Roots: The Saga of an American Family

Born in the mid-1700s into a Ghanaian village, Kunta had been warned time after time of the dangers of the toubob, pale men who would kidnap and steal you away if you weren't careful. He'd never seen a toubob yet, but suddenly one morning following sentinel duty he is captured and packed aboard a ship to suffer months of immobility, indignities and revoltingly foul conditions. Little is he aware that his miseries are only just beginning.

First, a few issues: Following extensive genealogic, geographic and historical research, Haley wrote and published this book as a work of nonfiction. As far as I can tell, it is catalogued as nonfiction by most libraries, though dialogue, which takes up a significant portion of the book, is 100% show more imagined. This is problematic. I can think of no other work of nonfiction in which all conversations are completely invented and most events are pure speculation. In addition, though I won't go into detail here, scholars have discovered documents which contradict essential components of the lineage presented. I can understand Haley's motivation — unlike most descendants of enslaved people, he was able to trace his ancestry back to a real, identifiable individual, and that person's story deserved to be told.

Academic reservations aside, this is a phenomenal, well-written book, and even as "merely" fiction it would be enough. I was surprised early on by how much of the story takes place before Kunta's capture and descent into slavery, but in hindsight it was a genius move on Haley's part. In taking the time to flesh out Kunta's life and family from birth, as well as complex aspects of his culture regarding food, religion, farming, social norms and morality, the reader becomes invested in his humanity. The savage brutality of the white people he encounters while subsequently enslaved provides a stark and ironic contrast. Make no mistake, this book will break your heart. Over and over, just when it seems that Kunta's family's circumstances marginally improve, something always occurs that obliterates any semblance of security that had dared germinate. show less

Our vicious history of slavery & the toll it took on our country is handled so beautifully and delicately in this brilliant genealogical story of Alex Haley’s roots. Where he could have dwelt on the worst of slavery, Haley focused on family life. It made it more real, to really feel with these characters what slavery was like. I especially appreciated the postscripts to this edition telling how Haley uncovered his roots and how he wrote this Novel—particularly his voyage to recreate Kunte Kinte’s trip across the ocean. There is no doubt in my mind why this won the Pulitzer Prize & why it is essential reading. It’s just so beautifully written especially about Gambia. We learn so so much about the lives of Africans and I just show more loved diving so deeply into that history. show less

Roots is one of those books that's been around so long that I thought I knew a lot about it before I picked it up to read it. I had always assumed it was a novel, so I was very surprised to learn that the publisher markets it as non-fiction, and that the Library of Congress classifies it as non-fiction. Alex Haley called it "faction". Now that I've read it, my opinion hasn't changed. I would call it historical fiction. While the last 35 pages, where the author himself makes his appearance, is more memoir than fiction, those 35 pages represent less than 4% of the book's total. The rest of the book tells the story of Haley's ancestors embellished with thoughts, feelings, conversations, and detailed descriptions of their physical show more appearance. Although Haley does discuss his research process and some of his sources, he does not provide enough detail for other researchers to easily retrace his steps. These are characteristics of fiction, not non-fiction.

Even though I disagree with the way the book is marketed, I do like the way it's written. The characteristics that make it questionable as non-fiction are what give the book its emotional impact. Who can read it without being moved by the tragedy and dignity of Kunta Kinte's life, or Matilda's faith, or Tom's quiet strength, or the family's joy when freedom finally comes? It's one of the most influential books of the last quarter of the 20th century, and it continues to inspire Americans of all ethnicities to learn more about our own family histories and how our lives are shaped by those who came before us. show less

The concept of this book is ambitious, and intriguing. There are both advantages and disadvantages of this narrow approach to telling black America's history—what it lacks in breadth, it makes up for in depth. And vice-versa, it must be said. The conditions of slavery described here seem—to my imperfect understanding—to be a sort of median among the range of conditions that existed. But having some sense of the extremes makes for a much fuller understanding. That said, of course, it can hardly be the job of one single book to create that fuller understanding. And the depth of experience described here is really valuable.

I loved the book, and highly recommend it. But since I don't have much to say about that which hasn't already show more been said before, let me point out two things I wasn't wild about. The first is the technique Haley used to try and locate the narrative in time for his readers. Slave conversations full of names, locations, and other specific details did the expository work he wanted them to do, I suppose, but they were jarringly unrealistic. Especially in a book with so much rich detail, they really took me out of the narrative. I would much rather he simply named the years at the beginning of each chapter, or something along those lines. His characters could then have made vague allusions to events (as they surely would have in real life), rather than speaking about them as though they were teaching a survey course.

