69 pages • 2 hours read
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
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Background
Historical Context: The Atlantic Slave Trade
Content Warning: This section of the Guide contains graphic depictions of enslavement, including violence, sexual assault, and death associated with slavery. The source material contains frequent use of racial slurs and racist language, which are reproduced in this guide only through quoted material.
The Atlantic slave trade was an operation entailing the capture and sale of African peoples, mainly from West and Central Africa, who were primarily sold in the Americas, including the American colonies and—after the Revolutionary War—the United States. Many European nations participated in the slave trade, including England, Portugal, France, and Spain. Beginning in the 16th century, the Atlantic slave trade existed for more than three centuries. Over the course of the Atlantic slave trade, as many as 12 million African people were transported as property, and as Haley depicts, many died in transit due to disease, starvation, and injuries on the 80-day journey from Africa to the Americas.
Roots addresses both the existing concept of slavery in Africa and the differences between existing forms of both African and European slavery and the chattel slavery of the Atlantic slave trade. In pre-existing forms of slavery, enslaved people still had rights as human beings but were generally seen as laborers and servants. Kunta’s father explains that enslaved people in Juffure could still bring lawsuits against their enslavers, and they were entitled to land, marriage, and property. In chattel slavery, enslaved people are afforded no rights as they are seen entirely as the legal property of their owners. Furthermore, chattel slavery subjects an enslaved person to any punishment or abuse their owner decides to employ, and their children are automatically the “property” of their enslavers. Under chattel slavery, enslaved people are also stripped of familial identity: The Kinte family does not retain the name Kinte as a result of their enslavement in this system, instead taking the last name of whichever planter they are with at the time.
Literary Context: Haley’s Research and the Impact of Roots
Alex Haley acknowledged that Roots is only partially factual, noting that dialogue, settings, and distinct events are often the result of his imagined completion of partial narratives provided by his family or documentation. Haley describes how griots—West African historians, storytellers, and/or musicians—in The Gambia confirmed his family history, which has since been proven false. Haley’s research comes primarily from a single griot, Kebba Kanga Fofana, who is not an actual griot and whose account of Haley’s family history raises doubts due to changing details and lack of separate verification. Historian Donald Wright reports that distinct information about people prior to the 19th century is limited among griots, and he suspects that Haley’s telling of his family history likely created the narratives that can be found among those griots today, creating an instance of circular reporting (Wright, Donald R. “Uprooting Kunta Kinte: On the Perils of Relying on Encyclopedic Informants,” History in Africa, vol. 8, 1981, pp. 205–217). Various details of Kunta’s life in America, as well, are not verifiable, as the Toby that Haley found already lived in America prior to the time he estimates Kunta’s arrival in Annapolis, and Haley has no documentation to affirm his accounts between Kunta’s life and post-Civil War events.
Haley has acknowledged that written records are imperfect and notes that his novel relies more heavily on his family’s oral history. As such, Roots is best described as historical fiction, but its impact on American culture and life is undeniable. Roots generated interest in the connections between contemporary African Americans and their heritages and cultures, which were largely destroyed by slavery. As Haley explains, Kunta Kinte is not necessarily intended as Haley’s ancestor, but as an imagined ancestor for all descendants of enslaved African peoples. Roots reimagines popular American imagery of the 18th and 19th centuries to include stories of the violence inflicted upon and the endurance and strength displayed by early African Americans, and it opens the door for future genealogical studies to restore those links to family history. Though Haley’s personal connection to Roots does not necessarily hold under historical scrutiny, the novels serves as an access point to African American family history.
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