Having loved Roots the book so much, it was
disappointing to hear claims of plagiarism and fabrication. It looks like there
are two main issues. The section on the ship from Africa pulled largely from another novel,
Harold Courlander's The African (1967). Then for the ending, it appears
that government officials told the griot whom Alex Haley spoke to - who may not
have been a griot at all - to give him a good experience. Therefore, what Haley
found in Africa may not have been real, but he may have thought it was. How the makers
of the mini-series handled both of those sections impressed me.
In The African there is a revolt on ship, and
some time of freedom before being recaptured by French troops. I suspect the
revolt in the mini-series, and possibly even Kunta Kinte's time escaped and
joining an English army were nods to Courlander, and that feels appropriate.
For the issue of plagiarism itself, and being able
to be fooled in Gambia, based on the book Haley only really had three pieces of
information: a name (Kunta Kinte), a place (Camby Bolongo, which would be
Gambia Bolongo, or the Gambia River), and the name of an instrument.
Reading the book, you can see that a lot is filled
in. There are parts of his heritage that he has to imagine and doesn't know. It
makes sense that he would have been researching a lot, where the copying from
Courlander may not even have been intentional. You can kind of tell that when
time passes with only the current events that were well known historically
being discussed in the book. I think Haley felt a limited freedom to invent.
When it gets to Haley's grandparents, there is more
detail, but even then, all that is known of two great-uncles is that one was
angry and one was fat, and that could just come from faces in a picture. Not
all stories get passed down. One reviewer of the mini-series pointed out that
the real Kunta Kinte would have encountered other slaves from Africa, and not been the lone one. Probably,
but if the family lore is that he was from Africa, and that was unique about him, that's
how you remember it.
The most painful thing about the book was how
connections ended. After Kunta was kidnapped, you never find out how his
parents react or about the men his brothers grew to be. We don't know if
Kizzy's parents tried to run away after she was sold, or if their hearts simply
broke. That was how it happened for his family. That was how it happened for
many families.
A thing I loved from the book was how when George
started thinking about buying freedom, it wasn't enough to get his and his
wife's, or even the children and his mother. They also needed their fellow
slaves. When Kizzy was ripped from her parents and immediately impregnated,
they became her new family, and then George's, and that wasn't going to change.
The new mini-series hints at that in the scene where
a newly-returned George talks to Miss Malizy, but it also carries it further.
An escaped Kunta Kinte tries to protect another young soldier, and his grandson
George later tries to do that as well. In both cases, the young men die,
additional losses in a long tally. It is completely understandable, then, that
Fiddler tries to resist his growing affection for Kunta Kinte, and that Mingo
tries not care about anyone, let alone George. It is also appropriate that they
fail. Attachments form. They bring pain, but they don't only bring pain. So
when George tells Cyrus that they are his family if he wants them to be, of
course he does. He could not be any other way.
That brings us to the last scene. There is a
familiar face again, with Laurence Fishburne as Alex Haley writing. He narrates
that truth can only be known as stories, reminding us that we have been shown
things that are possible, but we don't know.
The scene in the book where Haley is embraced by
people he believes are his distant relatives is really moving, and knowing it
could be based on a lie, it wouldn't have been right to film that. Instead,
they have two of the people he has been writing about come stand behind him,
and put their hands on his shoulders. That seemed so impossibly cheesy, and
completely incongruous with all that had come before. I should have known it
wasn't going to end there.
The room opens up and they move forward and there
are old photos, and then others step out of the photos, and they recognize
Haley and he recognizes them, because they are family. That is true.
I have two personal experiences I want to share.
In family lore, my great-grandfather left Tennessee because he didn't
like his stepmother. My great-great-grandfather was married three times and had
fourteen children. Because of my great-grandfather's side, I thought of his
father as being kind of selfish - just keep getting married and having more
kids instead of focusing on the ones you have.
I felt that until some distant cousins compiled a
genealogy, and they included a letter from the last surviving child of the
fourteen. She was raised by relatives for the most part, and she wrote that her
father just wasn't much of a hand with the kids.
That was when I imagined how hard it was to keep
being widowed, and to believe you need a woman to take care of the children and
to lose her again, and it looked different. I could feel something different
for him then.
The other is getting to know the family on my
mother's side. We knew about each other before, we were connected before, but
then when you have spent time together, and talked, and you look at the
pictures and recognize each one instead of it just being a photo, that's what happens.
I recognize you. I know you. I love you.
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