Roots by Alex Haley, first published in 1974
NOTE: This post references graphic content, including rape, torture, beatings, and severe emotional trauma. I won't censor my plot summaries or commentary, as it feels more important than ever that we tell the truth (albeit through a fictional lens here) about slavery and its history in America. While these events have been woven into a tale, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures". So be forewarned and take care of yourself accordingly if you choose to dive in.
Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Kunta's life begins in the warm embrace of his homeland, where he comes of age and begins to harvest and goatherd with the boys and men of his tribe. Once he reaches the third kafo (about 8-12 years old), he undergoes ritual manhood training, the first of the four sons in the family (Lamin, Madi, and Suwadu) to do so.
He returns to the village a "man", moving into his own hut, and makes plans to go on a trip to Mali. Several years pass, and he is now approximately 17 years old. One night, on sentry duty watching guard for the village against white men and invaders, he is brutally captured by slave traders.
After he is savagely beaten, whipped, inspected, and branded, he is chained to a collection of other men and trafficked to the coast and onto a slave ship. Kunta Kinte endures horrors on the Middle Passage, from rolling naked in his own filth and vomit to daily vicious beatings to lice infestations, rampant infection, rats, and lying next to decomposing bodies. He spends two weeks without exposure to sunlight or clean air. They're forced above deck for corrosive cleanings with salt water, where they come to understand the women have been brutally raped again and again, and see that there are also a handful of children who have been captured. Some of the women jump ship, only to be devoured by sharks. Eventually, despite being from different tribes and speaking different languages, a brotherhood develops among the men and the women find ways to sing messages to the men when they are brought above deck. The slaves attempt to gain understanding of their plight, assessing how many toubob (white men) are on the ship and how they might overcome them. They also develop ways of relaying messages using interpreters, sending verbal questions and answers back and forth along the hold. The men are besieged with traps on traps, finding out from the women that traitors working with the slave traders (they call them slatees) are placed in the hold amongst them to listen for plans of rebellion.
They consider many factors, including who will navigate the ship if they kill all the toubobs. They decide they would have to keep hostages under threat of death and make them sail the ship back to their homes. An unsuccessful first rebellion is attempted and viciously suppressed, and the men are planning a second attempt but are thwarted by a fierce storm which floods the hold, killing many of the remaning slaves. After more sickness and endless savage beatings ensue, the communication and plans for rebellion ebbs and then ceases. Kunta says that though he continues to despise his captors, he is so sick and weak that at this point he doesn't care if he lives or dies himself.
They eventually make it to land, where Kunta and his fellow survivors are chained, whipped, and dragged into a house where they wait in terror for what will come next, sure they are going to be eaten by the toubob, as this is the lore they have been raised to believe. Kunta tries to fortify himself to escape, but he is viciously kept captive as they bring him out to a slave auction. He is sold and carted off on a wagon to he knows not where. He is confused by the unknown languages and geography, and surprised to see so many black faces who are not resisting the toubob and seem to be accepting their lot.
Just before they arrive, he overpowers the driver and runs away, but he only makes it to a patch of forest before he is beset by dogs and the slave owner and his men. He is viciously whipped and then brought on the back of a horse to a hut where he is left chained for days. He eventually recovers enough to be forced to work the plantation, in the fields and in other various tasks of menial labor, but he remains chained from sunup to sundown. Another slave attempts to tell him he will now be called "Toby", which Kunta Kinte ignores with disdain. After Kunta's ankle is infected and his shackles are briefly removed, he attempts another escape, only to be captured by Samson, a fellow slave, and dragged back to the plantation. Samson lets him rejoin the group without telling on Kunta, but Kunta knows he is on thin ice. He waits a few more weeks until he is able to get his hands on a loose knife, at which point he makes his third attempt at escape. He is much more successful in how far he gets, but he is foiled by snowfall, which makes his tracks obvious and easy to track. The overseer and his band shoot Kinta in the leg, strip him naked, whip him to within an inch of his life, and return him to the plantation.
He bides his time until his next escape attempt. He pretends to become subservient and acts like the other slaves, who continue to distrust his rebellious nature. He successfully escapes by stowing away on a wagon full of tobacco, and makes it the farthest he has made it yet, though he still has no idea where he is or where he might run to. He is captured again, whipped, and this time, the slave catchers who have been hired to catch him sadistically cut off his right foot while he is tied to a tree. (They offer him a choice between that or his genitals.)
