Word: haleys
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Alex Haley's discovery of his roots is not a "whatzit"-it is historical drama. It is an unfolding of the Haley family as Alex Haley learned it. Should the idea of a happy African childhood be so unappealing? Should the idea that black men accepted themselves as proud and great warriors, should the idea that perhaps slavery was not necessarily good for blacks come through-that is to be applauded...
...Roots, Haley...
...psychological event, if not as history, Roots surely transcends its mistakes. Haley called his saga "faction," and therefore it cannot be evaluated merely as history or merely as an entertainment. As either one of those, it fails. Yet as both, in resonance with the long, complex American experience on the subject, Roots is extremely powerful...
...despite his partially amputated foot and love for Bell, she tells him that her first husband was killed for running away and her children sold off, and that now she is pregnant again. If slaves revolt or run away, the family is broken or killed. So Kunta stays. Thus Haley squares with the current theory...
...sense, it does not matter whether what Haley has to say in Roots is literally true - and much of it undoubtedly is. What matters is that, despite a certain mythic stereotyping, Roots is plausible. The only pertinent generalization about slavery may be that it was an immense evil. Roots gives that evil a brutal immediacy. In that process, the years of bondage have assumed a new psychological pertinence for both blacks and whites. Oddly, many whites seem to feel not guilt but an unexpected shock of identification with blacks, while blacks experience a larger shock of pride at glimpsing...