Roots: The Saga of an American Family

by Alex Haley

His drinking of liquor deeply offended Kunta, and yet had not a pagan the right to be a pagan?

Sometimes, they told him, as the white and black “young’uns” grew up together, they became very attached to one another.

It took him a long time, and a great many more parties, to realize that they didn’t live that way, that it was all strangely unreal, a kind of beautiful dream the white folks were having, a lie they were telling themselves: that goodness can come from badness, that it’s possible to be civilized with one another without treating as human beings those whose blood, sweat, and mother’s milk made possible the life of privilege they led.

Though they never showed it except to those they loved, and sometimes not even then, he realized at last that they felt—and hated—no less than he the oppressiveness under which they all lived.

The toubob didn’t need to steal his child, he thought bitterly, if his own wife was willing to give her away.

Maybe he got jes’ some l’il spur cuts, or nicks, dat can easy git ’fected.

I don’t think infection was understood until after Louis Pasteur proposed his germ theory in the 1860’s I believe?

“Seem like to me we does be bes’ if we’s been put next to Gawd when we’s young’uns,” said Sister Sarah. She gestured at Virgil in his gran’mammy’s lap. “’Cause dat way we starts out early soakin’ up some ’ligion an’ settin’ sto’ by it.”

He studied the face across the table, thinking bein’ white de only thing he got lef’ . .

President Davis asked all southern white men between eighteen and thirty-five to volunteer to fight for up to three years, and ordered that of each ten male slaves on any plantation, one should be turned over for unpaid war labor.

After singing a baritone solo, “In the Garden,”

I just felt like I was weeping for all of history’s incredible atrocities against fellowmen, which seems to be mankind’s greatest flaw . . . .

Along with my frustration, the more a rage grew within me the more I perceived to what degree the slave trade, in its time, was regarded by most of its participants simply as another major industry, rather like the buying, selling, and shipment of livestock today.

Since I wasn’t yet around when most of the story occurred, by far most of the dialogue and most of the incidents are of necessity a novelized amalgam of what I know took place together with what my researching led me to plausibly feel took place.