Details Appertaining To Books Roots: The Saga of an American Family
| Title | : | Roots: The Saga of an American Family |
| Author | : | Alex Haley |
| Book Format | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 729 pages |
| Published | : | November 1st 1977 by Dell Publishing Company (first published August 17th 1976) |
| Categories | : | Fantasy. Science Fiction. Dragons. Fiction. Science Fiction Fantasy. Young Adult. High Fantasy |
Alex Haley
Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 729 pages Rating: 4.44 | 140152 Users | 3217 Reviews
Explanation During Books Roots: The Saga of an American Family
When he was a boy in Henning, Tennessee, Alex Haley's grandmother used to tell him stories about their family—stories that went back to her grandparents, and their grandparents, down through the generations all the way to a man she called "the African." She said he had lived across the ocean near what he called the "Kamby Bolongo" and had been out in the forest one day chopping wood to make a drum when he was set upon by four men, beaten, chained and dragged aboard a slave ship bound for Colonial America.Still vividly remembering the stories after he grew up and became a writer, Haley began to search for documentation that might authenticate the narrative. It took ten years and a half a million miles of travel across three continents to find it, but finally, in an astonishing feat of genealogical detective work, he discovered not only the name of "the African"—Kunta Kinte—but the precise location of Juffure, the very village in The Gambia, West Africa, from which he was abducted in 1767 at the age of sixteen and taken on the Lord Ligonier to Maryland and sold to a Virginia planter.
Haley has talked in Juffure with his own African sixth cousins. On September 29, 1967, he stood on the dock in Annapolis where his great-great-great-great-grandfather was taken ashore on September 29, 1767. Now he has written the monumental two-century drama of Kunta Kinte and the six generations who came after him—slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lumber mill workers and Pullman porters, lawyers and architects—and one author.
But Haley has done more than recapture the history of his own family. As the first black American writer to trace his origins back to their roots, he has told the story of 25,000,000 Americans of African descent. He has rediscovered for an entire people a rich cultural heritage that slavery took away from them, along with their names and their identities. But Roots speaks, finally, not just to blacks, or to whites, but to all people and all races everywhere, for the story it tells is one of the most eloquent testimonials ever written to the indomitability of the human spirit.
Be Specific About Books To Roots: The Saga of an American Family
| Original Title: | Roots |
| ISBN: | 0440174643 (ISBN13: 9780440174646) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | George Lincoln Rockwell, Alex Haley, Kunta Kinte |
| Setting: | United States of America Gambia |
| Literary Awards: | ASJA Outstanding Book Award (1978), Audie Award for Nonfiction (2008), Premio Bancarella (1978), National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for General Nonfiction (1976), Lillian Smith Book Award (1977) |
Rating Appertaining To Books Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Ratings: 4.44 From 140152 Users | 3217 ReviewsAssess Appertaining To Books Roots: The Saga of an American Family
This was one of the first books I ever read concerning the trans-Atlantic slave trade and American slavery, and I consider the work one of the greatest epics ever written. I certainly recommend reading the actual book instead of watching the television mini-series. The historical research conducted by Haley in composing this masterpiece is awe-inspiring. A definite literary selection long-marked as required reading for my daughters once they reach middle school...as it should be read by allI 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.
I am at least a fifth generation genealogist. I was ten when this book was first published and made into a miniseries. But, I was allowed to stay up that entire week of January 23 January 30, 1977 to watch it in its entirety. I thought the cast did an excellent job. To this day, I still believe that the book was much better than the movie. But, as Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. once pointed out, "Most of us feel it's highly unlikely that Alex actually found the village whence his ancestors sprang.
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
I appreciate the author's research of his own roots and the overall message this book has. The problem I had with it was that the writing style was uninteresting. It wasn't bad but it made the characters too two-dimensional for me to enjoy the story overall. They were all empty and I couldn't cheer for them or feel for them. But I understand why the book is important to some and why it has the position it has, I just didn't notice the literary value it supposedly has. Plus the plagiarism
This book was astonishing to me - particularly the narrative of Kunta Kinte's life. This is why I read! What an amazing description of African culture and the rights of manhood. Then, the horrible violation of slavery and the cross-cultural experience of an African joining slaves who were predominately born in the United States. Sounds silly, but though I've read many books on slavery, none have dealt with the differences among slaves themselves and how growing up as a slave shaped how African
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
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