This was all very encouraging, but Haley had never heard of the Gambia River. No, Ebou Manga said, he did not speak Mandinka; his tongue was Wolof. He said he would be more than glad to introduce Haley to Gambians, in Africa, who spoke Mandinka. A few days later, both men flew off to The Gambia. They also told him of. Throughout the whole of black Africa such oral chronicles had been handed down since the time of the ancient forefathers.
Finally, they promised that by the time he returned to The Gambia they would have found one of these griots to assist him in his search. Some weeks later, a letter came to Haley in New York informing him that a griot had been found.
The safari took him to the village of Juffure, where the griot lived, and where, as he was to learn, his own ancestor, Kunta Kinte, had been born and raised. The griot said that the Kinte clan had begun in the country called Old Mali. Then the Kinte men traditionally were blacksmiths. In time, one branch of the clan moved into the country called Mauretania; and it was from Mauretania that one son of this clan, whose name was Kairaba Kunta Kinte—a marabout , or holy man of the Moslem faith—journeyed down into the country called The Gambia.
And by her he begot two sons, whose names were Janneh and Saloum. Then he took a second wife; her name was Yaisa. And by Yaisa, he begot a son named Omoro. Those three sons grew up in Juffure until they became of age. The youngest son, Omoro, stayed on in Juffure village until he had thirty rains—years—of age, then he took as his wife a Mandinka maiden named Binta Kebba.
And by Binta Kebba, roughly between the years and , Omoro Kinte begat four sons, whose names were, in order of their birth, Kunta, Lamin, Suwadu, and Madi. Now after he [the griot ] had just named those four sons, again he appended a detail, and the interpreter translated—. I sat as if I were carved of stone. My blood seemed to have congealed. Not many voyages of ancestral discovery can have been more amazing.
He now had to follow the trail of his ancestor to the New World. When, exactly, had Kunta Kinte been taken into slavery? Now, when did the Lord Ligonier reach Annapolis?
Haley thought he knew where he could find the answer. Excited by the riches he had just mined from the old records in London, he boarded the first plane to New York, shuttled to Washington, D. Confirmation: the Lord Ligonier had cleared customs at Annapolis on September 29, And its cargo? He rented a car, sped to Annapolis, dashed into the Maryland Hall of Records, and asked to see any local newspaper that had been published around the first week of October, He was given a microfilm roll of the Maryland Gazette.
In the ship Lord Ligonier , Capt. Davies, from the River Gambia, in Africa, and to be sold by the subscribers, in Annapolis, for cash, or good bills of exchange on Wednesday the 7th of October next. The said ship will take tobacco to London on liberty at 6s. Sterling per ton. John Quincy Adams, who was born on July 11, , was then two months old.
Aye, and there must be dancing Schools and Boarding Schools and all that, or else, you know, we shall not give them polite Educations, and they wil better not have been born you know than not have polite Educations.
Many years later, he dealt a blow against slavery when he defended a group of slaves who had seized control of the ship—the Amistad—that was transporting them to the Americas. To that evidence he has added a fair amount of conjecture and imagination by inventing settings, incidents, characters, and conversations. The result reads a little like historical fiction, except for a straight account, toward the end of the book, of how and why he pursued the factual threads from which the story is woven.
Shelves: biography , fiction , novels , history , memoir , non-fiction , popular-fiction , ultimate-reading-list , historical-fiction. 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 h The teenage self who first read this book would have given it five stars without hesitation.
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 , 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 of Roots ' pages dealt with events from Kunta Kinte's birth in Africa in to the end of the American Civil War in 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. 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. Shelves: re-visit , spring , racism , slaves , winter , rape , published , civil-war-american. Aug 05, Horace Derwent rated it it was amazing. Jul 04, Shirley Revill rated it it was amazing Shelves: historical-fiction , thought-provoking , made-me-cry.
I read this book some time ago and I also watched the television series. One of those books that really makes you think about the lives that some people endured. This book and the television series had me in tears. Very well written and very highly recommended.
Jun 01, Matt rated it it was amazing Shelves: audiobook. Alex Haley's novel is more than just a piece of award-winning literature, but a glimpse into the soul of America's lifeblood, even though it touches on areas that many would likely wish to see forgotten.
In the opening portion of the novel, Haley introduces the reader to the small villages of Gambia, where one Kunta Kinte is born and raised. Kunta explores a life of simplicity but also relative complexity, as he grows up learning the ways of his people, always warned about the dangers of the whi Alex Haley's novel is more than just a piece of award-winning literature, but a glimpse into the soul of America's lifeblood, even though it touches on areas that many would likely wish to see forgotten.
Kunta explores a life of simplicity but also relative complexity, as he grows up learning the ways of his people, always warned about the dangers of the white man lurking in the shadows.
As he develops a better understanding of his culture and the plight of becoming a man, Kunta fosters a strong sense of self. While foraging in the forest one day, he is captured and dragged aboard a slave ship, destined for the American colonies. It is here that Haley takes the story in its heart-wrenching direction, complete with the horrors of slavery and their treatment. As Kunta acclimates himself to life as a slave as best as one can , he learns that his horrors are only beginning.
After trying to escape, he is punished severely and sent to live on another plantation, where he is able to develop more of a sense of self, while still refusing to adopt the 'American' slave mentality. Slowly, he is acclimated into the lifestyle of a slave and is able to advance on the plantation, to the point of marrying and having a child of his own. Young Kizzy learns of her African ancestry from her father, though does not have the same passion, even with his blood coursing through her veins.
As Kizzy grows, she learns to love the African side of her heritage, though is also prone to living the life in America. A gamble of her own sees her punished and shipped to a new plantation, where she is never to see her father again. That is soon the least of her worries, as more horrors befall Kizzy and she soon has a son, young George, the third Kinte generation living in slavery.
Raising her son as best she can while dealing with a less than pleasant slave owner, Kizzy tries to instil some of the same values she learned from Kunta. As he grows, George, too, develops his place on the plantation and becomes a valuable asset to his master.
It is this relationship and the historical background told through the narrative that forges some of the most curious aspects of Haley's story, not to be lost in the transition from Kunta to Kizzy and now to George and the family he raises. The subsequent four generations spin their stories in the latter portion of the book, with each collection of slaves and eventually freed blacks holding onto the oral history Kunta Kinte brought with him.
Published at a time when America had to come to terms with its past to look ahead into the future, Haley strikes a necessary nerve as he explores a history only mentioned in passing on pages of school history books. A must-read for all readers, no matter their personal interests. The book's release coincided with America's bicentennial, though Haley refuses to admit there is anything intentional there. The story, no matter when it was told, shaped America and the way slavery was seen, through the eyes of those who lived in chains.
While the book served as the foundation to the topic in the late s, it was the creation into a television phenomena that saw many more people learn truths they never wanted to discover. Haley paints a dour view of the slave trade and lifestyle, but does so with supported truths and a vivid narrative that tells a more complete story than many history texts might.
Beginning well before any delivery to the shores of America, Haley facilitates a bond with Kunta Kinte before pushing the narrative into the darker and more sinister aspects of race relations and the acceptance of the slave trade and use of slaves on plantations across the colonial region. Using historical happenings as a backdrop, the reader can see the progression of the trade and how there was surely a clash between belief systems of the slaves themselves.
Kunta's strong Islamic beliefs do not coincide with the colonialisation of many slaves on the plantations, from their speech to their Christian beliefs and even onto their acceptance of the double standard as it relates to treatment by young whites. While Haley does touch on many of these areas, he does not downplay anything nor does he try to offer a one-sided approach that tries to paint blacks as solely victims.
Spanning seven generations, the latter chapters pull Haley into the story's narrative, forcing the reader to realise that this is not solely a piece of fiction. Kunta Kinte was, presumably, the four-time great-grandfather of the author and the stories spun within this book are oral recountings of lives lived. Complete with language and phraseology of the times, the story comes to life on so many levels, leaving the reader onto to choose which character they will affix themselves to through the journey.
