Take a photo of a barcode or cover
uncle_remus 's review for:
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
by Alex Haley
3/5. The story wouldn't have been as gripping if it was not an interesting historical fiction. While the ancestry may be real, as well as historical milestones, certainly the day-to-day events and conversations are not. Interesting, but not white-knuckle 'gripping' sort of story. Amalgams, in the authors words, and historical, but fictionalized. Interesting that even though a lineage is described, Alex Haley uses the words "much of what I have been able conventionally to corroborate with documents." This guy spent years research and over a half a million miles, he says, but still does not have hard proof of this lineage, but presents it as such. Still strong and evocative. I found the last 20 pages, of the search and meeting of the griot to be the most emotional.
One thing I find interesting, alluded to here, but yet unexplored in any slave drama I read, is the alignment of abolitionists to side with religious sects. I am unsure how true it is that Quakers and Protestants and Methodists would be abolitionists; and competing sects of Christianity of (assuming, but unmentioned in this book) Baptists and ?maybe? Catholics would be pro-slavery. How true is that alignment of creed to slavery? or even, was there an alignment? I'd venture to say that Islam was not a factor for American slave owners or abolitionists (in Mauritania, slavery was abolished 3 times, in 1905, 1981, and again in August 2007).
Please read ebookwormy1's review on the factuality of _Roots_ and possible plagiarism, and calls to question those last 20 pages that are so moving. To me, one of the more questionable parts of the book was the part about West Africans being Muslim. While I am no expert, I thought the Muslims were, at the time of slavers, more Mediterranean, and north and east of the Sahara, while the West Coast Africa religions were still tribally voodoo/vudon - each tribe had their own variation, like the multitude of languages. Whereas if they all embraced Islam and read from the Koran, they would all share the same language; this is not the case. Whether this is a facet of reality or imagination of the author, who also wrote Malcolm X's auto-biography (how can it be an autobiography if someone else writes it?) with it's unequivocal embracement of Islam... I cannot say, but it seems, well, just too 'forced' to me.
Reading this book written by an educated Black man, the proud history of an ancestral family, which has worked its way to overcome overwhelming hardships, many families and siblings successful despite everything ... how do we arrive at the situation of 2020, where the picture painted by the media is nobody makes it and everyone lives in abject poverty? Where the oral traditions of black ancestors talk of (some of) those white folks, even slave owners, helping the black folks (not setting them free, but allowing them to live, in some case, better than "the po' crackers from South Car'liny") to todays' talk broad brush strokes that nobody ever helped Anyone and it was nothing but DAILY brutal back-tearing whippings and abuse and starvation that white folks never experienced. I am sure it ran the gamut, but you don't hear that from today's media.
There is a good story in here, but you kinda gotta sift through to find it. I feel some parts of the fictionalized story seem to have an 'agenda' (Islam, for exmaple, as mentioned above). In any historical work of fiction, some it is true. I am sure some is overstated. I am sure some of it is understated. I am also sure that each family and ancestral stories would vary more widely; some better, some worse. Surely some in the deep south are much worse, whereas in VA it could very believable to be like this (even Frederick Douglass had a 'good' white woman misses owner for a while [she still owned a person, hence the good in quotes], but most only remember the truly mean, and evil folk and think that was the same for everybody). It would be unfair to paint the entire past as better (as some believe the "white man's history" tell us) or to paint it all as worse (as some believe is the 1619 project). The truth lies somewhere in between, probably like what is presented here - where some is bad, some truly horrid, some better, but none of it great - all depending on time, place and owner.
One thing I find interesting, alluded to here, but yet unexplored in any slave drama I read, is the alignment of abolitionists to side with religious sects. I am unsure how true it is that Quakers and Protestants and Methodists would be abolitionists; and competing sects of Christianity of (assuming, but unmentioned in this book) Baptists and ?maybe? Catholics would be pro-slavery. How true is that alignment of creed to slavery? or even, was there an alignment? I'd venture to say that Islam was not a factor for American slave owners or abolitionists (in Mauritania, slavery was abolished 3 times, in 1905, 1981, and again in August 2007).
Please read ebookwormy1's review on the factuality of _Roots_ and possible plagiarism, and calls to question those last 20 pages that are so moving. To me, one of the more questionable parts of the book was the part about West Africans being Muslim. While I am no expert, I thought the Muslims were, at the time of slavers, more Mediterranean, and north and east of the Sahara, while the West Coast Africa religions were still tribally voodoo/vudon - each tribe had their own variation, like the multitude of languages. Whereas if they all embraced Islam and read from the Koran, they would all share the same language; this is not the case. Whether this is a facet of reality or imagination of the author, who also wrote Malcolm X's auto-biography (how can it be an autobiography if someone else writes it?) with it's unequivocal embracement of Islam... I cannot say, but it seems, well, just too 'forced' to me.
Reading this book written by an educated Black man, the proud history of an ancestral family, which has worked its way to overcome overwhelming hardships, many families and siblings successful despite everything ... how do we arrive at the situation of 2020, where the picture painted by the media is nobody makes it and everyone lives in abject poverty? Where the oral traditions of black ancestors talk of (some of) those white folks, even slave owners, helping the black folks (not setting them free, but allowing them to live, in some case, better than "the po' crackers from South Car'liny") to todays' talk broad brush strokes that nobody ever helped Anyone and it was nothing but DAILY brutal back-tearing whippings and abuse and starvation that white folks never experienced. I am sure it ran the gamut, but you don't hear that from today's media.
There is a good story in here, but you kinda gotta sift through to find it. I feel some parts of the fictionalized story seem to have an 'agenda' (Islam, for exmaple, as mentioned above). In any historical work of fiction, some it is true. I am sure some is overstated. I am sure some of it is understated. I am also sure that each family and ancestral stories would vary more widely; some better, some worse. Surely some in the deep south are much worse, whereas in VA it could very believable to be like this (even Frederick Douglass had a 'good' white woman misses owner for a while [she still owned a person, hence the good in quotes], but most only remember the truly mean, and evil folk and think that was the same for everybody). It would be unfair to paint the entire past as better (as some believe the "white man's history" tell us) or to paint it all as worse (as some believe is the 1619 project). The truth lies somewhere in between, probably like what is presented here - where some is bad, some truly horrid, some better, but none of it great - all depending on time, place and owner.