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beejai 's review for:
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
by Alex Haley
I came into this book believing that it was fictionalized history. I thought all the key facts were 100% accurate and that Haley simply added dialogue and minor details to flesh out the daily life of his characters. I was thinking it was something very similar to Gore Vidal's style of historical fiction.
Very early on, I was disabused of this notion. Multiple times during the early going, I caught myself thinking, "That doesn't sound right." So I stopped and did some fact checking. I stumbled across two major things that I feel need to be shared right out of the gate. First, many historians and anthropologists have pointed out a plethora of errors in this novel. Second, Haley was sued for plagiarism and settled out of court for half a million dollars (that's in 70's money). Obviously, if he was stealing large segments of someone else's fictional work, it cannot possibly be his own factual accounting.
Once those two facts were square in my mind, I was able to truly enjoy this book for what it really is: historical fiction. Rather than viewing this book as 95% history with 5% fiction thrown in for color, it is better to see it as about one-third fact and two-thirds fiction. With this in mind, I was able to enjoy Haley's work for what it was, instead of criticizing it for what he claimed it to be.
Roots spends the first half of the book retelling the life of Kunta Kinte. It begins with his being raised in a small village in West Africa, shares his capture and harrowing journey across the Atlantic on a slave ship, and then shares his life as a slave in Virginia. The second half of the book then follows his progeny across more than a century as they did their best to make a life for themselves and maintain their identity by holding on to the memory of their "African" ancestor.
Since Roots has come out, there have been many other books sharing the lives and details of slave life. Two recent movies I would strongly recommend along these lines are Harriet and 12 Years a Slave. Although some of these works are better written and others are far more accurate, one thing cannot be taken from Roots. It was the first. No other such work like this can be said to have nearly the impact that Haley's work had forty-plus years ago. It changed the way we collectively view our American past. It paved the way forward for those others.
So if you are looking for the best or most accurate retellings of slave life, this is not the work to go to. But if you are interested in reading the book that changed our memories for the better, dive in. Just remember that this is a work of historical fiction, with an emphasis on the latter word, not the former.
Very early on, I was disabused of this notion. Multiple times during the early going, I caught myself thinking, "That doesn't sound right." So I stopped and did some fact checking. I stumbled across two major things that I feel need to be shared right out of the gate. First, many historians and anthropologists have pointed out a plethora of errors in this novel. Second, Haley was sued for plagiarism and settled out of court for half a million dollars (that's in 70's money). Obviously, if he was stealing large segments of someone else's fictional work, it cannot possibly be his own factual accounting.
Once those two facts were square in my mind, I was able to truly enjoy this book for what it really is: historical fiction. Rather than viewing this book as 95% history with 5% fiction thrown in for color, it is better to see it as about one-third fact and two-thirds fiction. With this in mind, I was able to enjoy Haley's work for what it was, instead of criticizing it for what he claimed it to be.
Roots spends the first half of the book retelling the life of Kunta Kinte. It begins with his being raised in a small village in West Africa, shares his capture and harrowing journey across the Atlantic on a slave ship, and then shares his life as a slave in Virginia. The second half of the book then follows his progeny across more than a century as they did their best to make a life for themselves and maintain their identity by holding on to the memory of their "African" ancestor.
Since Roots has come out, there have been many other books sharing the lives and details of slave life. Two recent movies I would strongly recommend along these lines are Harriet and 12 Years a Slave. Although some of these works are better written and others are far more accurate, one thing cannot be taken from Roots. It was the first. No other such work like this can be said to have nearly the impact that Haley's work had forty-plus years ago. It changed the way we collectively view our American past. It paved the way forward for those others.
So if you are looking for the best or most accurate retellings of slave life, this is not the work to go to. But if you are interested in reading the book that changed our memories for the better, dive in. Just remember that this is a work of historical fiction, with an emphasis on the latter word, not the former.