“The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle.”
Fonte: The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Alexander Murray Palmer Haley foi um escritor estadunidense.
É conhecido principalmente por seus relatos sobre a escravidão
Sua obra mais conhecida é "Roots: The Saga of an American Family", publicado em 1976. O romance foi adaptado duas vezes para a televisão. Suas obras se baseiam principalmente nas histórias de sua própria família, dando uma interpretação da viagem de um Africano kunta Kinte para a América durante o período da escravidão.
O sucesso da primeira obra foi fundamental para que Haley pudesse continuar escrevendo sobre a mesma temática. A história rendeu debates incessantes na televisão sobre a questão do preconceito contra negros nos EUA. Os debates aconteceram até a década de 1990.
Conheceu Malcom X, e Elija Mohamad, líder da Nação do Islã. O resultado desse contato foi a colaboração na publicação da "A Autobiografia de Malcom X", publicado em 1965.
Alex Haley usa de sua genealogia para traçar a história da escravidão através de suas "negras raízes".
Inicia com a história de seu quinto avô Kunta Kinte no século XVIII, que vivia em uma tribo na África Gâmbia Africa Ocidental, onde foi capturado por traficantes de escravos. Antes do ocorrido, o autor relata os costumes da tribo, a educação das crianças a divisão do poder e as tradições. Depois, denuncia os horrores vividos pelos escravos nos navios negreiros. Mulheres eram estupradas pelos traficantes, a ponto de seus órgãos ficarem em carne viva, outros eram jogados no mar para aliviar a fome dos tubarões.
Quando seu quinto avô chega à América do Norte é vendido, foge várias vezes até ter metade de seu pé amputado. Quando finalmente muda de dono, passa a ser o caseiro da casa grande e se casa com a doméstica. O casal tem uma filha, que ao tentar fugir com o namorado, é vendida para uma outra família. A menina é estuprada pelo novo patrão e o autor novamente relata em detalhes todos os passos da escravidão negra nos Estados Unidos.
Foram 20 anos de pesquisa que trouxeram à luz, denúncias da escravidão, desmascarando a própria história, cheia de ideologias e de vencedores.
Alex Haley também descendia do clã Kinte.
Wikipedia
“The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle.”
Fonte: The Autobiography of Malcolm X
As quoted in My Soul Looks Back, 'Less I Forget : A Collection of Quotations (1993) by Dorothy Winbush Riley.
“I knew I wanted to write. I had dreamed about it for years.”
"The Shadowland of Dreams".
Contexto: I knew I wanted to write. I had dreamed about it for years. I wasn’t going to be one of those people who die wondering, “What if?” I would keep putting my dream to the test — even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the Shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there. If you can't live here, get back to YOUR roots and LEARN to live here!
TIME interview (1977)
Contexto: Just look at the scores of thousands of housing tracts in this country, where only parents and children live. Think of the impact on these children who will grow up without close proximity to grandparents. There are certain things that a grandmammy or a granddaddy can do for a child that no one else can. It's sort of like Stardust — the relationship between grandparents and children. The lack of this for many children has to have a negative impact on society. The edges of these children are a little sharper for the lack of it. … I tell young people to go to the oldest members of their family and get as much oral history as possible. Many grandparents carry three or four generations of history in their heads but don't talk about it because they have been ignored. And when the young person starts doing this, the old are warmed to the cockles of their souls and will tell a grandchild everything they can muster.
“This is the Shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.”
"The Shadowland of Dreams".
Contexto: I knew I wanted to write. I had dreamed about it for years. I wasn’t going to be one of those people who die wondering, “What if?” I would keep putting my dream to the test — even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the Shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there. If you can't live here, get back to YOUR roots and LEARN to live here!
TIME interview (1977)
Contexto: Have family reunions. There is something magic about the common sense of a blood bond. It's not less magic for black, white, brown or polka dot. The reunion gives a sense that the family cares about itself and is proud of itself. And there is the assumption that you, the family member, are obligated to reflect this pride and, if possible, add to it.
On his career in the US Coast Guard, as quoted http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/cgcAlexHaley/history.asp at the official site for the Medium Endurance Cutter USCGC Alex Haley http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/cgcAlexHaley/default.asp
Contexto: You don't spend twenty years of your life in the service and not have a warm, nostalgic feeling left in you … It's a small service, and there's a lot of esprit de corps.
"The Shadowland of Dreams"', published in Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work (1996) by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Maida Rogerson, Martin Rutte and Tim Clauss; also in Alex Haley : The Man Who Traced America's Roots (2007), a collection of stories and essays by Haley published in Reader's Digest between 1954 to 1991.
Contexto: Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there’s a big difference between “being a writer” and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at the typewriter. “You’ve got to want to write,” I say to them, “not want to be a writer.”
The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune, there are thousands more whose longing is never requited. Even those who succeed often know long periods of neglect and poverty. I did.
TIME interview (1977)
Contexto: Just look at the scores of thousands of housing tracts in this country, where only parents and children live. Think of the impact on these children who will grow up without close proximity to grandparents. There are certain things that a grandmammy or a granddaddy can do for a child that no one else can. It's sort of like Stardust — the relationship between grandparents and children. The lack of this for many children has to have a negative impact on society. The edges of these children are a little sharper for the lack of it. … I tell young people to go to the oldest members of their family and get as much oral history as possible. Many grandparents carry three or four generations of history in their heads but don't talk about it because they have been ignored. And when the young person starts doing this, the old are warmed to the cockles of their souls and will tell a grandchild everything they can muster.
TIME interview (1977)
Contexto: When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth. We all have it; it's a great equalizer. White people come up to me and tell me that Roots has started them thinking about their own families and where they came from. I think the book has touched a strong, subliminal pulse.
“In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.”
As quoted in Traits of a Healthy Family (1985) by Dolores Curran, p. 199.
Contexto: The family is our refuge and our springboard; nourished on it, we can advance to new horizons. In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
“Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.”
A plausible statement, but no published source as yet located for it prior to 2007, and though most cite Haley as the author the earliest of these cites it with an obscure attribution to "Benhur R".[citation needed]
Disputed
“In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.”
As quoted in A Kwanzaa Celebration (1995) by Angela Shelf Medearis, p. 154.
This motto appears on the emblem of the Medium Endurance Cutter USCGC Alex Haley, named after the writer, as "FIND THE GOOD AND PRAISE IT". It is declared to have been his personal motto.
Variante: Find the good — and praise it.
Fonte: Roots : The Saga of an American Family (1976), Ch. 51.
Fonte: Roots : The Saga of an American Family (1976), Ch. 1, first lines.
Statement in Reader's Digest (1987), as quoted in Incredibly American : Releasing the Heart of Quality (1992) by Marilyn R. Zuckerman and Lewis J. Hatala, p. 13.
“Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.”
As quoted in A Touch of Class (2003) by Carol Vanderheyden, p. 60.
“If I had been taking hashish, I could not have dreamed of this.”
On the popularity of the television series Roots (1977).
TIME interview (1977)
TIME interview (1977)