A narrative history of the family from the birth of Kunta Kinte to the maturity of Haley himself, Roots is a hybrid work. It links the detective skills of a superior investigative reporter to the powers of a would-be fiction writer, and the product is a work of extremely uneven texture but unquestionable final success. (p. 23)
Haley's search for his ancestors is not conducted to discover unvarnished truth but rather, from one perspective, to justify the history of blacks in America—as if that history needed justification. There is a dominant angle of vision in Roots; almost the entire story is seen from the vantage point of a belief in the necessity of social and political justice, which is the principal romantic illusion to inform the text. From an artistic and intellectual point of view there is what may be for some readers a fateful shift of emphasis from the pathos and ingenuity of the author's search for his family toward the elevation of its members to mythical level as accurate representatives of the black race in America, with Kunta Kinte as the archetypal African warrior prince. Side by side in the book, then, exist these twin desires for the illumination of truth and the cultural propaganda. What furthur complicates this odd combination is the absence of radical political belief on the author's part; Haley's values, except concerning the worth of black people, are those of the masses of Americans, to whom the book is in fact dedicated.
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