The second issue I have is more significant. Haley deals with the most recent generation or two in about as much space as it takes him to describe individual days and nights earlier in the book. It's not hard to imagine why he might do this. He may have just been ready to move on. Perhaps he thought his reader would be familiar enough with recent history so that his description wouldn't add much, and perhaps he thought recent history was simply less important than previous generations. Surely he also felt some (economic, professional, literary) pressure to get the thing done and to keep the length manageable. I have to wonder whether there was ever a discussion of making it a two-volume work, to allow more space for this part of the story, but I doubt it was seriously considered. I'm conscious of this lack, though, and it feels like a real one, partly because of Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns. She points out quite well, I think, the way this chapter of America's race history has been underestimated and undervalued. She also shows quite well how individual stories can be used to illuminate it. It's a shame, really, that Haley didn't do the same.

But again, I really liked this book, those two complaints notwithstanding. I'm also aware of the controversy surrounding Haley's claims about how factual the book is. I'm put off by that, certainly. But I never assumed the book was at all factual until I finally reached the end (where he makes that claim). So I'm judging it here on its merits as a work of historical fiction, and on that ground I think it stands pretty firmly. show less

Here clearly is a powerful read, full of emotions grabbing you by the throat, the heart, the soul, and that can only leave a mark as deep as that left by slavery upon history. The author, in fact, has here fictionalised the story of his own ancestors, embedding a family history within History itself.

The book, for sure, suffers from unbalance, as, out of 700 pages at least, roughly 400 alone are solely dedicated to Kunta Kinte, the key ancestor, torn away from his motherland (Gambia) to be sold as a slave in Virginia. At first, I found such structuring very clumsy; but then why not? Wasn't such uprooting the birth certificate of African-Americans people themselves, and so the period, in their past, deserving the most attention when it show more comes to such tearing apart? What is undeniable, thought, is how dramatic and compelling is the driving narrative.

The inhumanity of the slave trade is truly harrowing. Many, of course, will think here about the authors' depictions of rapes and violence, although I was particularly moved by auctions, exposing to the full how degrading such institution was not only for Black, but for Whites also (having truly lost their humanity within such system). And indeed, slavery as recounted here truly is incomprehensible, enraging, evil and vile, making it impossible to don't feel nauseous at times because of the cowardice, scorn, cruelty underpinning it all. And yet...

And yet, it's also a story of hope, bravery, and strength. 'Roots', after all, is more than about slavery per se. It's about the human will to survive, to remain dignified even when stripped of all humanity, and to refuse to be broken by a hostile society, generation after generation. A great book indeed. show less

Roots is a great novel regardless of the hoax genealogy. I assumed it was fiction anyway. It doesn't take away from an archetypal story of millions of black Americans. Haley can tell a powerful story while at the same time revealing history. For example having recently read The Internal Enemy, a history of slavery in Virginia from the 1770s to 1830s, the place and times come alive in personal color through Roots. Haley correctly emphasizes white fear of the "internal enemy". Indeed Roots is comparable to Schindler's List how it introduced and educated generations of Americans to a hard topic; and serves as a corrective to romanticized white literature about the antebellum south.

I read this book long, long ago: came across it while going through a book list here on Goodreads, and suddenly felt the urge to post a review.

Dear Kunta Kinte,

We are separated by time, space and culture. Throughout your largely tragic life, you would never have imagined that your story would ever be written, let alone read by a bookish teenager in far-away India, for whom slavery till that day was only a fact learned from school textbooks, mucked up to pass hated history exams. However, Mr. Kinte, you would be pleased to know that reading your story, penned by your descendant Mr. Alex Haley, changed his whole outlook. He suffered with you, Mr.Kinte, as you lay chained up in the dark and dank hold of the slaving vessel: he felt the show more searing pain as your foot was cut off as punishment for trying to run away: he choked back the bitter disappointment, along with you, when your master told you that the money you had saved up was not enough to buy you freedom (namely, that you were too poor to pay for what you were worth!)and he suffered the agony of separation with you as your daughter was sold off. And that teenager hung his head in shame as he thought of similar atrocities perperated by his forefathers in the name of caste.

Mr.Kinte, that day the boy took a vow never ever to insult the dignity of another human being; also not forget these crimes against humanity, lest they be repeated.

Mr.Kinte, I am that boy. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the lessons your story taught me.

Yours sincerely,
Nandakishore Varma. show less