Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry（好震撼的名字）是美国非裔女性小说家Mildred D. Taylor在1976年的儿童文学作品，获奖无数。小说讲的是在1886年，一位美国非裔小女生的成长故事。那时，距离黑奴解放已经二十多年，很多美国白人仍然不把黑人当人看。以前种植园逼迫黑奴种棉花，解放后，很多黑人们还是靠种棉花为生。小女生的爸爸，家里有400acres的棉花地，最后也因为棉花价格下降，不得不出去打工。在选段里，小女生的学校里，几乎所有的同学们，都得去摘棉花，学校也因此调整开学时间，就这样，还是有很多孩子会因为在家务农，不能来上学。学校里的孩子们，学习一般都很差，而且大家都很穷，赤着脚，穿着打着补丁的衣服。大家如果还记得《绿皮书》，发生在1961年的故事，距离《黑色棉花田》又有八十年，电影里有一个镜头，还是贫穷的黑人们在棉花田里干活。
所以棉花田在美国是什么形象，呼之欲出。
那个这次抵制我们棉花的棉花协会，早在2008年就用同样的理由，抵制了别国棉花，重创了那个农业国家的棉花经济，最后让人家不得不引入外资来“救助”自己的棉花产业。呃，现在手摘棉花多贵啊，用机器不香吗？
——“棉花谣言”的想象，根植于美国文化里，换句话说，也只有他们编的出来。不停拿棉花说事儿，就像在重复承认西方种族歧视的污点历史，不知道非裔们怎么看。
这部获奖无数的儿童文学作品呢，揭开了一段历史，关于美国黑人所经历的贫穷和种族歧视，很适合给孩子读。Bunny也在网上找到了两个跟这篇小说配套的语言学习教材（是不是很神奇！）这部小说的中文翻译，也有好几个版本，还有一个插图版，甚是好看。
现在Bunny就来读一读节选部分，欢迎大家微信私信敲我要电子书哈～
The Great Faith Elementary and Secondary School, one of the largest black schools in the county, was a dismal end to an hour's journey. Consisting of four weather-beaten wooden houses on stilts of brick. 320 students, seven teachers. a principal.a caretaker, and the caretaker's cow, which kept the wide crabgrass lawn sufficiently clipped in spring and summer, the school was located near three plantations, the largest and closest by far being the Granger plantation. Most of the students were from families that sharecropped on Granger land, and the others mainly from Montier and Harrison plantation families.Because the students were needed in the fields from early spring when the cotton was planted until after most of the cotton had been picked in the fall, the school adjusted its terms accordingly, beginning in October and dismissing in March. But even so, after today a number of the older students would not be seen again for a month or two, not until the last puff of cotton had been gleaned from the fields, and eventually most would drop out of school altogether. Because of this the classes in the higher grades grew Smaller with each passing year.The class buildings, with their backs practically against the forest wall, formed a semicircle facing a small one-room church at the opposite edge of the compound. It was to this church that many of the school's students and their parents belonged. As we arrived, the enormous iron bell in the church belfry was ringing vigorously, warning the milling students that only five minutes of freedom remained.Little Man immediately pushed his way across the lawn to the well. Stacey and T.J., ignoring the rest of us now that they were on the school grounds, wandered off to be with the other seventh-grade boys, and Christopher-John and Claude rushed to reunite with their classmates of last year. Left alone, I dragged slowly to the building that held the first four grades and sat on the bottom step. Plopping my pencils and notebook into the dirt, I propped my elbows on my knees and rested my chin in the palms of my hands.'Hey, Cassie,' said Mary Lou Wellever, the principal's daughter, as she flounced by in a new yellow dress. 'Hey, yourself,' I said, scowling so ferociously that she kept on walking. I stared after her a moment noting that she would have on a new dress. Certainly no one else did. Patches on faded pants and dresses abounded on boys and girls come so recently from the heat of the cotton fields. Girls stood awkwardly, afraid to sit, and boys pulled restlessly at starched, highbuttoned collars. Those students fortunate enough to have shoes hopped from one pinched foot to the other. Tonight the Sunday clothes would be wrapped in newspaper and hung for Sunday and the shoes would be packed away to be brought out again only when the weather turned so cold that bare feet could no longer traverse the frozen roads: but for today we all suffered.