He is handed over to a nearby plantation, belonging to William Waller, who turns out to be the brother of his previous owner, John Waller. He slowly begins to befriend some of the slaves there - Bell, the plantation's cook, who cares for him and offers him new and different foods, Fiddler, an older slave, and the gardener. He holds tight to some of his traditions to maintain his sense of identity, and uses a tracking system to estimate he is about 19 years old now. When the gardener falls ill, Kunta takes on his duties around the plantation, and while he still resents his enslavement and feels different from these 'pagan' blacks who don't worship Allah, he begins to find a kind of near comfort in his existence on this less brutal plantation, which he learns eventually is in a colony called Virginia.
After a series of stories about slave revolts and various happenings in the white man's world, William Waller's driver, Luther, is found out to have helped a runaway slave attempt to make a map, and is sold at slave auction. Kunta Kinte, who is shocked to realize he is now 34 years old, is selected to replace him, and begins to drive his master, a doctor, to various places around town to see patients. Several years pass, and eventually Kunta starts to think about having a family. He quietly and sweetly courts Bell, and when he is 39 years old, they date and eventually get married.
In 1790, Bell gives birth to their daughter, Kizzy. While Bell is delighted by it, Kunta fears and distrusts the friendship that blossoms between Kizzy and Miss Anne, Mr. Waller's niece. Kizzy comes of age, learning bits and pieces of her Mandinka heritage from Kunta, and eventually turns sixteen, falling for a slave boy, Noah. Noah starts to dream of escape, and tells Kunta of his plans. Kunta supports him, but tells him he is under no circumstances to try to take Kizzy. Noah escapes and makes it a little ways away, but after killing two paterollers (slave patrollers) and getting captured, he confesses that Kizzy wrote his false traveling pass. Furious, Waller sells Kizzy south. Kunta is 55 and he and Bell are bereft, but helpless to stop it.
Kizzy is sold to a vicious master in North Carolina, Tom Lea, who immediately rapes her. Kizzy befriends the slaves there, starting with Miss Malizy, who cooks, keeps house, and does the washing. There are two field hands, Sister Sarah and Uncle Pompey, and Mingo, who helps the master with his gamecocks. In 1806, Kizzy gives birth to her first baby (from the master), George. Kizzy wants to name him Kunta or Kinte, but the master names him after a former 'hard working slave'. Kizzy is immediately sent back to the field to work, but Uncle Pompey very kindly constructs little tree-shaded shelters for the baby at each field they have to work so Kizzy can keep an eye on him and nurse him. George grows up, and when he becomes a teenager, he takes an interest in the cockfighting that the master and Mingo engage in. He becomes the master's protégé, even earning some of his own money in 'hackfights', and gets the nickname 'Chicken George'.
In 1827, Chicken George is 'permitted' to marry Matilda from another local plantation and move her to the Lea plantation. In 1828, Matilda gives birth to a son, naming him Virgil after Matilda's father. As George's family grows, he plots with Matilda and later his son Tom, who apprentices as a blacksmith, to save up to buy their freedom. George and the master gamble it all on a series of fights, where Tom plans to retire and George plans to buy the family's freedom, but they lose, and instead, Tom sells/loans George to the English cockfighter who bests him. He claims he will free the family when George returns from England, but gives no suggestion as to when that might be.
When Tom Lea falls on further hard times, he sells Matilda and her children away to the Murray family in North Carolina, leaving Kizzy, Sarah, and Malizy behind. At this point, Mingo and Pompey have died. George eventually returns from England, only to find his master is addled, Kizzy and Sarah have died, and Miss Malizy is experiencing dementia. George manages to steal his freedom papers from a drunken Tom Lea, and he runs to the Murray plantation to look for his family. He reunites happily with the family, but it becomes apparent that he doesn't really have a place there now that he is free and they are not. He also runs into the county sheriff, who informs Mr. Murray that a freed slave can't stay longer then 60 days in North Carolina without being re-enslaved.
When freedom truly takes legal and actual effect and the slave owners finally agree to recognize its validity, Chicken George reunites the family and moves them to Henning, Tennessee, a settlement of whites that claims to 'welcome' blacks. Tom begins to blacksmith, which rankles the whites with his store's success, until he makes it a traveling business (a cart that rolls from town to town) and circumvents their nasty racism. We get bits and pieces of the family's happenings from here, but if you follow my messy tree above, you can see that Tom has many children, including Cynthia, who marries Will. Will and Cynthia have a daughter, Bertha George, who marries Simon Alexander Haley. Bertha and Simon have three sons, the eldest of whom is born in 1921, Alexander (Alex) Haley.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here
Dear Blobbists,
It has been over a year since I have written to you here, and I have read many books (including this one) in the interim. I finished Roots many months ago, but it left me full of feelings and those feelings were also all wrapped up in this being the last of the second set of 100 novels. I want to write a reflection post on finishing the second 100, so be on the lookout for that, but for now, I'll just share my feelings on this fantastic contribution to the literary oeuvre.
