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Roots: The Saga of an American Family Paperback – May 22, 2007
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length899 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDa Capo Press
- Publication dateMay 22, 2007
- Dimensions6 x 2 x 8.25 inches
- ISBN-101593154496
- ISBN-13978-1593154493
- Lexile measure1330L
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Over the years, both Roots and Alex Haley have attracted controversy, which comes with the territory for trailblazing, iconic books, particularly on the topic of race. Some of the criticism results from whether ROOTS is fact or fiction and whether Alex Haley confused these two issues, a subject he addresses directly in the book. There is also the fact that Haley was sued for plagiarism when it was discovered that several dozen paragraphs in Roots were taken directly from a novel, The African, by Harold Courlander, who ultimately received a substantial financial settlement at the end of the case.
But none of the controversy affects the basic issue. Roots fostered a remarkable dialogue about not just the past, but the then present day 1970s and how America had fared since the days portrayed in Roots. Vanguard Press feels that it is important to publish Roots: The 30th Anniversary Edition to remind the generation that originally read it that there are issues that still need to be discussed and debated, and to introduce to a new and younger generation, a book that will help them understand, perhaps for the first time, the reality of what took place during the time of Roots.
From the Inside Flap
So begins Roots, one of the most important and influential books of our time. When originally published thirty years ago, it galvanized the nation and created an extraordinary political, racial, social, and cultural dialogue that had not been seen in this country since the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Roots has lost none of its emotional power and drama, and its message for today's and future generations is even more vital and relevant than it was thirty years ago.
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 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 39 million 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. Roots speaks, finally, not just to blacks, or to whites, but to all peoples 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.
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Product details
- Publisher : Da Capo Press; Anniversary edition (May 22, 2007)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 899 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1593154496
- ISBN-13 : 978-1593154493
- Lexile measure : 1330L
- Item Weight : 1.73 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 2 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,497,741 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,135 in Black & African American Biographies
- #9,707 in African American Demographic Studies (Books)
- #70,608 in Memoirs (Books)
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It came to me in perfect condition! Definitely recommend!!
The timeline moves forward more rapidly after the Kunta Kinte part, which takes up at leas the first one-third of the book. In other words theres a lot of detail about him and his life, then it speeds up during grandson George's lifetime until it is glossing over the day-to-day details of George's descendants' lives. I suppose thats inevitable - Haley could not have written the same level of detail about all the grandchildren, great-grandchildren and the numerous offspring. Haley handled this very well.
There are also several "cutoff points" where the chapter changes and the focus moves completely to the next generation. In other words, when Kizzy is taken away, we no longer hear of Kunta & Bell - the story becomes completely about Kizzy. Then when she gets old, the story refocuses to George's family. We never learn the fate of Kunta & Bell or exactly how Kizzy dies. This literary technique has a melancholy effect, but also leaves some things to the readers imagination. I like it for that.
There are some details, for example in dates of things happening versus the age of characters. But if you avoid looking for age/date contradictions, they won't detract from enjoying the book. Other little details include mentioning use of barbed wire on a plantation (invented by a Frenchman in 1865 and didn't enter widespread production until 1874-ish), George bathing in a galvanized tub before his marriage circa 1840(galvanization entered widespread use in the late 1800s), and the "old Gardener" Josephus describing Indian's teepees to young Kunta (the Eastern Woodlands tribes built wigwam huts - they did not use the conical teepees he describes of the Plains Indians, who were barely known to the colonists at that time, circa 1790)...All these are minor details, of course :)......
Please bear in mind this is a work of FICTION. Haley himself intended it that way; however the book has been spotted on library shelves in Biography or Geneaology sections. That is incorrect - the details of what happened 200 yrs prior could in no way be researched reliably enough for this work to be non-fiction or a true biography.
There have also been scholarly challenges to Haley's claims that he found his ancestral village in The Gambia, and to his genealogical research (its now known that Kunta/Toby arrived earlier than 1767 or was in fact born in America, and died years before Kizzy's birth. Also that the slave with the injured or deformed foot was a man called "Hopping George", possibly unrelated to the Haley line. And no evidence his foot was cut off as a runaway).
So Haley's claim to descendancy form Kunta/Toby is speculative. But this book will capture your imagination.
(For some details about criticism of the book, see Wikipedia. Just don't let that stop you from understanding the purpose of this fine work).
Before purchasing the book, I wanted to know a little bit more about Alex Haley and one of the things that caught my attention was that he was x-military U.S. Coast Guard. Also, I wanted to know why it took him 12 years to the research for the book. I learned not only was he researching his ancestors but he was learning about their surrounding day to day life (culture). With that said "Roots" is more like a history book that covers the life and culture of Africa during the 1700's, how husbands were able to speak a language that their wives were not allowed to speak or learn, or how there were many antislavery societies such as the Christians, Methodist and Quakers just to name a few. There is so much more in the book I found refreshing to learn of how our country was develop during the cotton gin age. There is so much more to the Civil War or the other wars within the United States that was or is not mentioned in our mainstream history books. A must read for all students sixth grade and up.
As we have learned in these pages, the roots of the Kinte family are African. I am also from an American family - with German roots. My husband is from an American family - with African roots.
I am not directly or personally responsible for any atrocities related to slavery, nor do I personally know anyone who has been the victim of slavery directly. Maybe because of that, I have had an impersonal attitude toward slavery and if I am being honest, I think I resented being lumped together with those of my race that were responsible for it.
I will confess that, although I had heard of Roots and had been aware of slavery’s impact on America, I had not given either the respect they are due until I married my African-American husband. In an effort to understand his heritage, I chose to read this haunting narrative and it will surely haunt me for the rest of my life! The images and emotions portrayed in these pages have changed me.
Having read Roots, I now have a deep conviction of the wrongs that have been committed. It is my prayer that I and those I have influence over will make every effort to do better for all generations to follow. May that be my legacy to my children and grandchildren and beyond, to in some small way, right a wrong and teach a better way.
Every American, regardless of their race, has roots from somewhere else. Every American, regardless of their roots, has a heart, a soul, a dream, a need. Every American loves, hopes, laughs, cries, hurts and suffers in their own way. May God help us all to see the things we have in common and use those things to unite us and build a future where cruelty no longer exists. Yes, that would be a legacy worth leaving!
—— Peggy Lee, Houston, TX
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Packaging was standard, so was the quality of the book, delivery speed was fine- nothing to complain about.