Chapter 116
- Cynthia is ecstatic: Will Palmer has asked her to walk home from church together. Oh, so scandalous.
- Tom approves of Will because he comes from a good family and has proven himself exceptionally ambitious. It's a go, ya'll.
- In fact, Will is such a good employee at the lumber company where he works that local bankers decide to give him the business after its owner becomes a degenerate alcoholic.
- The W.E. Palmer Lumber Company goes on to become "western Tennessee's first black-owned business of its kind" (116.23).
Chapter 117
- Cynthia and Will give birth to their first daughter, Bertha George, in 1895, and Cynthia passes down the story of Kunta Kinte just as her parents did for her.
- They spoil the crud out of Bertha, who becomes a stellar student. She eventually marries Simon Alexander Haley, a disciplined working-class kid who puts himself through college.
- After their marriage in 1920, Simon and Bertha move to Ithaca for school. Simon is getting a "master's degree in agriculture" while Bertha is going to a music conservancy (117.16).
- They write a bunch of letters at first, but suddenly stop. Cynthia and Will get so worried that Cynthia decides to visit them in Ithaca.
- Before she does, however, Bertha and Simon show up on their door with a new son in hand. That son is Alex Haley, the author of the book you're reading. Mind. blown.
Chapter 118
- As a note, we shift from a third-person narrator to a first-person, reflecting the transition from the Kinte family history to Alex Haley's personal story.
- Alex is a total grandpa's boy, which makes sense, because poor Will never had a son of his own. Alex is beyond devastated when Grandpa Will dies when he's five.
- Alex stays behind when his parents return North to complete their studies. He loves spending time with the whole family.
- Like his parents, and their parents, and their parents, Alex is told the family stories, from the origin of "'the African'" to the exploits of the irreplaceable Chicken George (118.10).
- He retells the entire story we just read in a much shorter and less detailed form. Presumably, this is what he was actually told by the older members of his fam.
- After college, Alex joins the U.S. Coast Guard. That's when he catches the writing bug, obsessively sending out stories for publication. It takes him eight years to get his first gig.
- After the war ends, Alex Haley dives into life as "a full-time writer" (118.25). He writes a killer interview with Miles Davis for Playboy, as well as The Autobiography of Malcolm X based on interviews with the man himself.
- While on assignment in London, Alex sees the Rosetta Stone in a museum, which was used to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics, thereby unlocking "a door into the past" (118.26).
- On the plane ride home, he realizes that he can do the same with his family's oral tradition. After all, there are a lot of k- sounds in the African words passed down through the family. Hmm...
Chapter 119
- At this point, the only surviving member of the older generation is Cousin Georgia Anderson.
- Cousin Georgia is pretty sick these days, but she gets super excited when Alex brings up the family stories.
Chapter 120
- Alex goes hot and heavy into research mode and finds census records that seem to align with his family story.
- He also talks to an African linguist who thinks the family's passed-down words are from the Mandinka tribe, who live in the Gambia.
- So he goes. He learns that there might be a griot that knows about the Kinte family history, so he returns to the United States to perform more research.
- While back home, Alex contacts Reader's Digest and enlists their support in the project. That's pretty useful because dude is broke.
- Once the griot has been located, Kunta returns to the Gambia. He feels an insane buzz of excitement as he pulls up to Juffure.
- There, the griot, whose name is Kebba Kanji Fofana, starts reciting history with a machinelike efficiency.
- Alex hears the history of the Kinte family and the griot refers to a son who was kidnapped while chopping wood "'about the time the King's soldiers came,'" which matches up with Alex's family story (120.36).
- The entire town embraces Alex. He later weeps when a group of children refer to him as Mr. Kinte.
- After leaving the Gambia, Alex continues his research. He suspects that the griot was referring to 1767 as the year that the "King's soldiers came."
- In London, he finds research that seems to validate this info. He correlates this with slave records about a slave named Toby who he presumes to be Kunta Kinte.
- So he wrote this book. This has been an especially emotional experience due to the recent death of his father, who had a big impact on him as a man.
- Thankfully, he still feels like his father is watching, along with Kunta, Kizzy, Chicken George, and the whole gang. Dude's finally found his roots.