In the following essay, Gerber examines the social and popular culture phenomenon of Roots-inspired interest in family ancestry and African culture.

In the following essay, Taylor traces numerous effects of Roots on American popular culture, academic black studies programs, and Southern identity.

In the following essay, Fishbein discusses the merits and shortcomings of the use of television drama as a medium for preserving history.

In the following essay, Blayney discusses similarities between the Roots portrayal of Africans and the portrayal of North Americans as the mythical “noble savage.”

In the following essay, Griffin examines the use of violence as symbol in Roots.

In the following essay, Miller traces parallels in Roots between the mythological Roman Vulcan, patron of arts and crafts, and the character of Kunta Kinte, craftsman and himself a mythical character to generations of his descendants.

In the following essay, Othow discusses Roots as a modern epic that has wide cultural appeal because it embodies the ongoing human search for meaning.

In the following essay, Rattley questions the premise that Haley's book and widely-acclaimed mini-series will have a significant impact on civil rights and issues of equality in the United States.

In the following essay, Skaggs compares Roots with Richard Wright's Native Son.

In the following essay, Marsh traces the significance of three major crafts—carving, weaving, and blacksmithing—in the multi-generational saga of the African family traced in Roots.

In the following essay, Boyd examines passages in Roots that author Harold Courlander charged were plagiarized from his novel, The African.

Ever since Alex Haley's best-selling documentary novel (or "faction," as he described it) "Roots" first appeared, in 1974, and then reappeared, on television, in 1977, still as "Roots" (or "Roots I"),… and then reappeared again a few weeks ago, as "Roots: The Next Generations" (or "Roots II") … the story of Mr. Haley's efforts to retrace his lineage to its African beginnings has been talked about ...

In the following essay, West questions the veracity of Haley's ancestral and historical claims in Roots.

For all its moving, tender, and grisly historic vividness, Roots remains what psychologists call an "ambiguous stimulus," one which is selectively restructured by the observer who is participant. This is not to despair in solipsism, but to emphasize the omnipresence of subjectivity in the never-detached observer; and to stress equally that that subjectivity can be a tool either for un-self-conscious indulgence, or for disciplined engagement. (p. 12) For me, what is refreshing about Haley...

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 ...

After a decade of research in Africa, Europe and the United States [Alex Haley] was able to piece together his family tree. [Roots], although represented as nonfiction, is a monumental novel, a Forsyte Saga of a part-African, part-Irish, part-Cherokee family…. Written mostly in slave dialect, it is crammed with raw violence and makes valid demands on the tearducts of the dourest reader. (p. 23)

As the reconstruction of a genealogy, Haley's [Roots] is a tour de force…. [It] reminds us how even in appallingly adverse circumstances blacks often maintained, through oral traditions, a full account of their lineage and a proper sense of their individual identities. Skillfully, Haley checked his oral history against surviving written documents, and the family tree that he has outlined seems not just plausible but authentic. It is easy to accept Haley's statement: "To the best ...

In the following essay, Crawford reviews Roots.

Perhaps it is time … to take a close, steady look at the phenomenon that is Roots: what lies at the bottom of its pandemic appeal, what magic does it proffer, and to whom? Three sorts of magic, subtly blended to serve as all things to most people, can be directly identified. To begin with, the magic of the placebo. Roots purports to deal with diseases in the American body politic and the harsh medicine necessary for a cure. But it proves unspeakably mild and conciliatory in fact…. Haley has th...

This saga of one man's twelve-year search for his ancestral origin [Roots] owes its success chiefly to white American guilt and Afro-American consciousness…. The Newsweek critique that Roots 'will reach millions of people and alter the way we see ourselves' is one certainly not to be applied to black Africans, who will question the sanity of any man who feels that his ancestral origins are of such significance as to warrant a twelve-year and half-a-million mile search. The inevit...

In terms of political impact, the three most important literary milestones may well turn out to be, first, the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852; second, the collective Black creative eruption of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s; and now, thirdly, Alex Haley's work of "fact-ion," Roots…. [Whether] this particular work itself continues to be read or not, its impact at the point of its birth has been sufficiently extensive to ma...

[Roots] symbolizes the connection of black Americans—and, by association, all Americans—to Africa itself. Roots is part of the growing body of literature helping to rediscover the heritage of black Americans which has been outlawed, ignored, or forgotten over the generations. (p. xliii) As literature the work has faults, but none which over-shadow the rightness of its general conception or the triumph of Haley's imagination.

"Roots," which, on television at least, started out as an entertainment and evolved into a sociological phenomenon, has finally turned into a self-contained environment…. "Roots" emerged from the TV screen like a massive tapestry, every square inch imprinted with artifacts of slavery and the period which it ominously dominated. The show's impact on whites as well as blacks is still being studied, but there is almost total agreement that, despite its obvious flaws, &...

Roots, meaning the beginning, captures the essence of an African people. It is the cultural history laid bare upon the canvas of time devoid of the misconceptions and misinter-pretations of a people rationalizing their sins against humanity. It sutures the wounds that European and American historical scalpers presented to Blacks as the truth about their heritage in an effort to enslave their minds as well as their bodies…. [This] psychological warfare was the most grevious of all crimes wrought upon ...

In presenting [the story of Roots] as a novel, Haley has maximized its popular appeal and captured the spirit of its oral tradition. In fact Roots may be regarded as the first serious challenge to existing popular mythology on the black man's past—that blacks are without a past, without a culture of their own and therefore, an inferior and unworthy people. If Haley had chosen to provide a factual report of his family's history, it might have had no greater impact than as a quaint and in...

In its seventh and final installment, "Roots: The Next Generations" changes shape. Set in the 1960's, it presents an Alex Haley who is a more complex and sharp-edged character than many of his now-famous forebears. And it places him in highly charged situations in which the battle lines aren't clearly drawn. If the earlier episodes, however sweeping, had a tendency to be black and white in outlook as well as subject matter, the conclusion of the series is something else again. Th...

Will Alex Haley's ancestors reconquer American television? After seeing three of [the 14 hours of Roots: The Next Generations], I'd have to give a provisional no. With all its whippings and thrashings and swoony palpitations, [Roots I] had a pulpy-moralistic excitement reminiscent of that other world-shaking race melodrama, Uncle Tom's Cabin…. [Roots II is] an expensive show-and-tell lecture about Black History and Black Pride, forlornly parading forth good intentions…. [A...