Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry: A Culturally Specific, Subversive Concept of Child Agency

This article is a critique of Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry with regard to its positioning of the child subject. I propose that the novel contrasts classic works of children’s fiction by following a trajectory of child agency, which is enabled through the novel’s racial specificity. The adults in the novel “teach” the children, but they do so in a way that encourages autonomous action. Subversive child agency is enabled in the novel through the demystification of history and the unveiling of power structures. In the process, the child characters become agents of resistance.