This study undertakes to examine the cultural politics of the subaltern peasants in Mo Yan's The Garlic Ballads (1995) in the light of the theoretical speculations of the subaltern study project espoused by Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak, and Dipesh Chakrabarty. Yan endeavors to give a voice to peasants who are underrepresented. The Garlic Ballads presents a dimension of peasant reality that is ignored in historiographic annals. They have been labeled ‘primitive' and ‘anachronistic' and thus, they have been muted, marginalized and confined to the peripheral zone of difference. In Mo Yan's narrative, the bleak existence and the physical and psychological wounds do not subdue the peasants' urge to resist, and their vitality remains enflamed. They forge stratagems and weapons derived from within peasant experience through which they counter the atrocious oppression and injustices of the officials. The weapons are diverse namely; docility, voluntary compliance, folktales, songs, rumors, and memories. Given their unrelenting insubordination and resistance through the resort to stratagems and maneuvers, they prove worthy of the status to represent China's sturdy backbone. Moreover, they demonstrate evidence of their capability to bear the responsibility to disrupt the burdensome legacy of the silence, inferiority and subalternity imposed upon them by the dominant culture.