Alex Haley vs Harriet Beecher Stowe
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In trying to write about the hardships and realities of African Americans in the United States, both Alex Haley and Harriet Beecher Stowe faced many struggles. Some of these challenges they shared, while others remained respectively their own.
First and foremost, Haley and Stowe both shared the common challenge of straying out of the typical realm of literature into the taboo. Both risked their lives to create such controversial works. Though both exceptional works were widely praised, they undoubtedly both had their critics: Stowe's the pro-slavery South and Haley's violent racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Furthermore, both Haley and Stowe definitely both faced the challenge of having to deal with hostility from their antagonists.
A challenge unique to Haley was that of trying to trace back his African American lineage. "Roots", Haley's masterpiece "begins with a birth in 1750, in an African village; it ends seven generations later at the Arkansas funeral of a black professor whose children are a teacher, a Navy architect, an assistant director of the U.S. Information Agency, and an author...