#roll of thunder

[dylanisdazed]

1, 15, and 59 please?

1. coffee mugs, teacups, wine glasses, water bottles, or soda cans?

I LOVE COFFEE MUGS, TEACUPS AND WINE GLASSES. I'm a whimsical little fairy boy. my followers wouldn't even buy me tea cups that i wanted :( :( i'll never forget it

15. favorite book you read as a school assignment?

I always think of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Being from Alabama I've always thought it was important to be sensitive to knowledgeable about african american stories and history.

59. if you were a video game character, what would your catchphrase be?

hmmm that's hard.

"MOON 🌙 STARS ✨ NATURE 🌷 WATER 💦 I CALL ON THEE. FUCK MY HATERS! FUCK GOD! WORSHIP 🎆D🎆 Y🎆 L🎆 I🎆 E🎆!!

[raybeansbooks]

Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry - Historical Fiction (Listening to Audio Book) Mildred D. Taylor Originally Published 1967 by Scholastic Inc.

Author Mildred D. Taylor released the historical fiction middle grade book Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry in 1976 and it continues to enrich young readers to this day. I read it initially when I was in middle school over a decade ago and, like many other books I read growing up, I felt I should revisit it and find appreciation for such a stunning book that I didn’t fully recognize when I was younger. 

This Newbery Medal winning novel takes place in a country adjusting to the new United States after the civil war, racial tensions still high and potent in the south. We focus on the Logan family and follow along specifically with the daughter Cassie as we witness life and happenings surrounding her family and community over a very turbulent year. We see how the school district treats her and other black students with no buses and poor conditions books passed down until they “weren’t good enough” for white children anymore. We watch as Cassie and her siblings deal with troublesome children in the community as well as adults. We see how far a community will go to get “justice” on a black person who has done them wrong. 

In a way, this reminds me a little of Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises. As his title suggests, and how I find some connection between the two, is that they highlight the going ons of everyday life for a time, place, and people. That this is just how life is in this moment, even if unfair and unrewarding as a reader or someone looking for a just and satisfactory ending to their story. Sometimes, that isn’t how it is.

As this novel was introduced to me as a reading in middle school, I can find myself keeping it somewhere between YA and JUV categories in a collection. This transitional period can be hard to place for people and reading materials so perhaps I would work a “middle�� category into my catalog and collection to mark transitional pieces for young readers. There are some difficult matters and language addressed in it that make me hesitant for a children’s collection even if put in a higher reading level area so maybe a YA or Middle grade space with proper labeling.

For me, someone reading this in the wake of the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, it feels very potent and disturbing that these feelings and actions towards people of color persist to this day; how people are being brought up and raised in a way to perpetuate an unjust hatred. Considering I have seen this on banned books lists, the prejudice doesn’t surprise me but disappoints me; the company it shares in these thoughts is revealing.

Speaking of Banned Books, I could definitely see Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry joining a display of banned materials recorded by the ALA. In a library that I currently work at, a number of the front line books on this display also come with interests in the form of book marks educating readers on why this material has been contested and recognizing the general history of it and its author. I can see Taylor’s novel taking up valuable space with other stunning and notable works in a Banned Books Display. Let’s also not forget when we highlight pride and appreciation of communities, we could also use it as representation for Black History month in February and recommend it as a quick read considering the page count.

I remember having no complaints about this book in Middle school and I definitely don’t now. It is a beautiful book, though sad. I recommend readers take their time with this one considering what happens to the Logan family and their community, especially in the novel’s conclusion. Be well. 

- Ray

11/10/2023

Anonymous. (2020, February 20). Banned & Challenged books. Advocacy, Legislation & Issues. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks

Taylor, M. D. (2004). Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry. Puffin

Books.Taylor, M. D. (n.d.). Roll of thunder, hear my cry (Logans, #4). Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/310459.Roll_of_Thunder_Hear_My_Cry

[newberyandchai]

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1977)

Roll of thunder Hear my cry Over the water Bye and bye Ole man comin’ Down the line Whip in hand to Beat me down But I ain’t Gonna let him Turn me around.

