Author: James E. White and Jean-Gontran Quenum
ISBN: 1-59113-465-X

The following review was contributed by James M. Curtiss:

Roots Recovered, by James White and Jean-Gontran Quenum, is a book with
an ambitious goal: it's subtitle, "The How To Guide for Tracing
African-American and West Indian Roots Back to Africa and Going There,"
lays out a broad agenda, and essentially achieves what it set out to do.

Throughout the introduction and the first of two main sections, the
authors attempt to identify, and provide a solution to, a troubling
paradigm of negative thought that pervades the black segment of America:
namely, that Africa is a dangerous continent filled with savages and in
no way should be a travel destination – let alone a place to search for
one's ancestors.

The authors attempt to overcome this misconception by providing the
historical background of the African continent (Chapter 2), including a
treatment on the horrors of the slave trade and a sobering and thorough
account of both the good and bad times the African Diaspora has been
through.

The practical information provided for preparing for a trip to Africa
(Chapter 4) is definitely useful and sometimes surprising. For example,
who knew that you can fly for free by acting as an on-demand air
courier, or that one might be able to luck into a "missionary discount"?

The overall challenge that the book faces, however, stems from the
breadth of its aims. The self-help chapters sometimes repeat themselves;
the information provided in the middle chapters, which deal with
preparing to travel, is sometimes overly thorough; and the
country-specific chapters, while providing plenty of textual
information, don't paint a vivid picture of what the traveler might
expect while actually in Africa – there are none of the maps or photos,
for example, that one expects to find in a contemporary guide book.

One can overlook these minor flaws, however, and still arrive at where
the authors intend. Indeed, the amount of salient and useful information
included in Roots Recovered will help any seeker find his or her way to
the promised land of "Roots Recovered" in the African Diaspora.