[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.

The first half of the book focuses on the life of the African Kunta Kinte and is clearly its most successful part. The dignity of Kunta's family and the soundness of the village culture are thoroughly convincing…. Statistics and drawings of slave ships in no way prepare one for the overpowering vividness of the voyage episodes. Equally moving are Kunta's struggles to escape and to salvage his manhood during the first agonizing years of slavery when he cannot communicate even with his fellow slaves. The book's largest virtues are the genuine and convincing heroism of Kunta and the sustained empathy through which Haley is able to convey the curse of slavery.

His portrayal of whites demonstrates equal control in the middle portions of the book…. Haley gives us believable representative masters without descending to stereotype. There are moments in the lives of later generations, Chicken George and Tom Murray principally, when Haley is equally successful; but melodrama and other flaws begin to strain at the narrative….

Haley's inspiration also seems to wane for the female generations…. Kizzy is surprisingly underplayed compared to the thorough treatment we have become accustomed to with Kunta himself…. [She] figures significantly only as a vessel—first for Kunta's determination to perpetuate his African heritage and later for Tom Lea's sexual attacks. (p. xliv)

Tom Murray's daughter Cynthia is also too quickly eclipsed by her husband, Will Palmer. Palmer is unquestionably an inspiring figure, but, having pursued the descent of one family for over five hundred pages, the reader feels gulled to find the operative grandparent overshadowed. Indeed, by the time we reach Haley's own mother, Bertha, the quality of family saga is dissipated to mundane family chronicle. Perhaps Haley's imagination is cramped toward the end of the book, ironically, by too much familiarity with his subject to allow a conclusion consistent with the bulk of the book.

Whatever the cause, the turn to personal history and the account of his investigation is a jarring disappointment at the end of the book. The method is apparent throughout, and the significance of the story for Haley and the reader lies in its basis in fact, but the distance in time and the purity of touch in the earlier portions of the book are ultimately more satisfying. One supposes that even Haley senses this as he accelerates the passage of time through the last three generations. Perhaps it is too much to attempt to breathe life into more than two or three generations in a single volume.

Whatever its flaws in symmetry and consistency of tone, they do not outweigh the power of the early narrative or the significance of the project as a whole. Haley has made an important contribution to our mutual history through an informed imagination. (pp. xliv, xlvi)