The protagonist and narrator of The Girl with the Louding Voice is a 14-year-old girl named Adunni. She grows up in a poor village in Nigeria and endures a string of terrible events in her life. These traumatic experiences lead into one another and escalate her suffering. Her mother dies, causing her father to arrange for a marriage to an older man; one of the man’s wives dies and Adunni runs away, out of fear that she will be killed. A man sells her to a rich woman who beats and tortures her. Adunni’s life becomes a string of painful, violent experiences, though she always finds a way to survive. The remarkable strength shown by Adunni allows her to face down even the most difficult of circumstances and emerge with a positive outlook on life.

Adunni’s narration infuses the story with her personality. The style of narration she employs evolves and changes along with her character. As Adunni is exposed to more of the world and learns about the English language, her the rhetorical scope of her narration grows. For example, after Tia teaches her about tenses, Adunni’s narration evolves to reflect the new information.