“You’re Gonna Hear Me Roar”: An Intersectional Feminist Approach to Growling Anger in Contemporary Picturebooks

Against the background of the politicized, racialized, and gendered use of big cat metaphors in Western Europe and North America, this article investigates the portrayal of anger as a powerful feline in contemporary picturebooks. Adopting an intersectional feminist framework, I examine how two contemporary picturebooks—Sophia en de leeuw [Sophia and the Lion] by Angela Pelaez Vargas (2015) and Ravi’s Roar by Tom Percival (2019)—featuring characters from groups whose anger is often disallowed or criticized (here, a white girl and a boy of color, respectively) engage with norms and stereotypes that silence and police their anger expression. The study employs a multifaceted critical cultural approach that combines intersectional feminism, cognitive linguistics, and picturebook theories to examine the anger processing of the enraged characters (e.g., holding anger in, speaking out) and the actions and reactions of other characters (e.g., offering support, shutting out) within the visual and verbal narrative context (i.e., how, when, where, with whom) and discusses the role of narrative techniques in the books’ stance toward societal norms and stereotypes. The study concludes with a reflection on the broader themes and representational dynamics at play in these books, and their implications.