Roots (1976)

Before I read this book, years ago, I had no idea of how cruel and heartless we humans can be.

This book and Animal Farm had great impact on my life. ( )

I'm so glad that I read this. I'm not sure how much of the story is true, but I'd like to believe it all is.

I love history when it tells a story. Endless facts and figures and dates are boring and tedious, which is exactly what "Roots" isn't. Almost from the first page, I felt that the people being described were REAL people, not characters someone has created out of nothing. The story of Kunta Kinte and his descendants really touched me in their determination to keep not only Kunta's memory alive, but to make sure that every single member of their family knew who they were. That's something that I don't really think a lot of people think or even care about these days. I know I myself never really thought about it, but I am now.

I also really loved Haley's writing style, which was simple and honest, without trying to overemphasize the horrors that his ancestors must have endured. I'm glad that he didn't make the atrocities overbearing, because that would have made the story unbelievable to some, even if every word is true. His method of "tracking" a particular family member was a bit shocking at the first major shift, but after reading the rest of the story, it only makes sense; this is as much a tribute to Kunta as it is a family history, but Kunta can only take us so far.

It also struck me in the segue between Kunta's and Kizzy's story the stark reality that in the life of a slave, nothing was certain. From day to day, even minute to minute, the whim of someone else can change the entire course of a life. Kizzy was removed from Kunta's life abruptly, and just like his own parents, he was cursed with the fact that he never knew what happened to her. That has got to be the hardest thing a parent can endure, and it was so commonplace that it sickens me.

It's so easy to forget the terrible things that we can do to each other. So I'm glad that Haley decided to put into print his and his family's history. ( )

Read it as a teen-ager, I loved it, though I am sure at the time I missed a lot of the politics: wonder whether it is now time to read the original edition ( )

Roots by Alex Haley is the story of six generations of African-Americans. It starts with Kunta Kinte, an African man who is captured by slavers, and ends with the author himself. Though the book is fiction, it’s based on the real genealogy of the author. There has been some controversy about the fact part of this story, especially the Africa part. I just call it a fictional story based on true facts. Then it doesn’t matter which parts are not correct, because it’s fictional, but it still gives credit to the research done and the fact that a lot of it is in fact true.

I have to say, this book disappointed me. It was interesting, but not as good as I was expecting. After my father (who is not a reader at all) recognized the title and raved about the mini-series, and all of the things I'd heard about it, I was expecting more. For a book that's about 6 generations, it sure seems to be mostly about one. Almost 400 pages of the book are about Kunta, the other generations are squeezed into the remaining 250 or so pages. I don't mind that Haley wanted to tell Kunta's story, but don't advertise it as a book about six generations if you're going to squeeze five of them in 200 pages! Just write a book about Kunta, and maybe tell us in an afterword how he's related? Or give the other generations their own book - a sort of sequel to Kunta's story. Or even a series if you really want to, one book per generation. Because in the end, this book felt hugely out of balance – long, sometimes overly descriptive of Kunta’s life, and a much faster paced story for the next two generations, while the rest of the generations are more sketches than anything else. I think that's my greatest problem with Roots, no matter how well written it is.

Don’t get me wrong, Roots is a well written book. Although the Africa part of Kunta’s story was a bit too drawn out for my taste – it got repetitive a lot – it did draw me into the story. Sometimes there was a bit of a didactic feel to the writing, but the whole story gives a full picture of the life slaves led – and for that alone this book is worth reading. The contrast between Kunta’s life in Africa and his captured life is large, horrifying, and difficult to read at times. You had better have a strong stomach in order to read about the sea journey Kunta undertakes, or some of the other atrocities he and his descendants underwent.

