Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 to a white mother and a black father who had met in Russian class at the University of Hawaii. He was an island boy most of his first 18 years, a pudgy kid called Barry who lived in a modest apartment with his grandparents.
His father, also named Barack Obama, was a scholarship student from Kenya. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was an 18-year-old from Kansas who went on to become an anthropologist and helped set up loans for poor people to start businesses in Indonesia.
Their marriage didn't last long. When Barry was 6, he moved to Indonesia, the homeland of his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, another university student his mother met in Hawaii. Obama was 9 when his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, was born. She now teaches history in a private girls high school in Honolulu.
Obama's mother sent him back to the islands after four years in Indonesia to live with her parents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham. His grandfather was a furniture salesman and his grandmother was Bank of Hawaii's first female bank vice president.
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