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March 28, 2024, 02:12:34 PM

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'Roots' by Alex Haley

Started by Satchmo Distel, May 03, 2019, 01:27:15 AM

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I was bought this book for my birthday when I was 11 and still think it was a very important work for me to have read at that age: beautiful, powerful writing and a great deal of empathy for the lives of slaves. Of course I also thought the names were historically true - there really was a Kunta Kinte, Kizzy and Chicken George - and I now know they were fictitious, but this doesn't lessen my admiration for the book as a work of the imagination.

I was wondering if any other readers here felt the same.

sponk

I'm sure it's a great book because he helped write the Malcolm X biog, but I've heard it's a load of bollocks really.

It's bollocks as biography and probably as a timeline; but as a depiction of slavery that I'd use to open the mind of a young teenager to the suffering of the victims, it works very well still in my opinion.

sponk

Now. This book about slavery isn't true. But What it tells us about slavery is true.