Roots

I just started reading the book Roots earlier this week. For those who don't know, its a book about a young boy named Kunta Kinte who is taken from Africa and made a slave in the United States. I'm maybe 200 pages into the book, and it is talking about the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. The description of the voyage is so terrible, and often makes me feel...so ashamed of our country's history. I don't know why I hadn't realized it before, but the men and women who were taken as slaves fought back as much as they could after they were captured. It was only the immense cruelty and neglect that made them too weak or injured to fight back. I don't know why I've never considered this aspect of slavery (I know in school they always talked about the cramped quarters and poor conditions on the ships) but it was never really driven home in my mind until I started reading this book. Although it is very sad, it is also amazing to me that a book I decided to read on my own time gave me a totally different perspective on our nation's history.