Book Bouncer Review - 'Roots: The Saga of An American Family' by Alex Haley

'Roots: The Saga of An American Family' by Alex Haley

Synopsis:

"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."

- Goodreads summary

So Roots happened, guys... And let me tell you, it was one hell of a ride! I'll admit it was much different from the books that I normally read, but I decided that I needed to take a break from high fantasy and all that stuff... plus, this was right at the top of my extremely long TBR pile, and we all know that this particular list never gets shorter, but instead lengthens. So it was time for a change.

I'm pretty psyched to be writing up a review for this specific book, because while I am usually familiar with current issues like violence against women and crime, slavery is a completely alien topic for me. I'm aware that child slavery still happens in this day and age, but colonization has come and gone, and with it the despicable horrors that Africans had to go through when they were imported into America, England and the many colonies that were being established in the 1700s. So let's get started.

The Basic Outline of Roots: The Saga of An American Family

We start off in Juffure, the home of Haley's ancestor Kunta Kinte, and are introduced to the traditional ways of the Mandinka people (Kunta's tribal group). We learn about the festivals, traditions and rules that Kunta and his people have. In a way, they are civilized among themselves. but the people they call toubobs don't think so. From the very beginning of the novel, we are introduced to these toubobs (the colonists) as thieves that bring devastation to the Africans, and are vile and feared.

The real action, however, takes place when Kunta is captured and thrown onto a ship that sails for Annapolis, America. He is in bad shape and violated in cruel ways, beaten and broken so that he cannot resist against his captors when they haul him and other natives of Africa to a slave auction. From there on, Kunta is sold to John Waller, the owner of a plantation that houses slaves that are nothing like the Africans Kunta is used to, These slaves are submissive, and turn against him when he runs away. After running away for the forth time, slave hunters catch him and cut his foot, leaving him for dead. He ends up on the farm owned by John's brother.

Renamed Toby, Kunta lives the remainder of his life on the new farm, making friends and marrying a headstrong woman by the name of Bell. Throughout Kunta's point of view in the book, we are aware of his opposition against the religion that every African American follows. This leads him to have problems with his wife when they have a daughter - Kizzy - and he cannot openly protest against the fact that Kizzy will have to be Christian if she can live comfortably among the other slaves. Eventually, coming to terms with this, and instead tells his daughter about his life before he became a slave. Ater on in the novel, these stories are passed on by every descendant of his onto their children.

Kunta encounters many hardships, the worst being when Kizzy is sold off to another slaver because of an innocent action she did that betrayed Master Waller. The novel's point of view switches to Kizzy's, and so we leave Kunta behind and move a generation closer to Alex Haley. Upon Kizzy being purchased by Tom Lea, she is raped by him, and thus becomes pregnant with George 'Chicken George' Lea. From the very beginning, he is outgoing, ambitious and different because of his skin colour. He cares for his mother deeply, and when he finds out who his father is, George hopes to at least be acknowledged as a son. Things don't go as planned, but George discovers he has a talent in chicken-fighting, and aims to eventually free his family of eight children, his wife Matilda, his mother, and three fellow slaves from their slaver by means of earning money through bets and winnings and chicken-fighting matches.

Through a certain series of events, he is sent to England to be a chicken-fighting trainer for Tom Lea's creditor, while Lea, in debt, has to sell off George's family to the Murray's, a couple who are willing to accept a family of slaves. However, Kizzy is not fortunate enough to be part of the package, and she dies a little later, while George's family moves to the new farm. There, one of George's sons - Tom - who is a blacksmith, finds his love, Irene, while doing his job at a nearby plantation. They marry, and have eight children. By that time, slaves have been declared free in America, and Chicken George has returned as a free man. The families leave for a better future, and Tom begins a successful blacksmith trailer that travels the town they live in, in search for customers.

From there on, Tom's daughter Cynthia, marries Will Palmer, and gives birth to their daughter Bertha, who marries Simon Alexander Haley, the father of the author of Roots. Then we reach present time, and Alex Haley writes about his life and his journey to discover more about his family and the stories his Grandmother Cynthia spoke about, and get in touch with his roots.

Overall Feedback

All in all, Alex Haley was absolutely brilliant with his determination to tie all the strings of his family's past together and write Roots: the story of how his family came to live in America, and all the struggles that came along with the change of scenery. It wasn't just a story of how his family came to reside in America; it was how traditions - despite the many religious obstacles - were passed down until Haley decided to look deeper.

The writing style of the book was so simple for such a complex novel, that I breezed through a 700+ paged book in less than a week! I was most impressed with how vivid the events in Roots were. I have to say that my favourite scenes were where the descendants of Kunta's line found their partners, because those romances were more funny than romantic and lovey-dovey. However, the most gruesome and heart-wrenching part of the book had to be when Kunta was captured and sailed off to America. When he hurt, I hurt; and his pain was so tangible that I had to take a break from the book several times just because it was too much.

I think what was worse was how extremely true these scenes were: Human beings could reach such a low where they treated their kind like animals (e.g, Hitler), and felt good when exploiting another person (the failed attempt at Communism). My heart broke, and I can swear there were a few tears here and there when I read about Kunta's will to escape slowly diminish as he came to terms with the fact that he couldn't run away from his life, and instead had to come to terms with the fact that he needed to find someone to spend the rest of his days with.

I think my favourite characters were Kunta (because the book kicked off with him and most of the book was from his point of view) and Tom (he was calm and hardworking, and his love story was just awkward and cute). While this book started off slow, I tip my hat to Alex Haley for keeping me utterly invested in Roots and biting my nails in anticipation for what happened next every single time. It's good to know that those 12 years he spent unearthing his family's ancestry paid off, and the outcome was a book that promoted the preservation of one's traditions, culture and hardships.

I think that Roots is not for everyone, as some of the contents in this novel were not just harsh, but also required a mature audience. Additionally, some of the issues in Roots (slavery, colonization etc.) are better understood by people that are older than 14 (just my personal opinion). I do hope that if any of you do pick it up, that your heart is touched by this book and the crazy journey it takes you on is one to remember, because this gem of a book is so rare and hard to come by, it should always be cherished.

Apart from the book, there is a show on Roots that is scarcely available as it was made in the 70s, but is quite phenomenal.