MALI AUTHOR · JUVENILE · BIOGRAPHY
Alex Haley
Also known as: Alexander Murray Palmer Haley, Alex HALEY
American writer and author of the popular 1970s book Roots which was adapted into a record setting TV mini-series. "The giving and getting, the sense of belonging and contributing to something larger than yourself, to something that began before you were born and will go on after you die, can make it possible for you to accept life in a way that makes you wish the whole world could realize how easy it is to feel as you do, and wonder why they don’t. That’s what having roots—and writing Roots—has done for me. I pray that reading it—and then reaching out for their families to join in a search of their own—will do the same for everyone." ~ Alex Haley (A Candid Conversation With Murray Fisher, January 1977)
Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a manchild was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.
— from Roots
Most acclaimed
Autobiografía Malcolm X
1992
Biografía del líder negro americano religioso y activista que nació Malcolm Little, publicado en 1965. Escrito por Alex Haley, que había llevado a cabo extensas entrevistas grabadas con Malcolm X antes de su asesinato en 1965, el libro ganó fama como un trabajo clásico en negro experiencia americana. La autobiografía es contada a través de la voz en primera persona de Malcolm X con contenido añadido y narrativa proporcionada por Alex Haley. Aunque a veces auto-engrandecimiento, Malcolm X habla de su extraordinaria transformación de un niño cuyo padre fue asesinado por racistas blancos, a un joven estafador y traficante de drogas en Harlem, Nueva York, a un erudito autodidacta en la cárcel, a un destacado líder y ministro de la Nación del Islam, y, finalmente, a un hombre transformado por su viaje a África y a la Meca y se marca como una amenaza por parte de los líderes de la Nación del Islam. A través de una vida de pasión y lucha, Malcolm X se convirtió en una de las figuras más influyentes del siglo 20. Aquí, el hombre que se hacía llamar "el hombre más enojado Negro en América" relata cómo su conversión al Islam le ayudó a enfrentarse a su ira y reconocer la hermandad de toda la humanidad. Un clásico establecida de la América moderna, la autobiografía de Malcolm X fue aclamado por el New York Times como "Extraordinaria. Una brillante, libro doloroso, importante. "La fuerza de sus palabras, el poder de sus ideas siguen resonando más de una generación después de su aparición.
Roots
Roots is a novel written by Alex Haley and published in 1976. It portrays the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery in the United States, and follows his life and the lives of his alleged descendants in the U.S. down to Haley. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, Roots (1977), led to a cultural sensation in the United States. The novel spent 46 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List, including 22 weeks in that list’s top spot. The last seven chapters of the novel were later adapted in the form of a second mini-series, Roots: The Next Generations, in 1979. The book sold over one million copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. It also won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Roots opened up the minds of Americans of all colors and faiths to one of the darkest and most painful parts of America’s past, and we continue to feel its reverberations today.
Marva Collins' Way
1982
Marva Collins offers a beacon of hope in the midst of America’s educational crises. In this work, Marva Collins recounts her successful teaching strategies and offers inspirational advice on how to motivate children to fulfill their potential. This 1990 updated edition contains a new epilogue for parents and teachers. Teachers need nothing more than “books, a blackboard, and a pair of legs that will last the day,” Marva Collins told Dan Hurley in 50 Plus magazine. These three things were essentially all that Collins had when she opened the Westside Preparatory School in Chicago, Illinois, in 1975 with the $5,000 she had contributed to her pension fund. Disillusioned after teaching in the public school system for 16 years, Collins decided to leave and open a school that would welcome students who had been rejected by other schools and labeled disruptive and “unteachable.” She had seen too many children pass through an ineffective school system in which they were given impersonal teachers, some of whom came to school chemically impaired. A firm believer in the value of a teacher’s time spent with a student, Collins rejected the notion that the way to solve the problems faced by U.S. schools was to spend more money. Collins also shunned the audiovisual aids so common in other classrooms because she believed that they created an unnecessary distance between the teacher and the student. By offering a plethora of individual attention tempered with strict discipline and a focus on reading skills, Collins was able to raise the test scores of many students, who in turn went on to college and excelled. “It takes an investment of time to help your children mature and develop successfully,” declared Collins in Ebony. Marva Collins has received many accolades in recognition of her outstanding work with children. She was featured on Good Morning, America, 20/20, Fox News, and many more programs. A made-for-television movie titled, The Marva Collins Story starred Cicely Tyson and Morgan Freeman first aired in 1982, and is still presented on television. Alex Haley contributed to Marva Collins’ Way: Returning to Excellence in Education by writing the foreword.