Point Books In Pursuance Of Roots: The Saga of an American Family
| Original Title: | Roots |
| ISBN: | 0440174643 (ISBN13: 9780440174646) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | George Lincoln Rockwell, Alex Haley, Kunta Kinte |
| Setting: | United States of America Gambia |
| Literary Awards: | ASJA Outstanding Book Award (1978), Audie Award for Nonfiction (2008), Premio Bancarella (1978), National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for General Nonfiction (1976), Lillian Smith Book Award (1977) |
Alex Haley
Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 729 pages Rating: 4.44 | 140152 Users | 3217 Reviews
Narrative During Books Roots: The Saga of an American Family
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 three 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 25,000,000 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. But Roots speaks, finally, not just to blacks, or to whites, but to all people 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.
List Regarding Books Roots: The Saga of an American Family
| Title | : | Roots: The Saga of an American Family |
| Author | : | Alex Haley |
| Book Format | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 729 pages |
| Published | : | November 1st 1977 by Dell Publishing Company (first published August 17th 1976) |
| Categories | : | Fantasy. Science Fiction. Dragons. Fiction. Science Fiction Fantasy. Young Adult. High Fantasy |
Rating Regarding Books Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Ratings: 4.44 From 140152 Users | 3217 ReviewsAppraise Regarding Books Roots: The Saga of an American Family
this is a perfect example of a book that would benefit from GR offering different rating criteria, rather than just one overall rating. because of the cultural and historical significance of roots, it deserves 5-stars. but because i was really expecting much stronger writing and a smoother style - i mean, he's got 900 pages to work with here; it's not like there's a shortage of space - i feel like the book was only 2½ to 3-stars on the quality of writing. i did very much enjoy the dialects haleyWow...I will be doing a FULL review for this soon.
I opened the cover of this book with eagerness and excitement. In fact, I informed my family I was finally reading Roots and I would be out of commission for the week! I was then greeted by 192 pages of some of the dullest prose I have ever encountered. Dull and monotonous writing. Zero character development. The exotic locale of Africa reduced to sand and thorns, with a few cardboard cut-outs of Africans standing around.Then, on page 192 (out of 900), conflict finally creates the true
I think it significantly affected my reading of Roots having come to it with the knowledge that Haley had been accused of plagiarism by Harold Courlander "The African" and Margaret Walker Alexander "Jubilee". While nothing can undermine the horrors experienced by slaves during this period, there was some question in my mind about the integrity of the author and thus, his ability to accurately portray these truths, even within the framework of fiction. Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny the
I honestly can't believe how much I enjoyed this book. It's been sitting on my shelf for about half a year now and I've been wanting to read it as soon as I got it. I always just started another book though and always said "next time."I finally picked it up 6 days ago and finished it about 10 minutes ago. The beginning was wonderful. I was so enthralled with Africa and Kunta Kinte and his family and the whole works. The way they lived, the culture, the traditions, it was like reading of another
I loved both the book and movie versions of this powerful, historical saga: I will never forget the indomitable Kunta Kinte. This book changed my very sheltered teenage world view. Decades later, I am now reading Esi Edugyan's Washington Black, and once again I am brought face to face with humanity's truly awful dark side. I have to read these gut-wrenching novels in bits and pieces, because my poor aging heart can no longer take so much horror in one long sitting.With the perspective of time
I appreciate the author's research of his own roots and the overall message this book has. The problem I had with it was that the writing style was uninteresting. It wasn't bad but it made the characters too two-dimensional for me to enjoy the story overall. They were all empty and I couldn't cheer for them or feel for them. But I understand why the book is important to some and why it has the position it has, I just didn't notice the literary value it supposedly has. Plus the plagiarism
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