As you saw from the plot summary, there's quite a lot that takes place in this novel, as it covers 210+ years of family history, so this blob is going to be a long one, so settle in! That said, if you haven't read this novel, you really should. It's a marvelously crafted narrative and also carries forth supremely important (if incredibly savage) pieces of American history, and should, imo, be required reading for all students.
My thoughts, as usual in no particular order:
Alex Haley's dedication
It wasn't planned that Roots' researching and writing finally would take twelve years. Just by chance it is being published in the Bicentennial Year of the United States. So I dedicate Roots as a birthday offering to my country within which most of Roots happened.
I thought about blogging on this on Juneteenth, but I was still very deeply in my feelings. So I'll offer it as a belated Juneteenth offering to you all.
Alex Haley's acknowledgements
Finally, I acknowledge immense debt to the griots of Africa - where today it is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground. The griots symbolize how all human ancestry goes back to some place, and some time, where there was no writing. Then, the memories and the mouths of ancient elders was the only way that early histories of mankind got passed along...for all of us today to know who we are.
The griots have an absolutely clutch role to play (more on that later) in this particular narrative, and I love the line 'when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground'. It feels really true and resonates as such an important homage to the critical role of oral historians and storytelling in society.
Islam's history in West Africa
For those who don't know me, I have a nephew whose father is West African, specifically Senegalese, and I was surprised when I first found out he was Muslim. To be honest, I knew very little about the continent of Africa or the country of Senegal when my sister first joined the Peace Corps and was stationed there, and I'm not sure what religion I thought would be common there. Anyhoo, I've learned a good deal more about the country and the continent and Islam in the decade plus since that time, but what I also didn't realize was how long Islam had been present in West Africa. I guess I thought that it might have been brought over with colonizers or proselytizers as Christianity largely was, and that's sort of the case, but it actually dates back as early as the 11th century, when some North African traders visited and began settling in the region. I also found out that between 15 and 30% of enslaved people in America were Muslim. Again, I had erroneously thought that a large portion of the Black muslim population in America came about through the Nation of Islam movement in the 1930's and later, but I now realize that a substantial portion of the enslaved population was Muslim to begin with and this was either viciously stripped from them or they were forced to adopt Christianity as a more 'suitable' religion. Maybe you knew all of this already, readers, but it was news to me! #themoreyouknow
Treatment of women
Okay, so there were many cool and awesome things about Kunta Kinte's life in the Gambia in the late 18th century, but there were also some really not cool elements of their society that I just want to make sure I'm on record as not being a fan of, and the treatment of women is the big one.
- No women are permitted in the Council of Elders (ahem. exqueeze me?)
- Women are subservient to the men, subject to their 'discipline'. (ick)
- Men are married in their 30's, women in their teens. (understand the biology favors this but still not loving it)
- Women must be guaranteed virgins. If proven not to be, husband divorces her immediately. (ick)
Peace only
But however hard they were playing, the children never failed to pay every adult the respect their mothers had taught them to show always toward their elders. Politely looking the adults in the eyes, the children would ask, "Kerabe?" (Do you have peace?) And the adults would reply, "Kera dorong." (Peace only.)
If you've read any of my other blob entries along the way, you may notice that I'm often surprised at how easy it is for me to make connections to the characters, even when we seem to have very different identities or lived experiences, and that was very much the case here. While I am a thirty-something white woman who was born in Pennsylvania in the late 20th century, I found myself having not even six degrees of separation from Alex Haley and Kunta Kinte. A big part of this can be attributed to my older sister serving in the Peace Corps in Senegal, but even that is a bit of a wild and wacky coincidence, since she originally wanted to study abroad in Madagascar, and Senegal was chosen I think somewhat for her (she gave criteria and they matched her).
So here's my little connection game: I looked it up, and it's a 4.5 hour drive from Juffure, the Gambia, to Joal Fadiout, Senegal, which is where my sister lived for most of her time in Senegal and where she met my future and former brother-in-law and the father of my nephew. This man, Lune, grew up in Dakar, a bit farther north, which is where Alex Haley flies into when he later comes to West Africa to seek out his family's history. The language my sister spoke with her former husband and is now teaching my nephew is Wolof, which is one of many languages and tribes/ethnic groups mentioned on the slave ship. Kunta (in this narrative, likely a detail not known or tracked irl) is even shackled to a Wolof man for much of his trip through the Middle Passage. So just like that, Alex Haley and I are woven into the same fabric.
