Title:
- Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Authors:
Genres:
Editions:
# | Date | Publisher | Binding | Cover |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 1976-08-17 | Doubleday |
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- Blurb:
- Brought up on the stories of his elderly female relatives -- including his Grandmother Cynthia, who was emancipated from slavery with her family in 1865 -- Alex Haley purported to have traced his family history back to "the African," Kunta Kinte, captured by slave traders in 1767. For generations, each of Kunta"s enslaved descendants passed down an oral history of Kunta"s experiences as a free man in Gambia, along with the African words he taught them. Haley researched African village customs, slave-trading and the history of Blacks in America -- as well as made a personal visit to the griot (oral historian) of his ancestor"s African village -- to produce this colorful rendering of his family"s history from the mid-eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth century.