Letters written by former U.S. President Barack Obama in the 1980s to his college girlfriend are made public by a private research university in the United States. (Photo credit: Emory University)
NEW YORK, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Letters written by former U.S. President Barack Obama in the 1980s to his college girlfriend were made public on Thursday by a private research university, revealing a young man grappling with his place in the world.
The nine full letters, sent by young Obama to Alexandra McNear, are now part of the collection of the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library at Emory University in metropolitan Atlanta, the southeastern U.S. state of Georgia, according to an article titled "Love, Barack" by Laura Douglas-Brown, posted Thursday on the Emory's website.
The 30 pages of letters are available to scholars and students by appointment, and there will be an opportunity to view facsimiles of the letters on Friday, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Woodruff Commons of the Rose Library, it said.
Beautifully composed, the letters "reveal the search of a young man for meaning and identity," Rosemary Magee, Rose Library director was quoted as saying. "While intimate in a philosophical way, they reflect primarily a college student coming to terms with himself and others."
"In fact, they show the same kind of yearnings and issues that our own students face - and that students everywhere encounter," Magee said. "Thus they will serve as sources of both inspiration and reassurance to people of all ages and backgrounds."
Spanning 1982 to 1984, the letters were written after Obama, who began his college career at California's Occidental College, transferred to Columbia University in New York City.
In page after page of neat script -- written on lined yellow paper, typing paper, pages torn from spiral notebooks and even an index card -- the future president poured out his thoughts and feelings to McNear, a fellow student from Occidental to whom he had grown even closer when she spent the summer of 1982 in New York.
The nine letters in Emory's collection pick up on Sept. 26, 1982, when both were back in classes at their respective schools on opposite coasts, and continued through April 14, 1984, when their romance has cooled to friendship and Obama has finished college and was working at Business International, "with everyone slapping my back" but no passion for the job.
