I think most people when you say slavery tend to see a group of anonymous people pulling cotton sacks in great plantation fields, and that is largely true. For instance, slavery, which I researched a great deal in the course of Roots. In a broader sense, I have always been intrigued how we as a culture tend to have tunnel-vision images of things and don't include facets of it. Without giving too much away, would you describe the story?ĪH: Somebody wrote in USA Today that it is a story wherein a white college student had become self-influenced to join the Underground Railroad and organized an escape of slaves.

Haley, your new book, A Different Kind of Christmas, is a powerful story that should appeal to the widest possible audience. What follows are the excerpts from the interview: The conversation centered on the new book with occasional discussion of other subjects.

Haley at the author's farm in Norris, Tennessee. Editor Roger Bishop recently interviewed Mr. The novella follows a young Southerner who becomes an agent for the Underground Railroad and helps mastermind the escape of slaves from his father's plantation on Christmas Eve, 1855. Haley had won critical acclaim for his authorship of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.Īnd now Alex Haley has a new book A Different Kind of Christmas, that will appeal to readers of all ages. Haley was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for Root s, a work he calls 'faction,' a combination of fact and fiction. It suggests, with great power, how each of us, however unconsciously, can't but be the vehicle of the history which has produced us.'Īmong other honors, Mr. James Baldwin wrote about the book in The New York Times: ' Roots is a study of continuities, of consequences, of how a people perpetuate themselves, how each generation helps to doom, or helps to liberate, the coming one-the action of love, or the effect of the avsence of love, in time. His book Roots, published in 1976, and the television series based on the book, which aired in 1977, were not only critical and commercial successes, they were also unique cultural events. Alex Haley is one of the best-known and most widely read authors in the world.

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