roots the saga of an american family movie

In the end, we reach all the way up through history to Alex Haley, our author, creating a wonderful little genealogical ouroboros. We trace generation after generation of Kunta's descendants as they survive and even thrive, hitting their fair share of struggles too, but always meeting them together as a family. As we watch Kunta suffer and struggle to adapt to this strange, new world, we gain a greater sense of why American slavery was such a historical calamity.īut we don't stop there. Sadly, Kunta becomes one of their number.

Beginning with Kunta Kinte's childhood in the small village of Juffure, we learn about the traditional way of life that was torn away from countless Africans when they were caught up in the horrors of the American slave trade. Before long, Haley became convinced that he had found the exact people and places referred to in his family's stories, and began creating a piece of historical fiction that would bring this personal history together with the history of a nation.Īnd that's exactly what he did. Haley began obsessively researching his family's stories, corroborating them with written records and even visiting The Gambia to meet a storyteller known as a griot who claimed to know the genealogy of his ancestral line. Despite this, there was one story Haley couldn't get out of his mind: the family oral traditions passed down to him from his grandparents. Author Alex Haley first honed his craft while serving in the Navy, but would go on to success as a journalist and even co-writer for The Autobiography of Malcolm X. We think 'phenomenon' would be a better term for Roots.Īlso, it's hard to separate the book from its writing process. Although Roots is so rooted (pun!) in historical fact, so sprawling, and so insanely culturally important that the word 'novel' sounds almost trivializing. Kunta Kinte is such a cultural icon that he inspired Kendrick Lamar to write a song about him, but we can't blame you if you only know him as the guy from that mini-series played by either the host from Reading Rainbow or Geordi La Forge from Star Trek (depending on your relative level of nerdiness).īut before that mega-famous television show Roots, there was the novel. Roots: The Saga of an American Family Introduction

Roots the saga of an american family movie