Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

I immediately fell in love with Cassie Logan, the spunky, resourceful main character in this classic novel. But by the end of the book, I had as much affection for her courageous mother, Mrs. Logan, a teacher who, in depression-era Mississippi, runs a school for African-American kids.

Among her pupils are some her own children, which I know from personal experience can be complicated. Of all the powerful themes in this book, an important, but often overlooked one is the power of teachers and schools to build community and respect for self and others.

Readers should know this book, written… show more.

Cassie Logan is fiery-tempered, bombastic, and demonstrative. She’s rather like her mother in that way, who is considered a ‘radical’ because she speaks up and out about the racism in the American South during the Depression.

Cassie fights back, but learns the hard way that there is a time to fight racism, speak out about injustice, and a time to accept that there are things we just have to live within this complicated and unjust world. But before she can accept that fully, she utilizes her fierceness to hatch a plan of attack against her nemesis, a racist, privileged white… show more.

By the time Mildred Taylor received the Newbery Award for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry in 1977, I had moved on to reading historical fiction for adults. In grad school I studied all of the Newbery winners to learn how to write literary fiction for young readers, and I fell in love with the whole Logan family at first read, especially the nine-year-old narrator, Cassie. Taylor had the exceptional talent of being able to climb inside a child’s mind and take the reader through her lived experience with stunning psychological depth and truth. With heartfelt humanity, Cassie’s narrative puts… show more.

I listened to this book while driving home to Massachusetts from Virginia and was so engrossed I nearly had an accident. It takes place during the 1930’s depression in Mississippi and told from the point of view of Cassie, a smart and resourceful 9-year-old black girl. Her innocence and integrity create a contrast to the experiences of cruel racial intolerance of the neighboring white people. It is told very realistically and is a must-read no matter what background you are from. 

Threats thunder across the young lives of Stacey, Christopher-John, and Cassie Logan. It is 1933 during the Depression in rural Mississippi. The novel, part of Taylor’s Logan Family Saga, is told from the point of view of nine-year-old Cassie. Through a plot covering the landscape of the racist Jim Crow South, the Logan children face threats involving property rights, sharecropping, substandard schools, racial epithets, servitude, and the prospect of “night men” bent on lynching. 

I admire the way this tightly plotted Newbery-winning novel offers a comprehensive portrayal of childhood in Jim Crow Mississippi, ringing with compelling truths about white-and-Black relationships.… show more.