I mention all this here because this is how many folks greet each other in Senegal (at least according to my sister) and occasionally how we greet each other now as well, being in peace only.
Toubob
It's always intriguing (and often horrifying) to understand what it means to be part of a heritage of whiteness, even if race is a construct and whiteness is a figment of our imaginations. I knew this word originally as what everyone called my sister when she came to Senegal, toubab - white person, foreigner. She would hear it as she biked from place to place, from children, etc. It has a much darker meaning in this narrative, as it becomes essentially synonymous with evil.
But almost every night, Kunta got spanked for doing something bad to his baby brother - usually for frightening him by snarling fiercely, or by dropping on all fours like a baboon, rolling his eyes, and stomping his fists like forepaws upon the ground. "I will bring the toubob!" Binta would yell at Kunta when he had tried her patience to the breaking point, scaring Kunta most thoroughly, for the old grandmothers spoke often of the hairy, red-faced, strange-looking white men whose big canoes stole people away from their homes.
I had this realization often as a white woman during my feminist resistance book bingo, this coming to terms with being the villain in many people's stories and realities, but it was still striking to see it here as an actual bogeyman, a devil to Kunta and his family. I know I am not those white people, but I think it's important to be able to grapple with and reckon with a world where you are not the hero, but the villain.
One boy, Demba Conteh, said that a very brave uncle had once gone close enough to smell some toubob, and they had a peculiar stink. All of the boys had heard that toubob took people away to eat them.
Abduction
You would have been too young to remember this. But such things still happen. So never get out of sight of somebody you trust. And when you're out here with your goats, never let them go where you might have to chase them into deep bush, or your family may never see you again.
Never be alone when you can help it. Never be out at night when you can help it. And day or night, when you're alone, keep away from any high weeds or bush if you can avoid it. For the rest of their lives, "even when you have come to be men," said their father, they must be on guard for toubob.
Can you imagine having to live in this constant terror? This knowledge that being alone for any reason is dangerous? When I read this line:
It had happened for several days before Kunta realized that he had never before been completely away from other people for any real length of time.
It reminded me that when my sister's ex-husband, Lune, first came to the States, I remember him saying he felt so lonely, especially when we would go to my hometown in the rural suburbs. I didn't understand at all at first, as I know many people there and also enjoy solitude, but I came to understand that he was used to being surrounded by family, friends, people who looked and thought and worshiped like he did, and how isolating and frightening this country must be for him sometimes. I also realized that there's likely a cultural reason (beyond just tribal or village living) that people weren't left alone or encouraged to be alone, given this history, and that that likely carried forward into future habits.
The darker the berry
When Kunta asked his mother why, she told him to run along. So he asked his father, who told him, "The more blackness a woman has, the more beautiful she is." "But why?" asked Kunta. "Someday," said Omoro, "you will understand."
I love this line, and love the celebration of darker skin in particular, given the complicated status and pigmentocracy that dark-skinned women of color tend to experience at least in America.
Lamin
I loved Lamin, because the relationship that Haley crafts between Kunta and Lamin felt so human, so natural, so very sibling-esque. As a youngest sibling, in particular, I could relate. ;)
In spite of himself, he began to regard his little brother as something more than a pest.
When Lamin fell from a low tree he was trying to climb one afternoon, Kunta showed him how to do it right. At one time or another, he taught his little brother how to wrestle (so that Lamin could win the resepct of a boy who had humilitated him in front of his kafo mates); how to whistle through his fingers (though Lamin's best whistle was nowhere near as piercing as Kunta's); and he showed him the kind of berry leaves from which their mother liked to make tea.
Why are some people slaves and others not?
Alex Haley does a really lovely job of exploring and explaining the existing relationship to slavery in the Gambia, as it does exist in the country already, outside of slave catchers and kidnappers. And by lovely I obviously don't mean that any slavery is lovely, it's obviously a cruel and vicious practice to own a human being, but it's thoughtful and points out in some ways how much more brutal and savage the American form of slavery was. Here's a conversation between Kunta and his father Omoro about it.
Though all he had named were slaves, he said, they were all respected people, as Kunta well knew. "Their rights are guaranteed by the laws of our forefathers," said Omoro, and he explained that all masters had to provide their slaves with food, clothing, a house, a farm plot to work on half shares, and also a wife or husband. "Only those who permit themselves to be are despised," he told Kunta - those who had been made slaves because they were convicted murderers, thieves, or other criminals. These were the only slaves whom a master could beat or otherwise punish, as he felt they deserved.
