THE WRITER

Many years ago I attended a women’s luncheon where the guest of honor was an unknown author who was scheduled to speak on his experiences as a writer. He had a reputation for writing magazine articles although none of the audience had ever heard of him. He started telling us about a book he had written which would be published sometime in the near future.

The author proceeded to tell us the story of his family. Everything he related was how the original male member of his family had come years ago to America. The story had been told orally by the females of the family. By rote they told how so and so begat so and so as the generations grew. The older story tellers of the last century could neither read nor write, so they would impart the tales of each family member descended from that time to keep their family history alive.

We were spellbound hearing the author relate how he had traced his ancestor who was kidnapped in Africa and brought to America by slave traders. The author was Alex Haley, his ancestor’s name was Kunta Kinte and the book published in 1976 was titled “Roots”.

I still feel privileged to have heard in great detail how he had come to write this great book after listening to the stories told by the elderly women of his family.