Obama's half-brother announces memoirs

Mark Obama Ndesandjo, the half-brother of US President Barack Obama, announced his upcoming memoirs at a news conference held at the Graduates Art Fair in the Guangdong provincial capital on Thursday morning.

Cultures: My Odyssey of Self-Discovery will be available for global distribution from Feb 27, 2014, and is published by Ndesandjo with the imprimatur of the Mark Obama Ndesandjo Foundation Ltd, he said.

In the book, Ndesandjo reveals the mixed race origins of himself and his half-brother Obama, who share a Kenyan father but have different white American mothers. Ndesandjo also writes of his journey of self-discovery across three cultures - Kenyan, American and Chinese. The businessman and musician eventually realized his dream to use music to reach orphans in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, starting from the first week he arrived in Shenzhen 12 years ago.

The biographical essays in Cultures detail Ndesandjo's life from his birth in Kenya to losing himself in America then finding himself in China. He eloquently describes his mother Ruth and Barack Obama Sr., portraying Obama Sr. as a charming force of nature who was then a graduate student at Harvard, who met Ruth just a few years after Barack Obama was conceived in Hawaii. Ruth eventually remarried, and it was the author's stepfather who introduced Ndesandjo to his love of music.

The memoir features not only the US first family, including Ndesandjo's first meeting with Barack Obama in Kenya 20 years ago, but also a brutally honest look at the author's past. These include life-changing moments and poignant reflections of one man's search for his true purpose. Rare family photos add to the book's personal nature.

This is the second book for Ndesandjo after his novel Nairobi to Shenzhen. He has lived in China since 2002 and consults around the world.

Ndesandjo has a BSc in Physics from Brown University, an MSc in Physics from Stanford University, an executive MBA from Emory University, is an accomplished Chinese calligrapher and advanced Mandarin speaker and writer. He has regularly volunteered piano lessons to orphans around Shenzhen since 2002，China appointed him volunteer image ambassador in 2009 and Special Olympics image ambassador in 2011.

He established a foundation in 2013 to promote cultural exchanges between Africa, Asia and America. His current projects include a book of his translations of work by Late Tang Dynasty poet Li Shangyin, whom he calls "China's Kafka in love".

The Graduates Art Fair is organized by Huayi Auction House, one of the largest Chinese art auction companies. The 2013 fair showcases 1,963 works of art from 799 young graduate artists from more than 100 universities and colleges around China, and covers an exhibition area of 6,000 square meters.