Back to roots - 20 December 2006

I have read somewhere that much of Alex Haley's "Roots" was plagiarized from a white person. God only knows where everything that becomes such an integral part of us comes from. I must confess that I may also have plagiarized, or at least let myself be inspired by, the dialect of a white man whom I - as a child - was long convinced was black. God also knows how I've loved Uncle Remus tales ever since I was a kid. Mea culpa if I have stolen anything from Brer Fox's plate, like a calamus root. I think it's all a part of the process of de and re construction.
A professor of Scandinavian literature - none-mentioned or forgotten - once told me that many of the 'experiences' that were related in a novel by a famous Swedish writer (while the latter was a visiting professor of Scandinavian literature in the United States and a lodger in the home of the afore-mentioned professsor), were actually experiences that he had related to this writer. The professor's reluctance to condone the writer's creative license, and writer's reluctance to credit his source, caused the two to remain tragically at odds with one another until just before death ultimately separated them. I think I understand them both, not because I'm so clever, but because the writer has expressed himself so lucidly in his work, and the professor so openly and honestly in personal conversation with me. What perspectives are represented in reading, writing, in private and public communications? Is personal communication different, a creative attempt to reconcile apparently dichotomus perspectives on life?
Uncle Remus folktales are especially fascinating to me because the stories are written in a black American dialect told by a fictional character - an old black slave called Uncle Remus - to a young white boy. The stories are overheard by a white woman, and written down in the late 19th century by a white male author. And after having read them as a child, and remembered the characters, their dilemmas and strategies, I am now rereading them and re-membering them as an adult. What a circuitous route we take to and from our roots.