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Mar 20, 2008

Ebookwormy rated it:

This book was astonishing to me - particularly the narrative of Kunta Kinte's life. This is why I read! What an amazing description of African culture and the rights of manhood. Then, the horrible violation of the character by slavery and the cross-cultural experience of an African joining slaves who were predominately born in the United States. Sounds silly, but though I've read many books on slavery, none have dealt with the differences among slaves themselves and how growing up as a slave sha More...

14 comments like (13 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Ashley rated it:

I honestly can't believe how much I enjoyed this book. It's been sitting on my shelf for about half a year now and I've been wanting to read it as soon as I got it. I always just started another book though and always said "next time."

I finally picked it up 6 days ago and finished it about 10 minutes ago.

The beginning was wonderful. I was so enthralled with Africa and Kunta Kinte and his family and the whole works. The way they lived, the culture, the trad More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Apr 07, 2008

Jennifer rated it:

This is probably the book that started my historical fiction fixation. I read this in my early teenage years along with the Clan of the Cavebear books, Gone With The Wind and the North and South series.

I love how it brings history to life. The characters are real and you can sympathize with their situations -- particularly Kunta Kinte's. It made the horrible practice of slavery real and how it dehumanizing it was. I think that reading it at a young age made me into a more compassion More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Dec 30, 2010

Becky rated it:

I'm so glad that I read this. I'm not sure how much of the story is true, but I'd like to believe it all is.

I love history when it tells a story. Endless facts and figures and dates are boring and tedious, which is exactly what "Roots" isn't. Almost from the first page, I felt that the people being described were REAL people, not characters someone has created out of nothing. The story of Kunta Kinte and his descendants really touched me in their determination to keep not More...

10 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Max rated it:

"Roots" has always been one of those books I knew I had to read eventually. It's just one of those "important" books that everyone brags about actually reading.

I inherited it from a friend about 6-7 years ago and it's been on my shelf looking impressive since then. I like to mix in heavy books with my lighter books for balance and knew eventually I'd have to get to that one. And after a summer of comic books and books about wizards and vampires, I knew it was tim More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 21, 2010

Suvi rated it:

I appreciate the author's research of his own roots and the overall message this book has. The problem I had with it was that the writing style was uninteresting. It wasn't bad but it made the characters too two-dimensional for me to enjoy the story overall. They were all empty and I couldn't cheer for them or feel for them. But I understand why the book is important to some and why it has the position it has, I just didn't notice the literary value it supposedly has. Plus the plagiarism ac More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 25, 2010

Linda rated it:

"Roots" is the supposed genealogical recounting of Alex Haley's African roots to his great-great-great grandfather, Kunta Kinte, a Mandinka tribesman who was captured and sold into slavery. The story follows Kunta through his upbringing in Gambia, capture, voyage across the sea, sale, attempted escapes, mutilation at the hands of slave capturers, marriage to slave housekeeper and the birth of his daughter Kizzy. The story then follows Kizzy's sale to another owner and the birth of her More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 14, 2010

Megan rated it:

This is a re-read for me. I was fourteen the first time I read it and loved it so I thought I would spend some time this summer and re-discover it. I forgot how hard the first 200 pages are to get through. Kunta's time in Africa is definitely necessary for the story, but for me it gets long. I love the parts of the story when he is on the boat and when he reaches America. I am just now really getting into the story and I am at page 230. I love this book. I love the way Alex Haley tell's the stor More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 20, 2008

Katie rated it:

I put off reading this epic for quite awhile due to the size, but I am extremely glad that I finally checked it off my list. It is a highly researched, multigenerational story that spans 200 years of one family, the key ancestor being a Mandinka man named Kunta Kinte who was renamed Toby by his slave owners. Kunta's story is told, beginning with his birth in an African village, including his kidnapping and horrific journey to America, chained within the disgusting hold of a slave ship. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 26, 2007

Stephy rated it:

Roots was an incredible Tome when it came out. I caught some of it on teevee, but not all. I waited for the paperback, because I couldn't move the hardcover. I read it and wept, laughed, cheered and was outraged again at the fact of slavery, and the way America ignores this nasty little secret in our past.

