Alex Haley: And the Books That Changed a Nation by Robert J. Norrell

Author:Robert J. Norrell [Norrell, Robert J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Literary Figures, social science, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies
ISBN: 9781466879317
Google: mv5oCAAAQBAJ
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2015-11-10T20:26:23.258908+00:00

8

The Black Family Bible

Lisa Drew handed Haley the copyedited manuscript of Roots on January 23, 1976. Promising to return it with the editor’s queries answered a week later, Haley left with the manuscript and settled into the Commodore Hotel in New York, where in the next two weeks he rewrote the last 183 pages. When he returned the manuscript, it was misplaced in the Doubleday building for a few days. The delay was long enough that the now frantic Lisa Drew did not let Haley see the galley proofs: “I was frankly frightened of risking having him rewrite any more at that point.” Doubleday was working to get the book out several months before the airing of the Roots television series, which, to great relief at Doubleday, was soon postponed until early 1977. This meant that that Haley could travel to promote the book in the fall of 1976.1

Though Roots was advertised as a book that covered seven generations of Haley’s family, it turned out to be far more about slavery than it was about freedom. Over his long years of writing the book, Haley’s dominant concern was establishing his African past. He saw that as his greatest contribution to black American history. The book’s focus also reflected the disproportionate time he had spent on researching and writing about the African and Middle Passage experiences. By the time he got to writing about the family members born after Chicken George’s time—the last four generations—he had to hammer out the remainder in about two months. The ending feels rushed, because the writing of it was rushed. Haley planned to dwell on his family’s post–Civil War experience in a separate book.2

Haley’s attachment to Kunta Kinte overwhelms his interest in other characters and dominates the book. He devoted years of research to creating an idyllic origin for his family in the unspoiled African environment. Kunta’s mother, Binta, and father, Omoro, are perfect parents—well born, wise, and loving—symbols for the original natal family of every black American. Kunta is the African hero, fearless at every turn, until he chooses a peaceful life on the plantation over futile and probably fatal rebellion. He contradicts in every way the archetype of Sambo that Stanley Elkins had presented and that had gained so much attention in the 1960s.

Kunta was the second great hero Haley had created on the page. Kunta and Malcolm X both were examples of fierce, independent, and manly characters, and together they formed a new and cherished archetype for black Americans—and, indeed, for many whites. Haley grappled with issues of identity in writing about Malcolm and then Kunta, and the two may have been proxies, on a subconscious level, for the existential struggles of Haley’s own life. The autobiographical impulse takes over Roots at the end, when Haley narrates his visit to Juffure.3

Though the book flows gracefully for at least the first half, Haley frequently tried to tell the reader too much. He relied on slaves’ speeches in dialect to narrate the history of race in American history.

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