This is a seminal piece of literature that should not be left to gather dust on the shelf. That it took me so long to find and read it is shameful on my part. Kudos, Mr. Haley for opening my eyes to something about which I always knew happened, but chose not to explore. You have captivated me and the world with this novel and surely helped shape many acquire a better understanding of slavery in the United States.
He said, "Most of us feel it's highly unlikely that Alex actually found the village whence his ancestors sprang. It was an important event because it captured everyone's imagination.
I think it significantly affected my reading of Roots having come to it with the knowledge that Haley had been accused of plagiarism by Harold Courlander "The African" and Margaret Walker Alexander "Jubilee". While nothing can undermine the horrors experienced by slaves during this period, there was some question in my mind about the integrity of the author and thus, his ability to accurately portray these truths, even within the framework of fiction.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny the s I think it significantly affected my reading of Roots having come to it with the knowledge that Haley had been accused of plagiarism by Harold Courlander "The African" and Margaret Walker Alexander "Jubilee". Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny the sheer stomach churning, tear inducing brutality and barbarity with which these men and women were treated.
There are passages within the novel, particularly during Kunta Kinte's sea travel to America, that made me feel physically sick and mentally and emotionally overwhelmed. These things shouldn't even be written for people to have to read, never mind have actually happened.
Happened over and over again. If there is anything that fiction can do, sometimes better than pure factual history, is invite the reader to see more clearly and feel more deeply.
I think the new tv series will show this in a truly powerful fashion. Yet that is the conundrum of this work- Haley seems to excellently illustrate this life, this man Kunte Kinte, yet we also know he stole from other authors.
I don't know enough about the period, or the lives of slaves, to really evaluate, and that is something I will have to rectify. Perhaps that is compliment enough to the author, that I now need to know more and will be active in looking for more information, that I feel like I need a greater understanding. Mar 12, Gina rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites , africa , nonfiction , culture-and-traditions , history , classics , united-states , memoirs-biographies-autobiographies.
I read this book when it first came out, many years ago. It touched me deeply and I waited patiently for each episode of the t. You cannot read this book, nor see the images, without becoming overwhelmed with emotion. It's one thing to read about what was done to people; it's another thing to see it played out in front of you. Even though it's acting, you will feel every tear that is shed, every whip that lands, every family that is separated The book is the result of the late Alex Haley's journey to discover his "roots".
The story leads him back to - and the book begins in - , in the village of Juffre in Gambia, West Africa, with the birth of a baby boy. The name Kunta Kinte resounds through all of the generations that follow him, including Alex. I cannot say much about this book that hasn't already been said. It should be required reading in the schools. We must never forget what mankind has done to mankind. There aren't many books that I can quote decades after reading them, but this is one. It deserves to be savored and read.
Apr 07, Jennifer rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: everyone. Shelves: all-time-favorites. This is probably the book that started my historical fiction fixation. I love how it brings history to life.
The characters are real and you can sympathize with their situations -- particularly Kunta Kinte's. It made the horrible practice of slavery real and how it dehumanizing it was. I think that reading it at a young age made me into a more compassionate person. I also liked how the book explained Kunta's African heritage. This is a beautifully woven book that spans many generations from the mid's through 's.
Hear me out. Undeniably Alex Haley's ethnographic research is stupendous, even if the majority of this book is fictionalised history. In a vacuum this book would have been a five-star read, easily and sans hesitation. Slightly embellished it may be, but Haley's story is of his own family's history, traced back from the man himself to his ancestor born in and later kidnapped and sold into slavery and brought to America.
There are, however, two major controversies which challenge the novel's hi Hear me out. There are, however, two major controversies which challenge the novel's historicity: the marketing of the book as factual history albeit told in a fictionalised format , and plagiarism. Roots was originally described as fiction, yet sold in the non-fiction section of bookstores and continues to be shelved as non-fiction even today.
