Kunta Kigle Book Report

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Alexander Murray Palmer Haley was an American writer whose works, including Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, centered on the struggles of African Americans. Haley traced his ancestry back to Africa and covered seven American generations, starting from his ancestor, Kunta Kinte. The book was adapted to television series, and woke up an interest in genealogy, particularly among African-Americans. Haley himself once said, that the novel was not so much history as a study of mythmaking: "What Roots gets at in whatever form, is that it touches the pulse of how alike we human beings are when you get down to the bottom, beneath these man-imposed differences." What originally started out as just an interest in his own genealogy, became a publication…show more content…
His first book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), which he co wrote with Malcolm X (1925–1965), was well-received by both critics and the public. The work sold more than five million copies and launched Haley's writing career. Two weeks after the book was completed, Haley began work on his next project, Roots. The tale follows the life of Kunta Kinte, a proud African who was kidnapped from his village in West Africa. After surviving the middle passage (the brutal shipment of Africans to be sold in the Americas), he was made a slave on a plantation in the United States. Haley visited archives, libraries, and research repositories on three continents to make the book as authentic as possible. He even reenacted Kunta's experience during the middle passage by spending a night in the hold of a ship and stripped to his underwear. Haley once commented that he never felt his novel was history but more so a study of myth-making. Published in 1976, covering his ancestry back to Africa spanning over seven American generations, the book was later made into a television mini-series and sparked a conversation for searching our own

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