A Foreboding Roll of Thunder

I started reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry almost a year ago. I'd heard it was a powerful book, and an important one, but it wasn't one of the Newbery winners that I really wanted to read. It was one that I felt like I should read.

After reading the first five chapters, I was filled with foreboding, waiting for a major character to be horribly killed or wounded. It didn't help that I had read Sounder not too long before I started Roll of Thunder.

I had the same feeling when I started reading The Kite Runner a few years ago, which I also put off reading for a couple years despite the fact that it seemed like half the people I know had already read it and recommended it. What can I say? One reason I read is for relaxation and escape, and I don't generally like Oprah-esque literary fiction. I did end up being very happy that I read The Kite Runner, mind you.

Then I got a part-time writing job, and happily abandoned Roll of Thunder (and indeed, all the remaining winners I hadn't yet read), and filled my drastically reduced reading time with books that didn't engender feelings of impending doom.

I finished my job last month, and finally returned to Roll of Thunder again. I was still worried about the characters - and reading They Called Themselves the KKK by Susan Campbell Bartoletti (one of the books in the running for this year's Newbery prize) just before resuming Roll of Thunder didn't exactly make me feel any better about Cassie, Stacey, Christopher-John, Little Man, and their extended family's prospects in Mississippi in the 1930's. It was pretty depressing. So I did something that I know drives some people crazy - I skipped ahead and read the last couple of pages. I wanted to be prepared for the worst that Mildred D. Taylor could throw at me.

Well, I could tell from the last few pages that Taylor's worst wasn't unbearable, and so I was able to finish the book with less foreboding, not wincing quite so much at the (sometimes heavy) foreshadowing, or every time Cassie lost her temper. I have to say that Taylor did an excellent job of describing the Logan siblings, and she used history - as in Mr. Morrison's Reconstruction-era story that he told on Christmas, which could have come straight out of They Called Themselves the KKK - very skillfully. The history doesn't ever overpower the Logans' story, but it serves as powerful backdrop, enriching the plot and putting the the characters' actions into a carefully constructed and entirely believable context.

It's a timeless book, too - Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry was written in 1976, but you really couldn't tell, unlike some of the other Newbery winners that feel a bit dated now (like Summer of the Swans, for instance, or It's Like This, Cat). I wonder if this accounts for some of the appeal that historical fiction seems to hold the Newbery Committee. At any rate, Roll of Thunder reads like a classic. And yes, parts of it were disturbing, but it was not a horribly depressing book. I actually want to read some of Mildred Taylor's other books about the Logan family now!

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor (Audio)

Roll of Thunder is a reread (or, to be more exact, a re-listen). I loved it the first time and I loved it this time. It’s the kind of book I now want to push off on everyone I meet.

It’s a story of the horrible effects of racism, but it is also much more than that. It’s the story of the struggles of a family to keep their land, to be good citizens and human beings, to have children that are good citizens and good human beings. I marveled at the character of Mama and Papa who never gave up their fight. I was happy to see Mr. Morrison in the story, a white man who dared to flaunt the social norms for the higher principles of justice. I was sad to watch T.J. fall prey to greed and pride.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

For me, this book falls into the "important but very painful to read" category. It was depressing, disheartening, and yet an important look at race relations in the south in the 1930s.

The basic story is a year in the life of the Logans, as told from 9-year-old Cassie Logan's point of view. She and her family live in Mississippi, north of Vicksburg, on a former plantation. Her family is different than the other tenant farmers in their area: they own 400 acres of their own land. It was a fluke: a Yankee had bought some after the Civil War and ended up selling some to Cassie's grandfather. Yet, it's the land -- and owning it -- that allows Cassie's family a measure of freedom that the other families don't have.

The interesting thing (to me) is that the other black families don't hold it against the Logans do what they can to help out their neighbors and work hard at making ends meet. It's the white people that claim the Logan's are putting on airs, getting uppity and the like. In the end, it's the land that both dooms them and saves them. (Which sounds ominous, I know, but really that's the way it happens.)

Mildred Taylor doesn't spare any one or anything. When Cassie disobeys, she gets whipped. She gets humiliated for just being black, and manages to get her "revenge". It's very much a world of get and try and give back. The children get splattered every morning on their way to school by the white bus going by (on purpose), and they take their revenge. Which sets off a chain of events. I think more than race relations, this book is about consequences. The consequences of choices, of decisions, of being black (or white) in Mississippi. There's a strong sense of family, too. The Logans deeply care for their children, wanting what's best for them. They are also concerned for their safety, navigating the difficult path of what's right versus what's best.

It was a very powerful book, one that I'm sure will stay with me for quite a while.

Cross posted at Book Nut.