The final chapter details Haley's apparent research into written record which would substantiate his story, primarily through libraries and archives. Haley writes: To the best of my knowledge and of my effort, every lineage statement within Roots is from either my African or American families' carefully preserved oral history, much of which I have been able conventionally to corroborate with documents. Those documents, along with the myriad textural details of what were contemporary indigenous lifestyles, cultural history, and such that give Roots flesh have come from years of intensive research in fifty-odd libraries, archives, and other repositories on three continents.
However, nearly every element of that paragraph has been challenged. Geneologists retracing Haley's footsteps found that his pre-Civil War genealogy is not despite his claims substantiated by public record, and is in fact contradicted.
Considering that the overwhelming majority of the book covers events occurring from to , this is a significant issue. Haley himself called the novel "fiction," and acknowledged that the bulk of the dialogue and specific incidents had been his own invention.
He also claimed however that the depiction of Kunta Kinte's circumstances, as well as the portrayal of slaves in Virginia and North Carolina, were factual and confirmed by historical documentation. Neither of those claims is entirely accurate. According to Haley, the family's history had been traced back to Kunta Kinte, a man born in in the village of Juffure in what is now known as the Gambia.
Haley stated that Kunta Kinte had been kidnapped by slave traders as a young adult and brought on a ship to America, where he was then sold into slavery. However, Haley's only source for this family history was Kebba Kanga Fofana, a griot[1] in the village of Juffure. Haley claimed that Fofana had told him, About the time the king's soldiers came, the eldest of these four sons, Kunta, went away from this village to chop wood and was never seen again.
Fofana's reliability swiftly came into question, and it was revealed that not only did Fofana change important details of the story upon repeated tellings but he also was not a genuine griot, only claiming to be. In fact, when historians focusing on the West African slave trade dug further, they found that genuine griots in the Gambia could not provide detailed or accurate information prior to the midth century It was discovered that Haley had told his story to so many people while apparently searching for documentation that his version of history had become assimilated into Gambian oral tradition, i.
The actual Juffure, however, was scarcely two miles' distance from James Island, a major trading outpost established in by the Royal Africa Company; the King of Barra had allowed the establishment on the condition that none of his subjects which included residents of Juffure could be purchased without his permission.
Haley later admitted that he had picked the year "the time the king's soldiers came" to match up with his American research. Haley had apparently only searched for references to Toby in documents dated after a clear example of confirmation bias. Toby had also almost certainly died before , eight years before Haley claimed Toby's daughter had been born. The Waller family did not have a cook named Bell, and in fact Dr.
Waller did not own his own plantation; he lived on his brother's property. Even if Toby had had a daughter, no records mentioned her, much less that her name was Kizzy; in fact there were no records of anyone named Kizzy at all. Relying solely on his family's oral tradition to span that near-century, Haley settled on a narrative that did and does not align with actual documented history.
Despite Haley's claim that Tom Lea had been born into a poor family, he actually grew up on a wealthy plantation household; regardless, there were no records of a woman named Kizzy or her son George amongst Tom Lea's slaves, nor of a man named George who married a woman named Matilda. Haley claimed that Tom Lea had encountered financial difficulty in the s, but Tom Lea had died sometime during the winter of or , meaning his financial circumstances must have been dire indeed.
Had George really been sent to England, he would have become a free man and presumably British citizen. Haley was also required to acknowledge that certain passages within his novel had been copied, at times almost verbatim, from Courlander's. Courlander claimed that Haley had copied 81 distinct passages from his novel. His pre-trial memorandum discussing copyright infringement stated: Defendant Haley had access to and substantially copied from The African.
Without The African , Roots would have been a very different and less successful novel, and indeed it is doubtful that Mr.
Haley could have written Roots without The African. Haley copied language, thoughts, attitudes, incidents, situations, plot and character. The lawsuit did not actually allege that The African 's plot had been copied in its entirety; the two novels differed significantly. Although Haley maintained throughout the trial that he had not even heard of Courlander's novel until the year after his own had been published, selections from The African were found stapled to a manuscript page from Roots.
