presidents past have published books. And in fact, from "Profiles of Courage" on, it's become sort of something that presidential candidates want to do and indeed, have to do. However, in Obama's case, he's a completely different order of writer.
Ms. DANTICAT: I was right in the middle of starting my own memoir and was reading many, many memoirs, and this one, I just absolutely loved because it involved this incredible journey back to Kenya, to this family. And it gave voice to these people in a way that I thought was so distinct.
(Soundbite of "Dreams From My Father")
President-elect OBAMA: After a long pause, Granny looked at me and smiled. Hello, she said. Mosawa, I said. Our mutual vocabulary exhausted, we stared ruefully down at the dirt until Alma(ph) finally returned. And Granny then turned to Alma and said, in a tone I could understand, that it pained her not to be able to speak to the son of her son. Tell her I'd like to learn Luo, but it's hard to find the time in the States, I said. Tell her how busy I am. She understands that, Alma said. But she also says that a man could never be too busy to know his own people.
(Soundbite of music)
Dr. NAFISI: Every book is a search and that is the journey he's on, and it is a search for an unknown, but also the essence of a good writer is to turn that search both into something very personal, which can have universal connotations. That is what a memoir should be.
Mr. MOODY: Perhaps we're lucky Obama has written a memoir of his early life prior to being in public office. This really is a book where he digs in.
(Soundbite of "Dreams From My Father")
President-elect OBAMA: I was engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant.
Ms. DANTICAT: Well, I think what I would gather from this in link to his word of governance is honesty. I mean, it's extraordinarily honest, and perhaps he wouldn't write in the same way, now.
(Soundbite of "Dreams From My Father")
President-elect OBAMA: I discovered that it didn't make any difference whether you smoked reefer in the white classmate's sparkling new van, or in the dorm room with some brother you'd met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school and now spent most of their time looking for an excuse to brawl. Nobody asked you whether your father was a fat cat executive who cheated on his wife, or some laid-off Joe who slapped you around whenever he bothered to come home. You might just be bored or alone. Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection.
Mr. MOODY: It's impossible to say, of course, how he's going to govern. However, what struck me as really relevant about reading his writing is his unvarnished devotion to speaking the truth. That's the president that I'd hope that we'd see - the one who's willing to say, this is where we really are, and let's start governing with the truth of our situation, rather than some pie-in-the-sky version.
Dr. NAFISI: What I would expect of him is as a writer, as a person who knows how much having a vision and thinking poetically about life is a way of revealing life and changing life. My expectation of him is to not only promise us what we are imagining, but to actualize it. So, he should do what seems impossible.
ROBERTS: That was author Azar Nafisi with fellow writers Rick Moody and Edwidge Danticat. They spoke with my colleague, Jacki Lyden.