Reading Alex Haley’s Roots
Toward An Anthropology Of Scriptures
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/post.27507Keywords:
Alex Haley, Roots, scriptures, race, anthropology, identity politicsAbstract
Alex Haley's Roots reframed America's discourse on race. The best selling novel and award winning miniseries centered the nation's history around the experiences of African Americans. The multigenerational saga of Kunta Kinte's descendants and their roots became a paradigm for American dreaming. This essay examines the scriptural qualities of Haley's Roots, contending that the story has had a binding effect on America's racial consciousness. Building on the work of Vincent L. Wimbush and James W. Watts, it approaches Haley's Roots as a case study in the anthropology of scriptures. A discourse analysis of media allusions to Kunta Kinte underscores Roots as an interpretive site around which Americans uproot, route, and root for a sense of meaning. When read critically, Roots provides a vocabulary and grammar for articulating inter- and intra-racial dynamics, but also the politics that accompany the phenomenon of scriptures.
References
Bauer, Margaret D. 2005. “‘[He] Didn’t Come Here on the Mayflower’: A Defense of Alex Haley’s Roots.” Crossroads: A Southern Culture Annual: 377–401.
Bielo, James S. 2009a. “Introduction.” In The Social Life of Scriptures: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Biblicism, edited by James S. Bielo, 1–9. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
———. 2009b. “Textual Ideology, Textual Practice: Evangelical Bible Reading in Group Study.” In The Social Life of Scriptures: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Biblicism, edited by James S. Bielo, 157–175. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Buijzen, Moniek and Patti M. Valkenburg. 2004. “Developing a Typology of Humor in Audiovisual Media.” Media Psychology 6: 147–167. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532785xmep0602_2
Burton, LeVar. 2013. “Tweet to @apotterdd.” 6 November. https://twitter.com/ levarburton/status/398292404950011904. Twitter post.
Carman, John. 2002. “ABC Rejects Its ‘Roots’/NBC, Ironically, to Celebrate Silver Anniversary Miniseries.” SF Gate, January 16. http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment article/ABC-rejects-its-Roots-NBC-ironically-to-2884049.php
Chireau, Yvonne P. 2003. Black Magic: African American Religion and Conjuring Tradition. Berkeley: University of California. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520209879.001.0001
———. 2008. “Conjuring Scriptures and Engendering Healing Traditions.” In Theorizing Scriptures, edited by Vincent L. Wimbush, 119–127. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Clifford, James A. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
Coleman, Larry G. 1984. “Black Comic Performance in the African Diaspora:
A Comparison of the Comedy of Richard Pryor and Paul Keens-Douglas.” Journal of Black Studies 15: 67–78. https://doi.org/10.1177/002193478401500107
Coleman, Robin R. Means and Andre M. Cavalcante. 2012. “Two Different Worlds: Television as a Producer’s Medium.” In Watching While Black: Centering the Television of Black Audiences, edited by Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, 33–49. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Coming to America. 1988. Directed by John Landis. DVD. Hollywood: Paramount Home Video.
Davé, Shilpa S. 2013. Indian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film. Champaign: University of Illinois.
Derrida, Jacques. 1995 [1993]. “Passions: An Oblique Offering.” In On the Name, edited by Thomas Dutoit, translated by David Wood, John P. Leavey, Jr., and Ian McLeod, 3–34. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.
Despoli, Darren. “Haley Heritage Square.” Alex Haley Tribute Site. http://www.alex-haley.com/alex_haley_heritage_square.htm
A Different World. “Perhaps Love,” season 3, episode 25. Directed by Debbie Allen. Originally aired 3 May 1990.
Dyson, Michael Eric. 2007. “Haley’s Comet: A Special Introduction.” In Roots: The Saga of an American Family. 30th anniversary edition, ix–ii. New York: Vanguard.
Edwards, Ben. 2010. Leather Bound, First Edition of Roots from the Collection of Ben Edwards. Photograph.
