Cheap Roots: The Saga of an American Family (Book) (Alex Haley, Michael Eric Dyson) Price

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Customer Reviews of Roots: The Saga of an American Family

ROOTS...great again
I loved the printed book and the mini-series and now I love the unabridged book on CD. The readers voice is deep and rich and sounds a lot like Alex Haley himself. It has been years since I first discovered ROOTS and it brought back memories of watching the mini-series with my Mom, who has since died. Many parts of the book I had not remembered. What a trip into his past this was for Alex Haley. I was quite enjoyable to listen to the book at my leisure.

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Roots 30th Anniversary Edition - WELL worth reading
This is how the most famous African-American saga begins: <
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> "Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a man-child was born to Omoro and Binte Kunte...It was the hour before the first crowing of the cocks, and along with Nyo Boto and Grandma Yaisa's chatterings, the first sound the child heard was the muted, rhythmic bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp of wooden pestles as the other women of the village pounded couscous grain in their mortars, preparing the traditional breakfast of porridge that was cooked in earthen pots over a fire built among three rocks. <
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>"The thin blue smoke went curling up pungent and pleasant, over the small dusty village of round mud huts as the nasal wailing of Kajali Demba, the village alimamo, began, calling men to the first of the five daily prayers that had been offered up to Allah for as long as anyone could remember. Hastening from their beds of bamboo cane and cured hides into the rough cotton tunics, the men of the village filed briskly to the praying place, where the alimamo led the worship: <
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>"Allahu, Akbar, Ashadu an lailahailala" (God is great! I bear witness that there is only one God!") <
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>"It was after this, as the men were returning toward their home compounds for breakfast, that Omoro rushed among them, beaming and excited, to tell them of his firstborn son. Congratulating him, all of the men echoed the omens of good fortune." <
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>So begins Roots, this beautifully told story of author Alex Haley's main character, Kunta Kinte, supposedly based on Haley's family history. In Roots, Kunta Kinte is a young man, who, in 1767 in The Gambia (West Africa), was in the forest chopping wood, when he was beaten, chained, and placed aboard a slave ship bound for America. <
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>Haley spent nearly 12 years of research and a half million miles of travel to uncover the cultural roots of his ancestors. Haley claimed to be a seventh generation descendant of Kunta Kinte, though historians and genealogists have disputed Haley's story as true, and have claimed the story to be fiction rather than genealogical fact. <
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>At the heart of the controversy is author Harold Courlander who sued Haley for plagiarism, charging that Haley plagiarized several dozen paragraphs from his novel, The African. Courlander was paid $650, 000 in an out-of-court settlement. <
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>Regardless of the controversy that surrounded Roots in the years after its 1976 publication, the story is told in beautiful prose and with a strong voice; Roots, more than any other book since the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, ignited the African - American soul and opened up serious discussion many topics, including the darkest period of American history - the slave trade. <
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>Because of the original publication of Roots, millions of African - Americans began to look for their genealogical and cultural roots, and they began to take African names as part of the African-American's search for their collective psychological and cultural identity. <
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>The impact of Roots is deep and far reaching, as the reader is reminded in the introduction to the 30th Anniversary Edition. Michael Eric Dyson, in his introduction, tells us that "Black History Week" was extended into "Black History Month" the same year Roots first appeared. <
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>Dyson writes: "Haley's quest for his roots changed the way Black folk thought about themselves and how white America viewed them. No longer were we genealogical nomads with little hope of learning the names and identities of the people from whose loins and cultures we sprang. Haley wrote black folk into the book of American heritage and gave us the confidence to believe we could find our forebears even as he shared his own. Kunta and Kizzy - and Chicken George too - became members of our black American family. That is why no flaw or shortcoming in Haley's tome could dim the brilliant light he shed on the black soul." <
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>Dyson was a 17-year-old boarding school student when Roots was first published. Roots sold more than 1 million copies during its first year of publication; the TV miniseries Roots attracted 130 million viewers. The book, Roots won the National Book award and the Pulitzer Prize; it was eventually translated into 37 languages. <
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>That cultural dialogue that began with the original publication of Roots has now been renewed with Roots: The 30th Anniversary Edition, The Saga of an American Family. <
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>A hearty thumbs up. <
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An important story...
...even if the specifics of Haley's geneology aren't true. It's obvious while reading the book that Haley fictionalizes much of the account of Kunte Kinte's life in Africa, his journey to America, and his subsequent life as a slave, since--as Haley himself later makes clear--he couldn't possibly have had such detailed knowledge about these events. <
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>Roots is not really Kunte Kinte's story, but the story of countless unnamed slaves. And, perhaps even more importantly, it is the story of the indomitable human spirit, refusing to be crushed no matter what evil is visited upon it by others.