What Cassie's papa has taught her grounds her like nothing else: the land they live on, it belongs to their family. The Logan Family. And whatever it takes for that land to stay in their family, Papa is ready to do it. Even as a nine year old, Cassie knows more than a little of life's hardships, living as a Black girl in the 1930s in Mississippi. Told from her perspective, we see the racism - both the big and looming injustices as well as the little tricky interactions that make life painful and hard to wrap your brain around. Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry is a portrait of a family, squeezed tight with love for each other and the place they call home. It's a portrait of a community, on the one hand split by hatred but also, within the Black community, the sort of ties between friends and neighbors that cannot be broken by misfortune or fear. It's also a portrait of a time and a place where the cotton you grew was your food for the next season, where children of different colors went to different schools and where, if you are Black, one word from a white person could truly spell the end of life as you know it. It's a complicated and frightening life for a little girl to navigate, but Cassie does it with compassion, spunk and intelligence.
I do highly recommend the audiobook, the narrator is incredible.
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