Alex Haley

Filmed shortly before his death in 1992, this in-depth interview with author Alex Haley comes at a time when Haley is very much in the news again as the world awaits the publication of Queen, recently a successful miniseries on television. A college dropout, Haley joined the U.S. Coast Guard where he worked as a cook, and made side money writing love letters for his fellow shipmates. Here, Haley discovered his true vocation--writing--and following his service stint he embarked on a career that, while having its share of struggles, produced two of the most influential works of the 1960s and 1970s: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) and Roots (1976). Haley visits his boyhood home in Tennessee and the family burial plot where men and women who are engraved in the national consciousness lie, finally at rest. He talks about his struggle in getting Malcolm X to open up about his personal life, and the long genealogical journey he took to discover the history of his own family's life. However, Alex Haley is an interview with Haley on his own terms: no mention is made of the $650,000 which Haley paid Harold Courlander after the latter charged that Haley had plagiarized his novel The African; there is nary a whisper about the legion of historians who claim that Haley's pre-Civil War "roots" are largely fictionalized; nor commentary about the fact that petitions have been filed with the Pulitzer Prize committee to take back Haley's award (an unlikely occurrence). Too, the controversy is liable to begin all over again with the publication next month of Haley's Queen. According to the March 1 issue of Booklist, the publisher Morrow has refused to furnish pre-pub copies for review. Still, when all is said and done, Alex Haley the video is a fine inspiration to young writers of any color. As for Haley's work, the fact remains that Roots was more than a book, it was a cultural phenomenon. It offered a sense of history to a disenfranchised people. And it galvanized a nation into searching for its roots (a movement which, incidentally, brought many new people into the library on their genealogical missions). Sure to be a popular tape and very affordably priced for public libraries. Recommended. (Available from: California Newsreel, 149 Ninth St./420, San Francisco, CA 94103; (415) 621-6196.)