[Spoilers ahead]

What an important book — just as tense as The Slave Dancer in parts, but less horrifying and more insightful and entertaining... which I have some (not-so-groundbreaking) thoughts about. (These posts keep getting longer and longer, but forgive me; I was excited about this one.)

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry was always on the shelves in my elementary classrooms, but I was never interested enough to pick it up. I remember thinking that the book must be written in something like Shakespearean English, given the title. And I suppose this is kind of true, although not with ye olde English. The dialog spoken by the Logan family is written in African American Vernacular English while the narrative portion is in more traditional written English.

I appreciate this because it both gave insight into how Cassie and her family communicated with each other without code-switching and illustrated the idea that speaking "properly" is not indicative whatsoever of actual intelligence. Even today, in which it seems like any non-white person is automatically dismissed if they can't speak perfect English without a thick accent, I appreciated seeing phrases like, "You care what a lot of useless people say 'bout you you'll never get anywhere, 'cause there's a lotta folks don't want you to make it” spoken aloud by characters. The Logan family felt much, much more real than the Black characters in Slave Dancer, who were almost always talked about collectively as "the blacks" and as though they didn't have the mental capacity to communicate at all.

But before Analysis Brain takes over the rest of this post, let's go into the plot a bit:

The story is about the Logans, a Black family in the American South during the Jim Crow era. There has just been a lynching in the community, which leads Cassie on a roundabout journey during the school year to figure out the role she is supposed to hold in society as a Black girl. A lot of different relationships between the Black and white people in the community take place:

TJ, a friend of Cassie's brother Stacey, thinks he's a hotshot for hanging out with some older white boys and feels like this has elevated his social status, even though they're just toying with him as a joke. They end up getting him to commit a crime with them and pin it on him because they're aware of their privilege; it's ultimately their word against his.

Cassie's teacher embodies the "don't bite the hand that feeds" mentality. When Cassie is outraged after finding out that her class's textbooks used to belonged to white children and were only given to the Black school once they were torn up and worn out, her teacher punishes her and her younger brother for having a problem with it.

Jeremy, a boy from a prominent white family, likes to hang out with Stacey and walks in the mornings with the Logan family before they part ways to go to their separate schools, but Stacey rejects his friendship several times because he's suspicious of Jeremy's motives. In this case, a genuine offer of friendship is confused for being transactional, just from what he's seen of other interactions between Black and white folks.

In the end, tensions between Cassie's family and the Wallaces, the white family that orchestrated the first lynching, come to a head. TJ, who participated in a robbery with two of the Wallace sons that led to a white man's accidental death, is about to be lynched, but a sudden fire in the Logans' cotton fields leads to everyone helping to put out the flames. TJ escapes the situation with his life, but he still ends up going to jail for the crime. At the very end, Cassie realizes her father had set fire to his own field to cause a distraction that would end up affecting everyone in the community if they didn't all work together to stop it.

But my favorite part by far was the long con that Cassie pulls on a rude white girl, Lillian Jean. In short, LJ disrespects Cassie and asks her to call her "Miss" as a show of subservience, and when Cassie protests, Cassie's grandmother makes her apologize to both LJ and her father to avoid an even worse conflict, even though she's done nothing wrong. Cassie decides to take this apology to the extreme and pretends to be LJ's friend and "know her place": she carries her books for her, compliments her, brushes her hair, etc., as though she was LJ's personal servant. During this time, she learns all of LJ's most important schoolgirl secrets, including which boys she likes. After some time passes, Cassie suddenly drops the act and pushes LJ into the mud one morning, making her promise to not bother her again and threatening to reveal her secrets if she tells anyone what Cassie did.

