Roots: The Saga of an American Family

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 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.

Such an amazing book. Super trigging and some parts were very hard to read but such an amazing story, I loved how it went through the generations and reading his discoveries and his journey back to his original home land, so heart warmig. I can't even imagine the emotions he felt. Absolutely loved it!

PFS Book Club --- 26th August, 23 Today we reviewed book called “Roots” by Alex Haley. Chandrashekhar started the session with history of book and setting the context on black slavery in USA. This book was written in 1976 and Alex writes this book as a history of Kunta Kinte and seven generations of his descendants in the United States. Chandrashekhar also mentioned that almost 15 million slaves were taken to USA and almost 5 million died in transit. Those times slaves were taken from coastal parts of countries and Kunta Kinte was taken from the country called Gambia in west Africa. Mist of the slaves sued to be bought in southern USA compared to north. Alex relates his journey to back to Africa to find his roots and discover about his family. Along with the release of this book TV series was among the most watched and popular during those times. This book also helped black people to take interest in their genealogy. Kunta tried to run many times and during last time when slave catchers caught him they cut off his foot. Kunta had a daughter called Kizy and book talks about all the characters of all seven generations. Also discussed how blacks breeding was done similar to cattle farms to get more slaves. Slavery was banned in 1800 in UK but continued in colonies for long time. We also discussed book called Uncle Toms cabin and how Abraham Lincoln got inspired by this book and proposed for abolition of summary. Young kid Dhruv mentioned that how in Africa production of cholate is still used as a slavery or child labor working for very money. We spoke about movies called remembering the titans and chariots of fire depicting black’s struggle. We discussed how people from Bihar were taken to Mauritius as slaves. Also discussed about country called Suriname in south America where many people speak Hindi because lots of Indian were taken as slaves. We discussed about Liberia (country in west Africa), many black African slaves were freed and relocated to Liberia so that they get better life. The book depicts what Africans went through under white colonial rule. It is the reflection of pain, hurt and humiliation by their white masters. We also spoke about it was similar to bonded labors in India and how in some parts of India many of such inhumanly things are practiced and people are differentiated based on color, caste and religion. Yet another amazing session 😊