Fisher, Murray. 1977. “A Candid Conservation.” Playboy, January. Repr. Alex Haley Tribute Site. http://www.alex-haley.com/alex_haley_playboy_interview.htm
Folkert, Kendall W. 1989 “The ‘Canons’ of Scripture.” In Rethinking Scripture: Essays from a Comparative Perspective, ed. Miriam Levering, 170-179. Albany: State University of New York.
Gates, Henry Louis. 1983. “‘Blackness of Blackness’: A Critique of the Sign and the Signifying Monkey.” Critical Inquiry 9: 685–723. https://doi.org/10.1086/448224
———. 1988. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford.
Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard.
Gray, Herman. 1995. Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for “Blackness.” Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
Haley, Alex. 1972. “My Furthest-Back Person-‘The African.’” New York Times, July 16.
———. 2007a [1976]. Roots: The Saga of an American Family. 30th anniversary ed. New York: Vanguard Books.
———. 2007b. “What Roots Means to Me.” In Alex Haley: The Man Who Traced America’s Roots, Reader’s Digest, 158–163. New York: Reader’s Digest Association. Originally published in Reader’s Digest, May 1977.
Hudson, Michelle. 1991. “The Effect of Roots and the Bicentennial on Genealogical Interest Among Patrons of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.” The Journal of Mississippi History 53: 321–336.
Jacobson, Matthew Frye. 2006. Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674039063
Kort, Wesley A. 2008. “Reading Places/Reading Scriptures.” In Theorizing Scriptures, edited by Vincent L. Wimbush, 220–226. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Legg, Sue Guinn. 2012. “Sen. Lamar Alexander Tells Short Stories at Jonesborough Festival.” Johnson City Press (Tennessee), 5 October. http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/article/102737
Lipsitz, George. 1990. Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
Malley, Brian. 2009. “Understanding the Bible’s Influence.” In The Social Life of Scriptures:Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Biblicism, edited by James S. Bielo, 194–205. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Man, Nancy. 2012. “Baby Names from Alex Haley’s Roots.” Nancy Baby Names, 24 April 24. http://www.nancy.cc/2012/04/24/baby-names-from-alex-haleys-roots/
Marmon, William. 1977. “Why Roots Hit Home.” Time Magazine, February 14, 69–75.
Massoud, Paula J. 1996. “Mapping the Hood: The Genealogy of City Space in ‘Boyz N the Hood’ and ‘Menace II Society.’” Cinema Journal 35: 85–97. https://doi.org/10.2307/1225757
Mills, Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills. 1981. “Roots and the New ‘Faction’:
A Legitimate Tool for CLIO?” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 89: 3–26.
Moore, David Chioni. 1994. “Routes: Alex Haley’s Roots and the Rhetoric of Genealogy.” Transition 64: 4–21. https://doi.org/10.2307/2935303
———. 1996. “Revisiting a Silenced Giant: Alex Haley’s Roots—A Bibliographic Essay, and a Research Report on the Haley Archives at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.” Resources for American Literary Study 22: 195–249.
Munger, Frank. 2008. “Laura Lefler’s Thanksgiving Story: Finding the Good.” Frank Munger’s Atomic City Underground. Knoxnews.com, November 26. http://cdn.knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2011/ 11/laura-leflers-thanksgiving-sto.html.gzip
Newton, Richard. 2010. “Gleaning Alex Haley’s Scriptural Roots.” 11 August. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBL6AbD32ts. Video mashup.
Nobile, Philip. 1993. “Alex Haley’s Hoax: How the Celebrated Author Faked the Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Roots.’” Village Voice, February 23.
Olaniyan, Tejumola. 1996. “Uplift the Race!’: Coming to America, Do the Right Thing, and the Poetics and Politics of ‘Othering.’” Cultural Critique 34: 91–113. https://doi.org/10.2307/1354613
Ottaway, Mark. 1977. “Tangled Roots.” The Sunday Times (London), April 10.