The chapter ends with Lillian Jean seeming completely shocked, saying she truly thought Cassie was her friend during the entire act. I think this shows the true ignorance in the white perspective at the time: many religious leaders in the Bible-thumpin' South preached that whites were God's chosen people and Black people were always intended to serve others, so I doubt Lillian Jean even thought to view Cassie as a real person. To her, Cassie could only ever be an uneducated, opinionless servant — a background character without her own personality who only has value when serving white people. For Lillian Jean to confuse Cassie's act with true friendship shows how many assumptions she's making about Cassie's very personhood.

In this case, I don't think the book was trying to portray LJ as a serious aggressor; if anything, it shows that she's not really at fault at all by way of sheer ignorance. From what the rest of the book shows, Lillian Jean was just parroting her family's views when she saw Cassie acting as though she had value beyond what was socially expected of Black members of their community, so she belittled Cassie to put her back into the role she was "supposed" to fill. Of course, this mindset is still around today in different ways (e.g., the more modern "I don't care if you're gay, but don't shove it down my throat" mentality if a same-sex couple dares to hold hands or essentially do anything a straight couple would do in public), and maybe it always will be.

This is nothing new (High School Musical illustrated roughly the same thing through teen romance and dance numbers nearly 20 years ago), but: There's such a deep-seated need to show others where we feel they belong in relation to ourselves, and I think this largely reflects what we were shown and taught by others in our childhoods. Our egos are too fragile to be able to let go of the things that other people do and not feel a desire to "put them in their place" if we were shown all our lives that our own place is higher on the totem pole — but acting rudely because of ignorance isn't an acceptable excuse in the Internet Age.

One of the quotes I try to live by goes something like, "Your first thought is what society has told you to think; your second thought determines your character." We have more opportunities than ever before in history to inform and shape that second thought into something kind, respectful, and productive.

With The Slave Dancer, I felt nothing but disgust and a strong desire to put the book down (or even throw it in the trash) while reading Jesse's perspective of being an unwilling white participant in the transatlantic slave trade. The idea that the slaves in Slave Dancer did not have any dialog forced the focus onto the despicable actions of characters like Ben Stout, who tormented slaves for fun, and it was just tragedy after tragedy until the slaves all perished at the end of the book.

But when given only the perspective of the Black characters in Roll of Thunder, I couldn't put it down and read the whole thing across two days. Both stories depicted race-related violence and gave a good picture of what people are truly capable of when driven by a hatred of the "other," but I was much more willing and eager to root for the Logan family and read about their lives in their own words than play the part of the powerless observer like Jesse.

This is long enough: 9/10, Recommendable.

[teophan]

a fantastic commission from @themetalhiro of my Dungeons & Devil Fruits 5e Sniper Marksman, Vinsmoke “Starfall Gunner” Beretta!

it was an absolute treat to work with you, looking forward to the next opportunity to do so!

[twixnmix]

New York Dolls photographed by Bob Gruen in Los Angeles, 1973.

[nikidontsurf]

JOAN BAEZ and BOB DYLAN during THE ROLLING THUNDER REVUE TOUR

[bobdylan-n-jonimitchell]

Joan Baez performing “Diamonds & Rust” on The Rolling Thunder Revue, 1975.

[dimestorethief]

bob dylan and joan baez, 1975(?)

[eroticlamb]

bob dylan interview, 1966 ⋆ ౨ৎ ˚ ˖ ࣪

[1976desire]

joan baez performing “diamonds and rust”, from renaldo and clara, 1975

x

[lhavibid]

look at these lil felas

double :D

[onemorecupofcoffee]

bob dylan and joan baez during the rolling thunder revue in 1975 — photo from the rolling thunder revue blu ray booklet!

[papertowness]

bruce was so right actually like what else IS there to do now except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair

[witless-winion1]

Siren: Then jump in the water and kiss me!

Odysseus: Penelope, I've told you this before- you know I'm afraid of the water!

Siren, internally: deadass? What a fucking loser

[aoko999]

[nikidontsurf]

JOAN BAEZ during THE ROLLING THUNDER REVUE TOUR