Kunta goes on to learn that a local woman in town whom he reveres and loves, Nyo Boto, is a slave, and marinates and reflects on what it means to be enslaved.
The Life of Kunta Kinte
As I've done in some of my posts, I'd like to share the story of Kunta Kinte through a series of vignettes from the book.
- Little Kunta basked thus every day in his mother's tenderness.
- Wiping the sweat from his brow, it seemed to Kunta that his people were always enduring one hardship or another - something uncomfortable or difficult, or frightening, or threatening to life itself.
- As far back as time went, Kunta guessed, the lives of the people had been hard. Perhaps they always would be.
- What sins was he being punished for in a manner such as this?
- Kunta knew that he would never see Africa again. ugh, can you imagine knowing you would not only never see your home (town, village, etc) again, but you would never see your home country or your home continent again?
- The more Kunta heard, the more his rage became as great for others as for himself.
- His heart sank with the thought that he would never again be able to listen to his father, that for the rest of whatever was going to be his life, he was going to have to think for himself. what a heavy heavy thought to bear.
- Dying held no fear for him anymore. Once he had decided that he would never see his family and home again, he felt the same as dead already.
- Why not die now? What better time was going to come?
- But even if he managed to escape, where would he run? Where could he hide in this strange land? he knew the country around Juffure as he knew his own hut, but here he knew nothing whatever. What a horrifyingly effective tactic to enslave people from a literally different continent, leaving them without any understanding of the geography, topography, flora, or fauna.
- What kind of blacks where those who looked down upon their own kind and worked as goats for the toubob? Where had they come from? They looked as Africans looked, but clearly they were not of Africa.
- Why had Allah turned his back? What thing so terrible had he ever done? He tried to review everything of any significance that he had ever done - right or wrong - up to the morning when he was cutting a piece of wood to make himself a drum and then, too late, heard a twig snap. It seemed to him that every time in his life when he had been punished, it had been because of carelessness and inattention. This line just broke me. It feels like it so poignantly captures this internal monologue of Kunta's, a teenager who has been raised to believe that punishment comes when you have erred, and then is faced with this savagery without reason or recourse.
- Kunta knew only that he must escape from this dreadful place - or die in the attempt. He dared not dream that he would ever see Juffure again, but if he did, he vowed that all of The Gambia would learn what the land of toubob was really like.
- If it was dogs or men, wounded buffalo or hungry lions, no son of Omoro Kinte would ever entertain the thought of giving up.
- It seemed to him that for moons without end, all that he had known was being tracked and attacked and captured and chained.
- These black ones seemed to have no concern in their lives beyond pleasing the toubob with his lashing whip. But no matter how long he stayed among them, Kunta vowed never to become like them, and each night his mind would go exploring again into ways to escape from this despised land.
- He would have given anything to hear even a sentence of Mandinka, or any other African tongue.
- One night, when Kunta had fallen asleep but drifted again into wakefulness, as he often did, he lay staring up into the darkness and feeling that Allah had somehow, for some reason, willed him to be here in this place amid the lost tribe of a great black family that reached its roots back among the ancient forefathers; but unlike himself, these black ones in this place had no knowledge whatsoever of who they were and where they'd come from.
- He was beginning to realize that like the Mandinkas' own secret sira kango language, these blacks shared some kind of communication known only among themselves.
- Back in his hut later that night reflecting upon what he had seen, it occurred to Kunta that in some strong, strange, and very deep way, the blacks and the toubob had some need for each other.
- He wanted to die, so that his soul could join the ancesterors; he wanted to be done forever with misery unending in this toubob land, so stifling and stinking that he couldn't draw a clean breath in it.
- It wasn't until the next morning that Kunta began to think about where he was going. He hadn't let himself think of it before. Since he couldn't know where he was going because he didn't have any idea where he was, he decided that his only course was to avoid nearness to any other human beings, black or toubob, and to keep running toward the sunrise.
- It was like a nightmare repeating itself. He couldn't run any farther.
- Was it possible that anyone would really chop off another's foot? It was unbearable - except that somehow he was bearing it.
- He longed to be a warrior in a great black army slaughtering toubob as fast as his arms could swing.
- What good was he anymore - alive or dead?
- Kunta sensed that the othe rblacks didn't trust him any more than he trusted them.
- It made him want to both laugh and cry that someone was actually talking to him as one human being to another.
- Fiddler: "Ain't hardly nothin' ain't done to n*s, an' if dey die 'cause of it, ain't no crime long as dey's owned by whoever done it, or had it done. Dat's de law."
