Literature review - Roots

I just finished reading "Roots" by Alex Haley a couple of days back and I meant to write what I felt about the book. For all those who haven't read the book it is a story of an African family through 7 generations starting with the life of Kunta Kinte in Africa and journeys through his life, how he is enslaved and how he manages to pass a little bit of heritage down the generations just to let the author (Alex Haley) a 7th generation descendant to research about his life back in Africa. It was a great read and if you haven't yet read it, please don't let the 700 odd pages deter you from doing so.

Through the book I liked the way the author was able to focus on the life of this family tree of Kintes through the different generations and at different places while letting the American history develop in the background. The war of independence, the civil war, emancipation of slaves, etc. Being a foreigner, I have not studied American History in detail but this book provided me with a brief perspective of it along the read. Another great feature of the book was the speech used by the African americans. While it did slow down my usual reading speed as I had to link each word to what it would mean if written correctly, it made me feel as if I was talking in that dialect. It carries right down until the generation that began education.

The best thing though that I loved about the book were the final few pages as the author describes how he traces back his family roots based on a few tidbits of knowledge about Kunta Kinte passed through generations. Particularly interesting is tracing the dialect based on a few words used to describe certain objects. Being a doctoral student myself I found the research and the description of this research by the author very enlightning and felt that the book would have been incomplete without this description and could be considered a pure work of fiction.