In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.
Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.
Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.
When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth.
In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.
My fondest hope is that 'Roots' may start black, white, brown, red, yellow people digging back for their own roots. Man, that would make me feel 90 feet tall.
We don't know: some little black boy or girl growing up in the inner city might grow up and cure cancer for all of us - if we let them do it.
I know Juffure was a British trading post and my portrait of the village bears no resemblance to the way it was. But the portrait I gave was true of nearly all the other villages in Gambia. I, we, need a place called Eden. My people need Pilgrim's Rock.
If somebody comes up and says something good about you, that is never taken as an adhesive thing like something negative about you.
The problem is to find the time to write. That's why I go to sea. I couldn't be happier than when at sea.
To the best of my knowledge and of my effort, every lineage statement within 'Roots' is from either my African or American families' carefully preserved oral history, much of which I have been able conventionally to corroborate with documents.
I stand by 'Roots' as symbol of the fate of my people.
Most of the people I've met who are black in other countries look up to the blacks in this country. Though they may talk differently, they are anxious to partake of this country simply because things in their country are not physically on par with what they are here.
If you think about it, there's not a religious group, there's not a nationalistic group, there's not a tribe, there is no grouping of people to my knowledge, of any consequence, who have not, at one or another time, been the object of hatred, racism, or who has not had people against them just because they were them.
I look at my books the way parents look at their children. The fact that one becomes more successful than the others doesn't make me love the less successful one any less.
I think from what I personally know, I am really quite proud of most of the people I know who have 'made it,' who do things to help people.
My own perception of Malcolm was one of something that bordered on fascination because I was looking at him and reacting to him as a subject.
Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.
If you're blessed to do something like 'Roots'... you find yourself immersed. You're asked to do this, to do that - all for admirable causes. But you're just swamped.