- To Kunta's astonishment, he began to discover that he was becoming able not only to understand but also to make himself understood to the brown one in a rudimentary way. And the main thing he wanted him to understand was why he would rather die a free man on the run than live out his life as a slave.
- "Ain't hardly nobody ain't thought about runnin'. De grinnin'est n*s thinsk about it. But ain't nobody I ever knowed ever got away."
- Though it shamed him to admit it, he had begun to prefer life as he was allowed to live it here on this plantation to the certainty of being captured and probably killed if he tried to escape again. Deep in his heart, he knew he would never see his home again, and he could feel something precious and irretrievable dying inside of him forever. But hope remained alive; though he might never see his family again, perhaps someday he might be able to have one of his own.
- Kunta could understand their having to do what they were told, but why did they seem to enjoy it so much? And if the whites were so fond of their slaves that they gave them presents, why didn't they make them really happy and set them free? But he wondered if some of these blacks, like pets, would be able to survive, as he could, unless they were taken care of. But was he any better than they were? Was he all that different?
- Kunta lay on his mattress at night for weeks afterward thinking about 'freedom'. As far as he could tell, it meant having no massa at all, doing as one wanted, going wherever one pleased. But it was ridiculous, he decided finally, to think that white folks would bring blacks all the way across the big water to work as slaves - and then set them free. It would never happen.
- He was thirty-four rains old! He had been in the white man's land as long as he had lived in Juffure. Was he still an African, or had he become a n*, as the others called themselves? Was he even a man? It was as if The Gambia had been a dream he'd had once long ago. Or was he still asleep? And if he was, would he ever waken?
- at 37, after meeting Boteng, the Ghanaian - "Day by day, year by year, he had become less resisting, more accepting, until finally, without even realizing it, he had forgotten who he was.
- And she did cook endless good things in her black pots. Kunta's thoughts to himself when he considers her prospects as a future wife.
- When Kunta Kinte makes her a mortar and pestle - She examined its painstaking carving with astonishment; and then she began to cry. It was the first time in her twenty-two years on the Waller plantation that any man had made something for her with his own hands. This is such a wonderful moment, where Kunta is mimicking traditions from home, and also eloquently highlights the complete lack of personal property or belongings that many slaves experienced.
- For the next two weeks, beyond exchanging greetings, neither of them said anything to each other. Then one day, at the kitchen door, Bell gave Kunta a round cake of cornbread. Mumbling his thanks, he took it back to his hut and ate it still hot from the pan and soaked with butter. He was deeply moved. Almost certainly she had made it with meal ground in the mortar he had given her. This moment was so darling.
- With her warmth always beside him, Kunta greatly enjoyed sleeping in Bell's tall bed on its soft mattress, filled as it was with cotton instead of straw or cornshucks. Her handmade quilts, too, were comfortable and warm, and it was a completely new and luxurious experience for him to sleep between a pair of sheets. Another connection point! I love sleeping under my mother's handmade quilts. I wonder if any quilts made their way along Alex Haley's family, passed down from generation to generation.
- "Don't care how good de massa is, I gits to feelin' like if you an' me was younger'n we is, I believes I'd be ready to leave 'way from here tonight." As Kunta sat there astonished, she said quietly, "Reckon I'se got to be to too old and scairt now." This conversation where Kunta realizes that Bell is just as covetous of freedom as he is feels so acutely painful when you realize that they are physically too old and mentally too terrified to try again.
- Kunta makes Bell a doormat out of bulrushes with a Mandinka design in the center, which she says she will allow no one will walk on
- She knits him a pair of woolen socks, one with half of a foot to fit his unique leg
- Kunta explained that in Mandinka "Kizzy" meant "you sit down" or "you stay put", which, in turn, meant that unlike Bell's previous two babies, this child would never get sold away.
- Could not one breathe a word of one's true heritage without fearing punishment from some toubob?
"Missy Anne say she want me fo' her own.""You ain't no doll fo' her to play wid.""I plays wid her, too. She done tole me she my bes' frien'.""You can't be nobody's frien' an' slave both.""How come, Pappy?""Cause frien's don't own one 'nother."
- "White man figger whoever somewhere 'fore him don't count. He call dem savages."
- "Y'all Africans and Injuns made de same mistake - lettin' white folks into where you live. You offered him to eat and sleep, then first thing you know he kickin' you out or lockin' you up!"
- "How you 'spec we gon' know 'bout Africa? We ain't never been dere, an' ain't goin' neither!"
"What you needs most to live here is patience - wid a hard shell."
