Word: haleys
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Fleshing out the story, Haley was able to write the African section of the book in great detail having done extensive research in libraries and archives in over 50 cities on three continents, and having interviewed African "griots," the village storytellers. For Haley, these men of an ancient profession symbolized "how all human ancestry goes back to some place, and some time, where there was no writing. Then, the memories and the mouths of the ancient elders were the only way that early history of mankind got passed along...
Inspired by his grandmother's original narrative, Haley present a view of African life striking in its immediacy...
...only do Haley's words splatter the reader's body with the warm blood of the newborn child, but he later succeeds in sensitizing the reader's mind to the society this child has been born into...
...Haley's narrative of the three generations of slaves in his family, dating from 1767 to the Civil War, is as keen as his African chapters. To ensure an accurate depiction of his ancestor's crossing of the Atlantic in a slave ship, Haley took a freighter from Africa to the United States, climbing down into the ship's cold dark cargo hold to lie on the rough planks stripped down to his underwear. Kunta's initial difficulty understanding and respecting American-born blacks, the selling of his daughter to the owner of a distant plantation, rape...
...historical novel, Roots seeks to concentrate on evoking the experience of black family life, in Africa and in America, such as it was. For Haley, the book is a link to a previously neglected past, so all blacks can "know...