The copying was deemed to be " significant and extensive. This case was dismissed as unsubstantiated after the court compared the contents of the two and found " no actionable similarities exist between the works. I did it. I finished this book at 2. I have seen both the mini series of Roots so I knew the story already. What I found the hardest bits to real was the slaves language so that took me ages to read.
For over pages we get to grow with Kunta Kinte we hear him being born as his father Omoro pacing outside the hut. We are with Kunta as he is looked after the elderly woman while his parents work. As he gets older he gets more responsibil I did it. As he gets older he gets more responsibilities like looking after the goats and we go with him to his lessons in becoming a man and loosing the foreskin off his foto olch.
He has desires of travel to other villages and wanting to study. We are with him when after guarding the village one night he goes looking for wood to make a drum and he gets caught by slave traders, he is chained and branded and put on a ship with many, many others, without the ability to move or go to the loo.
We are with him through sickness and pain and stench for 4 months while they sail across the world to America. There he is sold and taken to a plantation in which he runs away 3 times and to stop him they cut off half his foot. He is 16 years old, we watch him get older and he is a quick learner of the English language.
He jumps the broom with Bell and they have a daughter Kizzy. Kunta teaches Kizzy about his village, his language and his ways. One day when Kizzy is a teenager she makes a bad decision and is caught out so the Massa sells her. Which means we go with her, so we never find out anymore about Kunta and Bell, we don't see his heartbreak we don't know how they dealt with that pain of never seeing there Daughter again, and it is the hardest thing.
Kizzy is raped by her new Massa and has a son called George and because of his love for the birds they trained up to fight his nickname became Chicken George he married Matlida and they had 8 children. George was a way a lot with the Massa fighting roosters so Kizzy was a great help with her grandchildren.
This is a page book and a lot happened I did find it hard to not no anything else about Kunta but I guess that plays an important part of the story because they weren't a free people the family was split up and sent in all directions.
When George is sold because the Massa made a terrible gamble he is sent to England for 4 years and in that time Matilda never heard from her husband and her and the children are sold on again during those four years. You never knew if you would hear from them again.
So often through this book was the talk of freedom and that would be an up and down ride for them all and the reader too. Another think I noticed was the slaves were accused of being lazy and yet they were the ones doing all the work and not getting paid, the White man was lazy and getting all the money because of the slaves hard work.
It is wrong the way we treat people because of their colour everyone deserves to be treated with respect and kindness and all should be given a chance to prove themselves. This is a heart-breaking story and I hope whoever reads it will have their heart softened and take action to treat all with kindness and acceptance. I can see why God blessed the African Americans with beautiful voices because all they had been through Apr 05, Adira rated it really liked it Shelves: adult-fiction , books-about-africa , books-about-books , coming-of-age , own-a-copy , massive-reads , all-time-favorites , historical-fiction , thought-provoking , read-for-school.
I will be doing a FULL review for this soon. This story is riveting! I'm glad to have read and understood the cultural significance of this book. View all 6 comments. Jul 20, Debbie rated it it was amazing Shelves: classics , favorites , literature-black , american-south , slavery , america-civil-war , own.
One of my top 5 favourite reads! Certified Buyer , Bengaluru. Certified Buyer , Thanjavur. Explore Plus. Fiction Books. General Fiction Books. Roots English, Paperback, Haley Alex. Enter pincode. Usually delivered in 4 days? Haley Alex.
NSPRetail 3. Discover Alex Haley's Pulitzer Prize-winning search for his family's origins: a powerful memoir, a history of slavery and a landmark in African-American literature. Tracing his ancestry through six generations of architects, lawyers, blacksmiths, farmers, freedmen and slaves, Alex Haley's research took him back to Africa and a sixteen-year-old youth named Kunta Kinte.
Torn from his homeland and brought to the slave markets of the New World, re-imagining Kunta's journey would allow Haley to explore his family's deep and distant past. Frequently Bought Together. Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Add 3 Items to Cart. Rate Product. This novel is not just a novel but a peck at various aspects of human life.
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