Pile, Steve and Nigel Thrift. 1995. “Introduction.” In Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation, edited by Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift, 1–11. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511597244.002
Pryor, Richard. 2002 [1983]. Richard Pryor: Here and Now, DVD. Directed by Richard Pryor. Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures.
Reincheld, Aaron. 2006. “‘Saturday Night Live’ and Weekend Update: The Formative Years of Comedy News Dissemination.” Journalism History 11: 190–197.
Sander, Johanna. 2012. The Television Series Community and Sitcom: A Case Study Aimed at the Genre of Contemporary American Sitcom Television Series. Unpublished PhD thesis, Karlstads Universitet.
Smith, Theophus H. 1995. Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America. Oxford: Oxford.
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1993. What is Scripture?: A Comparative Approach. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.
Taves, Anne. 2009. Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things. Kindle Edition e-Book. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Taylor, Helen. 1995. “The Griot from Tennessee: The Saga of Alex Haley’s Roots.” Critical Quarterly 37(2): 46–62. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8705.1995.tb01053.x
———. 2001. “Everybody’s Search for Roots: Alex Haley and the Black and White Atlantic.” In Circling Dixie: Contemporary Southern Culture Through a Transatlantic Lens, 63–90. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Watts, James W. 2006. “Three Dimensions of Scriptures.” Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 2: 135–159. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v2i2.135
Weiner, Rachel. 2013. “Why Lamar Alexander Quoted Alex Haley.” The Washington Post, 21 January 21. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/ wp/ 2013/01/21/why-lamar-alexander-quoted-alex-haley
West, Kanye. 2004. “Never Let Me Down Lyrics.” Rap Genius. http://genius.com/ Kanye-west-never-let-me-down-lyrics
Wimbush, Vincent L. 1991. “The Bible and African Americans: An Outline of an Interpretive History.” In Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Hermeneutics, ed. by Cain Hope Felder, 81–97. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.
———. 2008a. “TEXTures, GESTures, Power: Orientation to Radical Excavation.” In Theorizing Scriptures, ed. by Vincent L. Wimbush, 1-20. New Brunswick: Rutgers.
———., ed. 2008b. Theorizing Scriptures: New Critical Orientations to a Cultural Phenomenon. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
———. 2012. White Men’s Magic: Scripturalization as Slavery. Oxford: Oxford.
X, Malcolm and Alex Haley. 1999 [1964]. The Autobiography of Malcolm X as Told to Alex Haley. New York: Ballantine Books.
Bielo, James S. 2009a. “Introduction.” In The Social Life of Scriptures: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Biblicism, edited by James S. Bielo, 1–9. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
———. 2009b. “Textual Ideology, Textual Practice: Evangelical Bible Reading in Group Study.” In The Social Life of Scriptures: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Biblicism, edited by James S. Bielo, 157–175. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Buijzen, Moniek and Patti M. Valkenburg. 2004. “Developing a Typology of Humor in Audiovisual Media.” Media Psychology 6: 147–167. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532785xmep0602_2
Burton, LeVar. 2013. “Tweet to @apotterdd.” 6 November. https://twitter.com/ levarburton/status/398292404950011904. Twitter post.
Carman, John. 2002. “ABC Rejects Its ‘Roots’/NBC, Ironically, to Celebrate Silver Anniversary Miniseries.” SF Gate, January 16. http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment article/ABC-rejects-its-Roots-NBC-ironically-to-2884049.php
Chireau, Yvonne P. 2003. Black Magic: African American Religion and Conjuring Tradition. Berkeley: University of California. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520209879.001.0001
———. 2008. “Conjuring Scriptures and Engendering Healing Traditions.” In Theorizing Scriptures, edited by Vincent L. Wimbush, 119–127. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Clifford, James A. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
Coleman, Larry G. 1984. “Black Comic Performance in the African Diaspora:
A Comparison of the Comedy of Richard Pryor and Paul Keens-Douglas.” Journal of Black Studies 15: 67–78. https://doi.org/10.1177/002193478401500107
Coleman, Robin R. Means and Andre M. Cavalcante. 2012. “Two Different Worlds: Television as a Producer’s Medium.” In Watching While Black: Centering the Television of Black Audiences, edited by Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, 33–49. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Coming to America. 1988. Directed by John Landis. DVD. Hollywood: Paramount Home Video.
