Roots

Rating:
Summary: From Gone With The Wind To Roots
Review: One of my college friends who studied comparative literature in China wrote to me a few years ago, about how she was longing to visit Georgia one day, "The plantation, and the oak trees...". Gone with the wind is a classic and was well translated in many languages. The movie also brought countless publicity and I remembered that I read an article once how the book "corrected" the public perception of the south and the slavery.

Well, that was my impression too, until I read Roots. Gone With The Wind is a story from Whites perspective with a focus on romance. I feel now it carried a heavy make up on the real south and the slavery. It eulogized the relationship between white masters and black slaves. Roots, on the other hand, describes the same south and the slavery, from Blacks perspective.

Roots started from Kunta Kinte's life back in Africa, to stories of several generations in the South. I feel the African part was hard to read, maybe due to lack of interests personally. Once I got past that part, I was fascinated by the story and I was saddened many times by their struggles. I believe the book displayed a much more accurate picture on the slavery and on relationships between whites and blacks. It is more than a family's tale, it is history!

I strongly recommend this book to everybody, especially to those who are interested into American History, to non-blacks, and to foreigners like myself. With Gone With The Wind overshadowed Roots in many other countries, this book offers a great education on American Slavery and on Black History. It shreds new lights on the origins of many current issues in the U.S. such as racism, racial profiling, and affirmative action. I rank this book the best book I've ever read, well, at least in English.

Rating:
Summary: a very moving story
Review: This is a great, great book. My only problem is a kind of unevenness to the story. While the story spans 250 years, about half the book is spent covering only 50 of these. For the rest of the book, at times the story skims by, not developing characters as well as it did initially, and sometimes seeming somewhat shallow. Part of the story about Kunta's youth in Africa maybe be slightly overdone, and towards the end, it drags somewhat as multiple generations seem to fly by in only a few pages, so it's hard to connect with the people. To complain too much about this, however, is to miss the point. I saw the overall theme of the book as the gradual theft and loss of Kunta's initial African-ness over the generations, and in this aspect the book succeeds greatly. To me, the best part of the the book, by far, was between when Kunta lands in America and when the story shifts to his daughter. It is here where we see Kunta attempt to keep his identity alive, and truly want him to succeed, even though the outcome is almost inevitable. It's impossible not to feel good when reading about him teaching his daughter about Africa, or when the story is passed down. It's crushing when we see things destroyed - his daughter becomes the white girl's plaything, his wife only reluctantly allows him to carry on an african naming tradition, and immediately distrusts his seemingly insane ideas, and somehow the worst is when we see, two generations later, that slavery has become so ingrained, people can no longer even understand why someone would try to escape. Seeing the slaves' resistance decline is heartbreaking. In addition to seeing the African and American slave cultures combined in this part, I thought the end was fascinating, where the author describes the procedure he went through in starting and developing the story- one part in particular really shows the often underappreciated power of oral histories. It's a long book, but when you get through it, you'll be happy you read it.

Rating:
Summary: Roots Period 1 Shea
Review: The book Roots is about begins at an African Village called Juffure in 1750, and ends seven generations later. In the beginning, a son is born to Omoro and Binta, and they call him Kinte Kunta. Kunta grows up from AFrican traditions. However, when he is 17 years old, he is kidnapped by Whites and is shipped along with thousands of other AFricans in a ship to Annapolis. He is taken as a slave, but he tries to escape and by the fourth time, he finally does. He is taken in by another massa, a master, but this one is more generous because he does not use a whip. Kunta is given the name Toby. He works there as a driveman for 45 years. While these years, he marries Bell, a cook for the massa. They have a baby named Kizzy. However, she is taken to jail when she is sixteen because she wrote a fake pass for her lover,Noah. She is taken to Massa John and she has a baby named George. Then, he meets Matilda and they get married. 2 generations later Alex Haley is born along with four other siblings.
I liked this book because eventhough there were some sick parts in the book, there were many informations about AFrican traditions. The book showed how it was like for an african to become accustomed to a particular place and learning how to speak a new and foriegn language. Comparing, I think that AFrican Traditions and American traditions were very different.
My favorite part in the book was when Kunta was on the ship. I felt very sorry for him because of all of the pain he went through. It made me want to read on because I wanted to know what happened next and if he made it through or not.

