Kamala Harris: Shyamala’s daughter

These are interesting times in American politics, especially with the fact that since President Lyndon B. Johnson in March of 1968, a sitting president drops out of the reelection campaign and hands the baton to his vice president, who isn’t just a woman but a woman with a number of firsts to her name. Is she about to add another first? We will know on November 5.

 

For more than four decades, Dan Morain has covered policy, politics, and justice-related issues in California, the state where there are many guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Twenty-seven years of those decades were at the Los Angeles Times and eight at The Sacramento Bee, where he was editorial page editor. His path crossed with major political figures in those decades. One extremely stand out figure he met is 59-year-old Kamala Harris, the first woman to become Vice President of the United States of America, the daughter of two immigrants in segregated California, the one whose bragging right as the first Black woman to become the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party is assured, and the one who could be America’s first female President, a feat that will mean beating a record the almighty Hillary Clinton smelled but couldn’t taste.

Morain has a book on Harris. It is called ‘Kamala’s Way: An American Life’. It tells us about her values, her priorities, her problem-solving capacity, her missteps, her risk-taking skills, and more.

It tells us things Kamala’s 2019 autobiography, ‘The Truths We Hold’, shies away from. Morain’s knowledge of Kamala from the start of her public life fills up relevant areas. The book unveils Harris in her near-entirety. It shows almost nothing about her is conventional. We see her in action off-camera.

The Kamala Harris on the pages of this book is the eldest daughter of Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a single mother, a disciplinarian, a breast cancer researcher originally from India who had her at 26 and exerted so much influence on her. Her mother came to America at the age of nineteen for better education. Her parents were together until Kamala turned five. From then on, her economist father, Donald Jasper Harris, originally from Jamaica became a scarce figure. She believes her parents’ marriage would have survived had they been more emotionally matured. Donald was Shyamala’s first boyfriend and husband. The divorce led to a contentious custody battle, which Shyamala eventually won but Donald got the right to see them for alternating weekends for sixty days in summer and he used the opportunity to take them to Jamaica to meet his family.

But, till date, Donald remains just a footnote to Kamala and he hardly features in her discussion about growing up. She is her mother’s daughter. And despite losing her mother in 2009, Shyamala remains in her daughter’s life, and Kamala is said to always share nuggets from the deceased while the one who is alive is dead to her world.

In her official biography during her time as California’s Attorney-General, she simply described herself as “the daughter of Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, a Tamilian breast cancer specialist who travelled to the United States from Chennai, India, to pursue her graduate studies at UC Berkeley”.

Morain holds our hands and leads us along as Kamala handles child molestation cases and homicides for the Alameda County District Attorney’s office. He lets us in when, as a 29-year-old, she begins a romantic relationship with Willie Brown, one-time Speaker of the California Assembly and the state’s most powerful man who proudly called himself the “Ayatollah of the Assembly”. The author doesn’t hide Brown’s married status at the time, just like he also tells us the life-changing nature of the relationship for Kamala.

Morain regales us with her tough battle to the US Senate, her day-one support for Barack Obama’s presidential journey, her friendship with one of Joe Biden’s children, her heavy blow on Biden in her quest for U.S. topmost job, their settlement of the matter and the behind-the-scenes deals on the way to the Vice President spot.

This books shows us Kamala is a foodie, who loves cooking and seeking out fancy restaurant to dine out. We also learn that as much as she has loyal supporters from her first political outing, she also has people who used to be super close who she now keeps at bay.

Morain feesds us on little details such as Kamala passing the California Bar exam at her second try and her middle name, Devi, which means mother goddess in Hindu, a name her mother chose to preserve her Hindu heritage. A culture that worships goddesses, Shyamala believed, produces strong women.

The book also tells of another little detail, especially about her time at Howard University, that historically-black college. Those who knew her there said they saw nothing that showed that she would be extra-successful in life, they didn’t see her becoming attorney-general or senator, and being vice president was certainly beyond their projection for this woman with Jamaican-cum-Indian roots who grew up in a state with many guns in many a wrong hand.

In the book, we see Kamala’s father’s radical bent and his rejection of popular economic theories and his tilt towards Marxism, a development which threatened his academic career at Stanford.

Besides her father and her mother, Morain also introduces us to Kamala’s sister, Maya, who is like her closest confidante on her political journey. We also meet others, including Kagan, someone who lived with the Harris family while running away from the turbulence of her own family.

We are not deprived of details about Kamala’s life with her husband, Douglas Craig Emhoff, also a lawyer, who she married in 2014 at about age 40, nine years after the end of her affair with Brown who was thirty years older.

For anyone wishing to have more insights into the life of Kamala Harris, Morain’s book, written in easy-to-access language, is a sure bet. It shows Kamala neither as a saint nor as a sinner. It simply dishes out the facts and leaves each reader to decide where to put her.

 

My final take: These are interesting times in American politics, especially with the fact that since President Lyndon B. Johnson in March of 1968, a sitting president, drops out of the reelection campaign and hands the baton to his vice president, who isn’t just a woman, but a woman with a number of firsts to her name. Is she about to add another first or will she not become America’s first female president as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump believes? We will know on November 5.

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