"Gran'pappy, wherbouts you work at?""What you talkin' 'bout? He glared down at the boy. 'Who tol' you to ax me dat?'"Nobody. Jes' ax you."He decided that the boy told the truth. "Don' work nowheres. I'se free."The boy hesitated. "Gran'pappy, what free is?"
Referents and Reverberations
This is a section where I like to reflect on books or moments in my own life that reminded me of this book, or that this book reminded me of, whether they came before this book (a referent) or after (a reverberation).
How many Wolof words do you know?
At various points, Haley references different ethnic groups/tribes like Fula, Wolof, Serahuli, Jola, and Serere. As I mention above, my former brother-in-law speaks Wolof, and my nephew is learning some from his mother. When Kunta has a Wolof shacklemate on the slave ship, he thinks hard:
- Every Wolof expression Kunta had ever heard he now dragged from his memory. He knew that the Wolof was doing the same with Mandinka words, of which he knew more than Kunta knew of Wolof words. I thought at this moment of the handful of phrases I know in Wolof, and how terrifying it would be for them to all of a sudden take on such urgent meaning and need.
The first time he had taken the massa to one of these 'high-falutin' to-dos,' as Bell called them, Kunta had been all but overwhelmed by conflicting emotions: awe, indignation, envy, contempt, fascination, revulsion - but most of all a deep loneliness and melancholy from which it took him almost a week to recover. He couldn't believe that such incredible wealth actually existed, that people really lived that way. 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 blod, sweat, and mother's milk made possible the life of privilege they led.
Reminded me of this line from Ta-Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me (published in 2015):
The [American] Dream smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry shortcake. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies.
When you know you have to go
And this exchange between Kunta and Noah, his daughter Kizzy's suitor:
Well, if you gwine run, you gwin run,' said Kunta.
'Don't know 'zactly when', said Noah. 'Jes' knows I got to go.'
Reminded me of this exchange between Dean and Sal in Jack Kerouac's On the Road (published in 1957):
Dean: "Sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there."
Sal: "Where we going, man?"
Dean: "I don't know but we gotta go."
It was and it was not so
Early on in the novel, Haley references a local story teller, and he talks about the way the stories are told:
- And she would begin in the way that all Mandinka story tellers began. "At this certain time, in this certain villabe, lived this certain person."
- When the story-telling griots came, a quick hush would fall among the villagers as they sat around the baobab to hear of ancient kings and family clans, of warriors, of great battles, and of legends of the past.
These lines reminded me of Salman Rushdie and these passages:
- Haroun often thought of his father as a Juggler, because his stories were really lots of different tales juggled together, and Rashid kept them going in a sort of dizzy whirl, and never made a mistake. Where did all these stories come from? It seemed that all Rashid had to do was to part his lips in a plump red smile and out would pop some brand-new saga, complete with sorcery, love-interest, princesses, wicked uncles, fat aunts, mustachioed gangsters in yellow check pants, fantastic locations, cowards, heroes, fights, and half a dozen catchy, hummable tunes. ‘Everything comes from somewhere,’ Haroun reasoned, ‘so these stories can’t simply come out of thin air …?’ Haroun and the Sea of Stories (published 1990)
- It was so, it was not, in a long time long forgot.
- Once upon a time—it was and it was not so, as the old stories used to say, it happened and it never did—maybe, then, or maybe not. The Satanic Verses (published 1988)
Words that were new to me
alimamo - spiritual leader of a Mandinka village
dundiko - a long shirt, often given to boys as they transition into the "Second Kafo" (a group of boys roughly five to nine years old). This transition marks their advancement in age and responsibilities, including learning to herd goats and studying the Quran.
harmattan - a very dry, dusty easterly or northeasterly wind on the West African coast, occurring from December to February
jaliba - a praise singer or griot, a West African historian, storyteller, and musician
kafo - in the Gambia, "Kafo" (also spelled "Kafoh") refers to a traditional social institution or voluntary association, often organized around age and gender. These groups play a crucial role in Gambian society, encompassing various aspects of social life, including mutual support, community development, and cultural practices.
Lines I Particularly Liked
- He didn't know which was his worst enemy: the toubob or his own imagination.
- Kunta's favorite sight was a lonely old oak or cedar in the middle of a field; it would send his mind back to the baobabs of Africa, and to the elders' saying that wherever one stood alone, there had once been a village. At such times he would think of Juffure.
- After marrying Bell - He just couldn't believe how different things were, how much better life was, than it had been just a few months before and a few yards away.
- It occurred to Kunta that far away in Juffure, Binta and Omoro were becoming grandparents, and it saddened him to know not only that they would never see his manchild - or he them - but also that they would never know he'd had one.