Davé, Shilpa S. 2013. Indian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film. Champaign: University of Illinois.
Derrida, Jacques. 1995 [1993]. “Passions: An Oblique Offering.” In On the Name, edited by Thomas Dutoit, translated by David Wood, John P. Leavey, Jr., and Ian McLeod, 3–34. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.
Despoli, Darren. “Haley Heritage Square.” Alex Haley Tribute Site. http://www.alex-haley.com/alex_haley_heritage_square.htm
A Different World. “Perhaps Love,” season 3, episode 25. Directed by Debbie Allen. Originally aired 3 May 1990.
Dyson, Michael Eric. 2007. “Haley’s Comet: A Special Introduction.” In Roots: The Saga of an American Family. 30th anniversary edition, ix–ii. New York: Vanguard.
Edwards, Ben. 2010. Leather Bound, First Edition of Roots from the Collection of Ben Edwards. Photograph.
Fisher, Murray. 1977. “A Candid Conservation.” Playboy, January. Repr. Alex Haley Tribute Site. http://www.alex-haley.com/alex_haley_playboy_interview.htm
Folkert, Kendall W. 1989 “The ‘Canons’ of Scripture.” In Rethinking Scripture: Essays from a Comparative Perspective, ed. Miriam Levering, 170-179. Albany: State University of New York.
Gates, Henry Louis. 1983. “‘Blackness of Blackness’: A Critique of the Sign and the Signifying Monkey.” Critical Inquiry 9: 685–723. https://doi.org/10.1086/448224
———. 1988. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford.
Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard.
Gray, Herman. 1995. Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for “Blackness.” Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
Haley, Alex. 1972. “My Furthest-Back Person-‘The African.’” New York Times, July 16.
———. 2007a [1976]. Roots: The Saga of an American Family. 30th anniversary ed. New York: Vanguard Books.
———. 2007b. “What Roots Means to Me.” In Alex Haley: The Man Who Traced America’s Roots, Reader’s Digest, 158–163. New York: Reader’s Digest Association. Originally published in Reader’s Digest, May 1977.
Hudson, Michelle. 1991. “The Effect of Roots and the Bicentennial on Genealogical Interest Among Patrons of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.” The Journal of Mississippi History 53: 321–336.
Jacobson, Matthew Frye. 2006. Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674039063
Kort, Wesley A. 2008. “Reading Places/Reading Scriptures.” In Theorizing Scriptures, edited by Vincent L. Wimbush, 220–226. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Legg, Sue Guinn. 2012. “Sen. Lamar Alexander Tells Short Stories at Jonesborough Festival.” Johnson City Press (Tennessee), 5 October. http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/article/102737
Lipsitz, George. 1990. Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
Malley, Brian. 2009. “Understanding the Bible’s Influence.” In The Social Life of Scriptures:Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Biblicism, edited by James S. Bielo, 194–205. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Man, Nancy. 2012. “Baby Names from Alex Haley’s Roots.” Nancy Baby Names, 24 April 24. http://www.nancy.cc/2012/04/24/baby-names-from-alex-haleys-roots/
Marmon, William. 1977. “Why Roots Hit Home.” Time Magazine, February 14, 69–75.
Massoud, Paula J. 1996. “Mapping the Hood: The Genealogy of City Space in ‘Boyz N the Hood’ and ‘Menace II Society.’” Cinema Journal 35: 85–97. https://doi.org/10.2307/1225757
Mills, Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills. 1981. “Roots and the New ‘Faction’:
A Legitimate Tool for CLIO?” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 89: 3–26.
