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4.37 AVERAGE
4.37 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Roots is not a book you enjoy, due to it's brutal story and Haley's no-details-spared approach to story telling. However, it is the definitive account of the slave tale and therefore feels like the bedrock for all other novels on this topic. It's required reading because of this.
While the book can at times feel a little long or tedious, over time you realize that Haley is building characters and worlds that will stick with you for all of time. It shapes the way I understand slavery and the slave novel: Last week I read Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Water Dancer and was amazed by how much I drew from Roots. Following generations of Kunta Kinte's family is a painful, but necessary reading for white people.
While the book can at times feel a little long or tedious, over time you realize that Haley is building characters and worlds that will stick with you for all of time. It shapes the way I understand slavery and the slave novel: Last week I read Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Water Dancer and was amazed by how much I drew from Roots. Following generations of Kunta Kinte's family is a painful, but necessary reading for white people.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Hate crime, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Trafficking, Grief, Colonisation, Classism
I always felt I should read the book but couldn’t bring myself to suffer through it emotionally after watching the series as a child. I’m glad I did! I know nothing of where I came from further back than 3 generations before me And that makes it all the more an astounding novel to me. It had me in tears so many times. I feel that everyone should read this book. The end of the story where he goes right back to his roots made the book for me. The story of Kunta Kinte as he grows, and all his hopes and dreams for his life i found myself wishing so dearly that he had stayed safe in Africa and built his family there. I kept reading till 3 sometimes 5am because I needed to know what happens next to Kunta, Kizzy and Chicken George and all his family. Every family member with such rich individual personalities that Iv became so attached to. Definitely a must read.
4.5 stars. There were some inaccuracies in the depiction of some Mandingo/African customs and pacing issues toward the end. Still an excellent book and a really admirable project.
A truly imaginative novel. What really shines here is the tremendous amount of research that Alex Haley put into this book - traveling to his ancestral homeland, searching through census records and slaveowners' records, and researching African history to make his story as accurate as possible. The only reason I didn't give this book five stars is because the writing was sometimes lacking. There would be a lot of run-on sentences or backward grammatical structures (on the part of the narrator, not in dialogue), and the fact that the first half of the book focused on one character while the rest of the family line was squashed into the second half made for very abrupt transitions. Also, the 30th-anniversary edition had an average of two typos per page, which is just inexcusable for such an important novel.
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
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% 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.
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% 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.
Having dispensed with my ancestors, I'm on to my sons' people; or at least to Alex Haley's family. Alex Haley knows all his ancestors back a thousand years.
The first 143 pages are about his ancestor Kinte Kunta who was abducted as a teenager in 1767. It's a fascinating picture of life in Gambia (W Africa). What a marvelous culture they had in that harsh place!
The next 50 pages cover the 4 month passage to America. It was very hard to absorb, but I've no doubt it is accurate. A third of the captives on most ships died from the conditions aboard ship before they ever had a chance to be slaves. I put it down several times but I forced myself to read every word.
The rest of the book takes us through 200 years of Haley history, slave and free. None of it as gruesome as the voyage over.
I gave it 5 stars because it is such an achievement. The writing style would be a 3.5.
Everybody should read this book. I've no idea how the movie is.
The first 143 pages are about his ancestor Kinte Kunta who was abducted as a teenager in 1767. It's a fascinating picture of life in Gambia (W Africa). What a marvelous culture they had in that harsh place!
The next 50 pages cover the 4 month passage to America. It was very hard to absorb, but I've no doubt it is accurate. A third of the captives on most ships died from the conditions aboard ship before they ever had a chance to be slaves. I put it down several times but I forced myself to read every word.
The rest of the book takes us through 200 years of Haley history, slave and free. None of it as gruesome as the voyage over.
I gave it 5 stars because it is such an achievement. The writing style would be a 3.5.
Everybody should read this book. I've no idea how the movie is.
More like four and a half stars rather than a full five. Very engrossing. Rich with detail and believable characters. Sure the book's reputation has been sullied by well-founded accusations of plagiarism, and Haley certainly had an agenda to push, but still this is a book well worth reading. One thing that captured my imagination was the idea that Haley was able to track down his ancestry from a handful of African words and phrases handed down through the generations from Kunta Kinte. My late Grandma used to sing a song from...her mother, I guess--I'm not even sure. None of us living descendants knows the songs meaning nor true origin. I wonder whether it would be possible for us to track it down similar to what Alex Haley did.
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery