A review of Roots by Alex Haley

The 3oth Anniversary Edition  Roots The Saga of an American Family Every family historian should read Roots—yes, all 899 pages are worth your while!  In 1977, Alex Haley single-handedly changed the course of genealogy with this one epic novel.  This grandson of an African slave called Kunta Kinte taught us that our very own stories are worth being told.  Even if we are children of poor immigrants, indentured servants, historically incorrect characters, or slaves—our story can be fantastic and research-able.  There are records and there is plenty of detective work that will lead us to unimaginable worlds from long ago.  Of course, Haley never fails to mention his greatest source of all—his sweet old aunts who carried forth hundreds of years of a family’s story in whispers—on star-filled nights out on their breezy southern porch.   I am so amazed at the rich ancestral heritage Haley reveals in the pages of Roots.  Most of the book centers around Kunta Kinte—Haley’s fist ancestor to reach American shores—brought over on “the big canoe” to Annapolis and sold to the highest bidder.  He was a proud African, a strict and devout Muslim—a man who was defined by his own ancestry.  This was something which was kept alive by oral tradition and a society that held ancestral background in a special and noble place above all else.  Kunta Kinte taught his daughter, Kizzy, about Africa and she taught her children who taught theirs.  Only a few things remained intact, but everyone remembered something to pass on.  These little bits and pieces took Haley back to an exact location in Africa—to an ancient village in the Gambia called Juffure.  He writes how he fell to his knees in overwhelming emotion.  I have to say I have spoken to others who have had this experience—whether in the balmy village of St. Pierro in Sicily, or the long green grasses of the Black Forest it is always the same.  There is this unspeakable moment, this realization that you are home.   Ironically, this book is a particularly painful book for me and to be honest I have been tentative about reading it and giving myself to it—as my own ancestry takes me back to the Old South, as well.  As a child, I remember star-lit nights where my own gram told me stories about my family.  I wondered how my family could have been a part of this terrible system of life—that of the Southern planter.  I was so intrigued, yet ashamed.  I wondered who these people could be and why they lived the way they did.  And here lies the beauty of Roots.  No one’s life is insignificant.  As the writers of history twist around the facts we are still left with individual people and “they do watch and guide” us as we seek the truth of their existence.   Michelle Ann Kratts