Alex Haley is a master storyteller, and I was completely pulled into the story. I made mental pictures of what I read. I have always done that. Some of the pictures I saw made it ha More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 18, 2008

Kristine rated it:

I think I read this book about when I was 9. It was summer and it was on my parents shelf so I picked it up to read. I LOVED IT! Even at such a young age. I remember it took me a while to finish but it was compelling, so I kept reading (it's 900 pgs). I think reading the vivid imagery of the slave trade and their treatment was one thing that helped me develop a lot of compassion -- I CARE so much (ok probably too much) about those who've been wronged. And WOW did it open my eyes!! After r More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 15, 2007

Heidi rated it:

I have always wanted to read Roots, but I've been putting it off because it was such a large read. I finally finished it, and I must admit, I was overwhelmed by the immense effect it had on me. Rarely does a book bring me to tears, but when I finally got to the end and Alex Haley, (great, great, great, great grandson of an African Slave) finally returned to Africa to meet his tribe I was overcome with emotion. Because of Alex Haley's incredible ability to tell his family's story from generation More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 03, 2011

Laurie rated it:

I'm reading this for the second time and it's just as good the second time around. It's such a long book, but so worth the time investment. I'm partially listening on CD and I love the way the reader brings the characters voices to life. Kunte Kinte is one of the strongest, most well-developed characters in all of literature. He's the male version of Jane Eyre to me. One of the best books ever written about the plight of slaves in America.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 22, 2008

Debbie rated it:

I read this book for the first time when I was in middle school and it simply blew me away. The book is a mix of biography and historical fiction, based on Haley's research of his family history.

The story starts when a young African boy named Kunte Kinte is kidnapped and brought to America as a slave. He survives a harrowing journey on the slave ship and refuses to give in to despair. He is sold to a Virginia planter and spends the rest of his life as a slave.

The sto More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 27, 2007

Garrett rated it:

This is a great, epic, jewel of cultural history and storytelling. It was hard for me to get through because the characters and the story wandered and did frustrating things. I did not really understand why and what was going on really until the end. It all comes together so beautifully that it is well worth the time spent getting there. I learned much of what I know about the ugly legacy of slavery the US is built upon by reading this book, which perhaps speaks only to my ignorance when i r More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 12, 2009

Claire marked it as to-read

I have just been having my daughter and I watch the tv mini-series based on this book; both because of Obama's historic inauguration coming up, and because she is studying American History this year.

And it's been just as jolting and uncomfortable for me as I thought it would be, but for additional reasons than what I expected.

Of course all the humiliation and degradation and viciousness of the white population is horrifying.

But there were significant things t More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 18, 2012

Enrique rated it:

I first read this book at the age of eight. Most would think that is a fairly long novel for someone that age to understand, let alone read. By this time I had already devoured Black Boy and Native Son by Richard Wright, and I was thinking about what my next read would be at the time. My mother had tons of black literature on her bookshelf, and I read all of them, except Roots. I was always intimidated by it's thickness. I remember watching television around that time and seeing that the roots More...

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Nov 24, 2011

Amarise marked it as to-read

While in between books, I picked up Roots, a book I've had for about 5+ years or so now. I held onto it without reading it because I knew that there would be a time I would move and not have a library convenient. {Been buying books for later for that purpose & holding onto Diary of a Wimpy Kid series that my 14 y/o read and finished, so that my 9 y/o can read and a couple others}...I have read through to chapter 8 in Roots thus far. I happened to have found Roots in a thrift store of all places, More...

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Oct 16, 2011

Joe rated it:

Giving Roots anything less than 5 stars would sort of be like lighting a cigar with The Diary of Anne Frank or punching Nelson Mandela in the face, (both on my bucket list, jk), but truly Roots deserves any accolade thrown at it.
Not only was Roots, as I expected, an mesmerizing work of historical research, it also reads like a novel of the highest quality, (which I did not expect.)
The bulk of the book is devoted to the life of Kunta Kinte both in Africa and in America, with steadily at More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 21, 2011

Bishope rated it:

I listened to the 29-hour unabridged audiobook, read by Avery Brooks. It was my very first audiobook ever and I couldn't have chosen anything better. Mr. Brooks' commanding voice brought the words and story alive in a way that I cannot describe. It was far more vivid and vibrant than it would have been reading it myself. I will never give up reading, but I am a true audiobook convert from now on and look forward to another way in which it devour books and increase my reading. I have a mindless c More...

