Too many people still believe that Roots is the true story of Alex Haley's ancestors. It is their story, all right, but almost entirely a work of fiction.
Mr Haley's claims to have spent 20 years under-covering his family history were quickly found to be false. The book (even Haley admitted it was a novel, and "largely" fiction) is a work of the imagination, not history. And not even his own imagination. It was freely plagiarized - whole pages intact -from the work of Harold Courlander - who incidentally wasn't an African-American.
Roots is compelling TV, but like Frankenstein or The Shawshank Redemption, it is a work of fiction, and a mistake to read too much into it.
Mr Haley's claims to have spent 20 years under-covering his family history were quickly found to be false. The book (even Haley admitted it was a novel, and "largely" fiction) is a work of the imagination, not history. And not even his own imagination. It was freely plagiarized - whole pages intact -from the work of Harold Courlander - who incidentally wasn't an African-American.
Roots is compelling TV, but like Frankenstein or The Shawshank Redemption, it is a work of fiction, and a mistake to read too much into it.