What one of the largest teaching moments was for me in this book was the hierarchy between the slaves. Kunta is looked down upon as being African and I know, also from other books, that house slaves often considered themselves better than field slaves. It’s both funny and sad how oppressed people divide themselves with their own prejudice, instead of banding together. The fear of the white people towards their slaves was also poignant. The constant threat of an uprising, the frankly ridiculous responses of the slave holders at times, and the slaves playing dumb to avoid punishment. It all turns into a vicious circle that held slavery together for far longer than it should have.

In the end, there were parts of this book I would have liked to have seen shorter, and parts that I would have liked to see more of. But what my genealogy heart really wants to know is where Haley got all the information from – and then I’m talking relationship information of the primary line he follows throughout the book. The book is based on oral history, and in the last chapters Haley tells a little of the research he did, but it’s never quite clear if he managed to corroborate all the oral family history with sources. Leaving the controversy of the African ancestor out of the picture, it’s a miracle that he seems to know every father of the children. I don’t know a lot about African-American ancestor research, but the little I do know indicates that while mothers names were written down, fathers names are often missing. So did he take educated guesses, did he build a case for each father based on indirect evidence, did he actually find evidence for the fathers, or did he just make the fathers up (some or all of them) to make a story? A factual family tree based on sources, marked with which names were corroborated through research and which were taken from oral history alone, would have been appreciated. But I do realize Roots is primarily a fiction book, giving a face to all of the history African-Americans share, that of slavery. And despite its flaws, Roots is a book that tells a story worth telling. ( )

The teenage self who first read this book would have given it five stars without hesitation. The conception is brilliant. I don't think there's a better way to really absorb history, and really inspire people to dig deeper, than what this purported to do. To really have you come face to face with history by telling the story of one family, especially in fictional narrative form, where people of the past can be brought vividly to mind as people who bled and sweated and struggled. And Alex Haley had claimed not to be just writing a novel, but telling the story of his family--who he claimed he had traced back to its roots in Africa where his ancestor Kunta Kinte, in what is today Gambia, had been kidnapped into slavery and brought to America. There was nothing quite like that when it was published in 1976, and the miniseries based upon it was a landmark in American television.

But since publication, the book has drawn controversy. First, this was marketed--and is still widely regarded--as factual history, even if told in fictional form. But geneologists who retraced Haley's footsteps found that Haley's pre-Civil War genealogy is not, as he had claimed, substantiated by public records. And the book hangs precisely on the pre-Civil war family--838 of Roots' 888 pages dealt with events from Kunta Kinte's birth in Africa in 1750 to the end of the American Civil War in 1865. Just google Roots and "controversy" or "criticism" and you can read the details of the dispute over the book's historicity yourself. The "griot" Haley supposedly found linking him to an African heritage was no griot, and was reportedly pressured and coached into telling Haley what he wanted to hear. And as a Village Voice article by Philip Nobile detailed, Haley's own notes reveal that Kunta Kinte and Roots is largely a work of Haley's imagination.

All right then, what we're dealing with is a novel. Just Haley's attempts to put it over as history admittedly tarnishes the book for me now, but there's another problem. The 30 Anniversary edition I looked through alluded to the other major issue that has come up since publication: plagiarism. As part of a court settlement, Haley admitted to lifting passages from Harold Courlander's The African. The 30 anniversary edition makes it sound like it was only a few paragraphs, but I've read the court papers charged over 80 different passages were involved. And I can't say I buy Haley's explanation that the work of other researchers made it undifferentiated and unsourced among Haley's notes from where he inadvertently copied it. What was material from a novel doing in research notes? There was also a charge that Haley plagiarized Margaret Walker Alexander's novel, Jubilee--but those charges were dismissed by the court as unsubstantiated. On the other hand, one commentator who actually bothered to read Courlander's The African said he found no real similarities in plot or character with Roots. Maybe so, I haven't read The African. So, giving Haley the benefit of the doubt about the plagiarism being substantial, is Roots still worth reading as a novel in the tradition of Michener and Rutherfurd? I think so, but I admit knowing what I do, the book has slipped quite far down in my esteem. ( )