Moore, David Chioni. 1994. “Routes: Alex Haley’s Roots and the Rhetoric of Genealogy.” Transition 64: 4–21. https://doi.org/10.2307/2935303
———. 1996. “Revisiting a Silenced Giant: Alex Haley’s Roots—A Bibliographic Essay, and a Research Report on the Haley Archives at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.” Resources for American Literary Study 22: 195–249.
Munger, Frank. 2008. “Laura Lefler’s Thanksgiving Story: Finding the Good.” Frank Munger’s Atomic City Underground. Knoxnews.com, November 26. http://cdn.knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2011/ 11/laura-leflers-thanksgiving-sto.html.gzip
Newton, Richard. 2010. “Gleaning Alex Haley’s Scriptural Roots.” 11 August. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBL6AbD32ts. Video mashup.
Nobile, Philip. 1993. “Alex Haley’s Hoax: How the Celebrated Author Faked the Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Roots.’” Village Voice, February 23.
Olaniyan, Tejumola. 1996. “Uplift the Race!’: Coming to America, Do the Right Thing, and the Poetics and Politics of ‘Othering.’” Cultural Critique 34: 91–113. https://doi.org/10.2307/1354613
Ottaway, Mark. 1977. “Tangled Roots.” The Sunday Times (London), April 10.
Pile, Steve and Nigel Thrift. 1995. “Introduction.” In Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation, edited by Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift, 1–11. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511597244.002
Pryor, Richard. 2002 [1983]. Richard Pryor: Here and Now, DVD. Directed by Richard Pryor. Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures.
Reincheld, Aaron. 2006. “‘Saturday Night Live’ and Weekend Update: The Formative Years of Comedy News Dissemination.” Journalism History 11: 190–197.
Sander, Johanna. 2012. The Television Series Community and Sitcom: A Case Study Aimed at the Genre of Contemporary American Sitcom Television Series. Unpublished PhD thesis, Karlstads Universitet.
Smith, Theophus H. 1995. Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America. Oxford: Oxford.
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1993. What is Scripture?: A Comparative Approach. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.
Taves, Anne. 2009. Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things. Kindle Edition e-Book. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Taylor, Helen. 1995. “The Griot from Tennessee: The Saga of Alex Haley’s Roots.” Critical Quarterly 37(2): 46–62. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8705.1995.tb01053.x
———. 2001. “Everybody’s Search for Roots: Alex Haley and the Black and White Atlantic.” In Circling Dixie: Contemporary Southern Culture Through a Transatlantic Lens, 63–90. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Watts, James W. 2006. “Three Dimensions of Scriptures.” Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 2: 135–159. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v2i2.135
Weiner, Rachel. 2013. “Why Lamar Alexander Quoted Alex Haley.” The Washington Post, 21 January 21. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/ wp/ 2013/01/21/why-lamar-alexander-quoted-alex-haley
West, Kanye. 2004. “Never Let Me Down Lyrics.” Rap Genius. http://genius.com/ Kanye-west-never-let-me-down-lyrics
Wimbush, Vincent L. 1991. “The Bible and African Americans: An Outline of an Interpretive History.” In Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Hermeneutics, ed. by Cain Hope Felder, 81–97. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.
———. 2008a. “TEXTures, GESTures, Power: Orientation to Radical Excavation.” In Theorizing Scriptures, ed. by Vincent L. Wimbush, 1-20. New Brunswick: Rutgers.
———., ed. 2008b. Theorizing Scriptures: New Critical Orientations to a Cultural Phenomenon. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
———. 2012. White Men’s Magic: Scripturalization as Slavery. Oxford: Oxford.
X, Malcolm and Alex Haley. 1999 [1964]. The Autobiography of Malcolm X as Told to Alex Haley. New York: Ballantine Books.
Published
2018-08-21
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Newton, R. (2018). Reading Alex Haley’s Roots: Toward An Anthropology Of Scriptures. Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 9(1), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.27507