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Jul 05, 2011

Adil rated it:

The story of a narrative that was carried down from generation to generation. Kunta Kinte, a member of the Mandinka tribe, was captured and enslaved at the age of fifteen. Brought to America perilously on a disease-ridden ship, Kinte was sold to a slaveowner somewhere in the southern part of the United States. Eventually, Kinte married another slave on that slaveowner's plantation and fathered a daughter. He told his daughter all about his African upbringing, seeking to prolong the knowledge of More...

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May 06, 2011

Oliver rated it:

Alex's Haley's Roots is an epic journey through African American heritage, beginning with slaves stolen from Africa, transported to the states in ships and mistreated to the extreme, sent to work and live on plantations in the South, usually picking cotton, and then their dreams and actions taken toward liberation, towards being free blacks and their slow but eventual "assimilation" into American society as equals. Obviously this is just one family's story but I believe it provides i More...

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Mar 19, 2011

Erika rated it:

This book is very difficult for me to review. The beginning is horrible and mind-numbingly boring. Some baby is born in Africa, and without providing a reason for us to care, Haley provides every last little detail of some baby's life. I had to skip about a hundred pages of this part, in hopes of something actually happening once the boring baby gets captured. After he does, the book moves from unreadably dull to tolerable only in very small pieces read with a determination to get through this More...

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Dec 28, 2010

Melinda rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Oct 10, 2010

Rick rated it:

Alex Haley is a great writer and Roots was initiated a generation of African Americans to research their family history. I remember seeing the mini-series when I was nine but couldn't remember the content or details. The book is well written and it goes through the generations of Haley's family history from Kunte Kinte (actually the story includes Kunte's father and mother) in Africa to his being kidnapped and enslaved and taken to America all the way through to the slaves are freed by President More...

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Sep 01, 2010

Alexander rated it:

One of the main reasons that i decided to read this book was because i recognized the name. "Roots"-- nice and simple. When i was in eighth grade, i had watched "Roots: The Miniseries" in class, and i remember it being extremely moving and emotional. Just one episode made half the kids in my class cry, and watching the whole series made me realize the severity, pain and anguish that many slaves went through on their forced journey to America. Furthermore, the series made me s More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 13, 2010

Lindsay rated it:

I had wanted to read this book for years but only had a copy of it in my hand recently. I didn't know what to expect but I did believe it would have a powerful message and some great stories. What I didn't know was how much of an understatment that would be.

Alex Haley researched his African Roots to the late 1700s when Kunta Kinta was brought to America on a slave ship. His life was unbearable but he still stayed strong, keeping close to him the manhood lessons he had learned fr More...

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Jul 31, 2010

Christina rated it:

Title:Roots B: Alex Haley total pages:914

Roots by Alex Haley is a story about an african american family living during the slavery days. This story starts off with the birth of a son to his parents omoro and Binta. The babies name is Kunta Kinte. the story goes on to take about the childhood of Kunta Kinte and how he lives a normal life by going to school and gaining new life skills. Then one day he went hunting alone to bring back food for his family. To his surprise he sees a w More...

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Apr 26, 2010

Anjali rated it:

My aunt had been asking me to read this book since ages. Considering that our literary tastes are not very similar, I was apprehensive about reading it. But when she asked me for the nth time if I got a chance to read that book, I figured I better read it and be done with it before she points a gun at me and screams, ‘Read it now’.

Roots is about an African man, Kunta Kinte, who is forcefully brought to America to work as a slave. The book is about his early life in Juffure (now in Ga More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 14, 2010

Amanda B. rated it:

The first time I saw this book was in middle school on my mother’s dresser drawer. Its size was very intimidating and I promised myself that I would get around to reading it sometime in my future. Well this time came about and I was very excited. I remember seeing the movie so reading this book would not only refresh my memory of that but test my ability to take on larger books. I vividly remember first seeing a depiction of slavery in the movie, but I find books to paint more interesting images More...

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