Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Taylor, M. D. (1991). Roll of thunder, hear my cry. New York: Puffin Books. ISBN 0-14-034893-X. Originally published in 1976.

Why read this book

Learn what bittersweet means from this story of life in rural Mississippi during the Great Depression. Bitter is the racism that black people experienced daily. Sweet is the land, the family, the people who share your struggles and your happiness.

Plot summary

Cassie Logan is an eight-year-old who lives with her older brother Stacey, her younger brothers Christopher-John and Little Man, Mama, Papa, their grandmother Big Ma, and Mr. Morrison on 400 acres of their own land in Mississippi cotton country during the early 1930s. Papa is a hard-working, loving father who has to spend much of the year working on the railroad in Louisiana to get the cash to pay the mortgage and the taxes on their land. Mama teaches seventh grade in the local black school, and she and Big Ma keep the household running while Papa is away. Mr. Morrison is a giant of a man, older than Papa, who comes to live with the family when tensions build between black families in the area, most of whom are sharecroppers, and the local white community.

Trouble starts when drunken white owners of the local store burn three black men whom they have accused of flirting with a white woman. Mama and Papa Logan quietly organize their neighbors to boycott the local store by traveling to Vicksburg, the nearest large town, to buy their household items. The major local landowner decides to make a grab for the Logan land, which his family has coveted since Papa’s grandfather purchased it from them during Reconstruction. First the white school board fires Mama from her teaching job, seriously jeopardizing the Logan financial situation. Then the white storeowners attack Papa, Stacey, and Mr. Morrison late at night when they are returning from a trip to Vicksburg. How far will this struggle escalate, as the Logan family navigates the difficult ground between preserving their dignity and provoking an onslaught against the black community?

Critical evaluation

Roll of Thunder is a well-crafted story. It provides a good example of what Stephen Roxburgh (2005) describes as the importance of causality in fiction. Minor events laid out at the beginning of the story reveal their relevance as the narrative builds to a climax, such as the interest that T.J., a friend of the Logan children, shows in a small revolver for sale in a neighboring town. The complex relationships between characters shape the narrative, as when Stacey must decide to help T.J. despite T.J.’s earlier betrayal of the Logan family that helped cost Mama her teaching job. Cassie’s first-person narration is skillfully employed to imbue the story with a lively spirit, but Taylor doesn’t hesitate to make an eavesdropper out of Cassie to gain some of the advantages of an omniscient third-person narration.

Still it is hard not to think that Taylor has pulled some of her punches because she was writing for young adults. There is no questioning the authenticity of her story, as she has often explained how it derives from her own family’s experience living in Mississippi since the days of slavery (Taylor, 2004). Her story doesn’t sugarcoat the oppressive nature of the white power structure, but it lacks the bite of Anne Moody’s autobiography Coming of Age in Mississippi (2004), which takes place at nearly the same time in nearly the same place as Roll of Thunder. Having read Coming of Age before Roll of Thunder, I read the latter in dread of the assault that I assumed was coming on the Logan family. In the end, Papa’s cleverness averts disaster in a dénouement that seem more akin to a made-for-television movie than the lived experiences of many black families in Mississippi before the Civil Rights Movement.

About the author

Mildred D. Taylor was born in Mississippi in 1943 and moved with her family to Toledo, Ohio, when she was an infant. She describes continual comings and goings among her extended family between Toledo and the family farm in Mississippi, including many summers spent on the farm. She also describes her father’s storytelling talents and credits him and other family members with passing on the family history that she writes about (Taylor, 2004). In addition to Roll of Thunder, Taylor has written six other books that feature Cassie Logan and her ancestors. Some are written for children and others for young adults (Penguin Books, 2000).

Genre: Historical fiction, African American

Curriculum ties

U.S. history — Roll of Thunder is an excellent book for teaching and learning about racism, other social conditions, and economic conditions in the Jim Crow South between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement.

Book-talking ideas

• Read a fun part of the story, such as the rainy day that the Logan children skip lunch and dig a trench across the road so that the white school bus, which has been harassing them on their walk to school, ends up getting stuck.

• Read a more harrowing part of the story, such as when Papa, Stacey, and Mr. Morrison are attacked on their way home from Vicksburg.

Reading level/interest age

I agree with the publisher’s listing of “10 and up” as the appropriate age for readers of Roll of Thunder (Penguin Books, 2000). The central role of the children in the narrative and the straight-forward plot and language mean that the book is accessible to younger readers, but the historical significance of the story and the quality of the storytelling are such that many older teens will also find it worthwhile. I would encourage older teens to read Coming of Age In Mississippi (see above) in addition to Roll of Thunder.

Challenge issues

Taylor has noted that her books have been challenged for use of the n-word (Taylor, 2004, p. 8), although the word does not figure prominently in Roll of Thunder.

Responses

• Remind the challenger of the policy (in the case of the San Francisco Public Library) to present “all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

• Remind the reader that Taylor is African American and is writing about her own family, which means she is entitled to choose whatever vocabulary she wants.

• Remind the reader that the book is a part of the canon of young adult literature and therefore has both historical and literary significance.

Why I chose to read this book

Since reading a Horn Book essay on multicultural literature for another course, I have wanted to read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

References

Moody, A. (2004). Coming of age in Mississippi. New York: Delta Trade Paperbacks.

Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers (2000). Mildred D. Taylor. Penguin.com USA. Retrieved October 27, 2009, from http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000031974,00.html

Roxburgh, S. (2005, Winter). The art of the young adult novel. The ALAN Review, 4-10. Retrieved August 23, 2009, from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/v32n2/

Taylor, M. D. (2004, May-August). My life as a writer. World Literature Today 78(2), 7-10. Retrieved October 27, 2009, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40158384