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At twenty-two, divorced, with a mixed-race child, people looked at Stanley Ann Dunham and whispered: poor girl. She heard something quite different: A free woman. Her marriage to Barack Obama Sr.—brilliant, charismatic, complex—had ended quickly. He had left for Harvard, then for Kenya. Ann had stayed behind, alone with a toddler, in a country where interracial marriage was still illegal in twenty-two states. The labels came quickly. Divorced.

At twenty-two, divorced, with a mixed-race child, people looked at Stanley Ann Dunham and whispered: poor girl. She heard something quite different: A free woman. Her marriage to Barack Obama…
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