Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Mildred D. Taylor |  Fiction

two-hearts

Washington Post “100 Books for the Ages” Age 12

The Washington Post put together a very interesting list … 100 of the best books, one for every age.  I have already read 29 of them (assuming you count the Outlander series, age 66, as one book!)  I have selected 11 more to read.  So, over the next few months, I will weave these books in.  The link for the list is below, and I would love to hear what you select to read from the list!!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/entertainment/books/100-books-for-the-ages/?utm_term=.3d716c18b4d4

I quite liked Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry for many chapters.  The time is 1933, deep in the depression; the main character is Cassie, a fourth-grade black girl living with her two younger brothers, one older bother, mom, dad, and Big Mama in Mississippi on cotton-growing land they bought.  They are poor, black, and living at a very difficult time in our country.  I really appreciated Cassie’s innocence and what you could see right from the start was going to be big learning for her … painful, difficult, important learning.  In her naivete, she wants to know why the white kids have a bus to take them to and from their school, but the black kids all have to walk to their school.  She is curious about the bus, but it never even occurs to her to raise the question, why are there two schools?  I really liked seeing the world through her eyes, and I thought the author did this well.  I was ready for four hearts and a recommendation that this was a book we all should read … to be reminded again.

But then the author threw in a whole cadre of adult relationships, difficulties, racism, and lynching.  I could not keep track of these white and black families … the Wallaces, The Simmes, the Avery family, Mr. Granger, Mr. Jamison, Mr. Harrison.  I couldn’t keep straight who was who, I am uncertain that a 12-year-old could.  Then again, maybe they would do a better job than me.

More than anything, I felt sadness at the loss of voice, of perspective.  While Taylor kept returning to Cassie and her thoughts, feelings, and reactions in the situations that presented themselves, I felt we lost Cassie’s voice, and for that I was disappointed.