Rating:
Summary: Not very often do I take the time to review a book...
Review: Friends, if you haven't yet read this classic book, I strongly recommend you do so as soon as possible. Not only does Haley accurately trace his family's "roots" through generations back to the village of Juffure in Africa, but he also writes an interesting book which could stand on its own merit as an interesting read. The descriptions of slave life in the American south are so vivid, the reader feels as if he/she were feeling the pain and sorrow of the slaves. Will this book make you sad? Hopefully. Will you be enriched by having read it? Definately.

Rating:
Summary: great story
Review: This book is an epic.

To my surprise, a lot of people have commented that the book focuses too heavily on the life of the protagonist, Kunta Kinte- particularly before he is captured... apparently, they wanted to read more about the life and times of slaves in the United States. In that the book has a peculiar sense of imbalance because each succeeding generation is described more superficially than the last, I agree. Otherwise, I think that these folks kind of missed the point. The story is fundamentally about a family passing on the story of their African forebear and through this story, being able to connect with their origins as free people. Besides, we (Americans, anyway) already *know* a lot about the plight of the slaves just from sitting in history classes-- but we are not taught that the people who became slaves were real people before their capture. We are just taught that they were "from Africa" and that they were treated very badly on slave ships. Haley helps fill in some of the details which illustrate how "real" captured slaves were.

The story is very engaging, though toward the end, it does get a little thin. (Perhaps it is also somewhat frustrating to get so little literary payoff about times in history with which Americans are more familiar).

The only other thing that I found disturbing about this book was the use of dialect which, to enlightened people, appears to intentionally demean the characters. Whether or not the dialect is accurate, it detracts from the sympathy one is supposed to feel for the family portrayed.

Rating:
Summary: Roots
Review: Roots is an excellent book that I would recommend to people who are interested in African history. One of the main reasons I enjoyed this book was because it had a good story line and is was easy to follow.

Rating:
Summary: A damn good book
Review: Thank GOD for a book like ROOTS.
Those who suggest that it "demonizes" the South had better remember that the South kidnapped and enslaved FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS and treated them like cattle and then were willing to tear the United States apart rather than face their own lies and teason over their violating a Document they WILLING Signed that says something about ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL and something about the inalienable RIGHTS of LIFE LIBERTY ect ect.
This book is needed in reaction to GONE WITH THE WIND which glorifies the Slave Masters and their empires and expects us to pity Southern belles who get blisters on their hands (while ignoring the welts of a Black girls back) and having to show common respect to the Blacks they had treated like dogs -- at least while the Federal Troops and mean old Yankees and Republicans were around.
The only indominable spirit was the BLACKS and the YANKEES.
THANK GOD for ROOTS.

Rating:
Summary: A good generational saga!
Review: I reread ROOTS the first time in about twenty or twenty-five years. I thought the book perfect the first time I read it. I noted several flaws the second time, though. But no one had done a book like ROOTS before--it was truly revolutionary and started black and white people thinking about the barbarity of slavery and how difficult it was for black people to research their ancestors. Also, it taught how attitudes evolved over the generations. If Haley wrote the book today, it would be entirely a different work, so try to overlook the flaws. What Haley did was open people's eyes. Since reading ROOTS I have read many books on slavery and can recommend two recently published: The Journal of Leroy Jeremiah Jones and The Diary of a Slave Girl, Ruby Jo.

Rating:
Summary: When Will It Ever End?
Review: More fiction and plagiarism designed to demonise the South, divide the races, fill the coffers of Jessee Jackson and politicians who claim to have the answers, encourage liberal whites to wallow in guilt and shame, insult blacks with paternalism at its very worst: Treat them like children; they can't handle the truth. To quote STANLEY CROUCH, a black columnist for the New York Daily News; "The book remains an opportunistic insult to black people, and no amount of excuses will change that harsh fact."

Rating:
Summary: unputdownable book
Review: the begning was a little tough for me, may be i was not perticularly interested in the life of a young man from Africa. but the story became very gripping once he gets captured and then, there was no way i could put the book down without finishing it. by the end of the book, i figured, i had missed out a lot by not focusing on the first few chapters. i wanted to know more about that young man who was Alex Haley's great great.... grand dad. so i reread them. that gave me a better perspective of why kunta kinte never became an american, and always remained 'african'. although other african americans arround him did not identify themself as 'african'.
i highly recoment this book for all those who are curious about life in general.

my father recomended this book, and i am very thankful to him for that