- Sometimes, while he drove along, he couldn't help asking himself why it was that his countrymen didn't simply kill every toubob who set foot on African soil. He was never able to give himself an answer that he was able to accept.
- His next word was "Unk'pomp", which made the old man look like he'd swallowed the sunshine.
- Anybody ever sol' ain't gwine never forget it!
- Freedom ain't gwine feed us, it just let us 'cide what we wants to do to eat.
I explain to her that I wanted to try to see if there was any way that I could possibly find where our "Kin-tay" had come from...which could reveal our ancestral tribe.'You go 'head, boy!' exlaimed Cousin Georgia. 'Yo' sweet grandma an' all of 'em - dey up dere watchin' you!'
Perhaps if Alex Haley had tried this process today, he would have had only to go to a computer and search the internet. But it's somehow wildly more romantic and epic that he's doing this in the 1950's and 60's, and therefore has to do everything much more manually.
(2) He heads to the National Archives to find lists of enslaved folks on ships.
(3) He goes to the United Nations building and 'spots the Africans' and says his handful of words to each of them in turn, and eventually hooks up with some African linguistic specialists and discovers that the sounds are Mandinka.
(4) He's told that a student from the Gambia is studying at a nearby college, and so they book a trip to the Gambia together. They arrive in Senegal and meet with a group of gathered men and elders, who amusedly tell Haley that the 'Kamby Bolongo', which Kunta Kinte has faithfully told each generation about, is, of course, the Gambia River, and anyone would know that. Hilariously, Haley tells them that actually NOT everyone knows that, and it's taken him years to get to this point. I love the idea of these Gambian elders being like, oh, yeah, yeah, of course of course, Gambian River, duh.
(5) They tell him about the critical role of griots:
Throughout the whole of black Africa such oral chronicles had been handed down since the time of the ancient forefathers, I was informed, and there were certain legendary griots who could narrate facets of African history literally for as long as three days without ever repeating themselves. THIS IS SO COOL. Three days. Literally 72 hours of history and knowledge and stories just 'on file behind their quiet eyes'. (Fahrenheit-451 nod ;))
They said that we live in the Western culture are so conditioned to the 'crutch of print' that few among us comprehend what a trained memory is capable of.
There is an expression called 'the peak experience' - that which emotionally, nothing in your life ever transcends. I've had mine, that first day in the back country of black West Africa.
Many times in my life I had been among crowds of people, but never where every one was jet black!
I felt somehow impure among the pure; it was a terribly shaming feeling.
(7) He listens to a griot with specialized knowledge of this area of the Gambia and hears him recount the story of a Kunta Kinte:
I sat as if I were carved of stone. My blood seemed to have congealed. This man whose lifetime had been in this back-country African village had no way in the world to know that he had just echoed what I had heard all through my boyhood years on my grandma's front porch in Henning, Tennessee... of an African who always had insisted that his name was "Kin-tay"; who had called a guitar a ko, and a river within the state of Virginia, Kamby Bolongo; and who had been kidnapped into slavery while not far from his village, chopping wood, to make himself a drum.
When the women offer him their babies -- a year later, he understands from a professor, "You didn't know you were participating in one of the oldest ceremonies of humankind, called 'The laying on of hands'! In their way, they were telling you 'through this flesh, which is us, we are you, and you are us!'" I can't read this line without crying.
I guess we had moved a third of the way through the village when it suddenly registered in my brain what they were all crying out...the wizened, robed elders and younger men, the mothers and the naked tar-black children, they were all waving up at me; their expressions buoyant, beaming, all were crying out together, 'Meester Kinte! Meester Kinte!"
Let me tell you something: I am a man. A sob hit me somewhere around my ankles; it came surging upward, and flinging my hands over my face, I was just bawling, as I hadn't since I was a baby. 'Meester Kinte!'I just felt like I was weeping for all of history's incredible atrocities against fellowmen, which seems to be mankind's greatest flaw.
So there you have it, blobbists, my 200th 'classic' (well, really it's my 227th, if you count the books that were series). I'm going to draft a blob post reflecting back on this second list, and I'm also going to post about the 13 book bingos I've completed since I started blobbing, so never fear, you won't be rid of me just yet! ;)
I'll leave you with this final line from Alex Haley, reflecting on his father's passing:
So Dad has joined the others up there. I feel that they do watch and guide, and I also feel that they join me in the hope that this story of our people can help to alleviate the legacies of the fact that preponderantly the histories have been written by the winners.
Until next time, keep each other safe! Keep faith! And keep reading!
