Go Tell It on the Mountain
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4.3 • 233 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
One of the most brilliant and provocative American writers of the twentieth century chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention in this “truly extraordinary” novel (Chicago Sun-Times).
Baldwin's classic novel opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin tells the story of the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Originally published in 1953, Baldwin said of his first novel, "Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else."
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Written in the breathless cadence of a Pentecostal sermon, James Baldwin’s classic hits you with an emotional power that remains undiluted decades after its original publication in 1953. Baldwin lets us spend a single Saturday with teenage outsider John Grimes, the stepson of a cruel and duplicitous pastor who runs a storefront church in 1930s Harlem. As John tries to reconcile his own identity with his most important relationships—God, family, and community—Baldwin gives us glimpses into John’s childhood trauma. His passionate critique of the church also serves as a brutal condemnation of a systematically segregated America. An intense, dramatic story that sings with a force and power all its own, Go Tell It on the Mountain brilliantly and elegantly weaves cutting social commentary into fiction.
Customer Reviews
Just wow.
I have absolutely no words. The writing within this novel is something of which I haven’t laid my eyes on in my life, and something I won’t ever forget. My soul is touched, and I can’t say I’ve ever read something so beautiful and vivid.
The journey to rebirth
With passion and poetry and artistry we see into the vivid world of James Baldwin.... Each character is lovingly etched into the family and we are forever touched and moved by their personal struggles of survival.
A hard slough
I love to read. This book, however was just too abstract for my tastes. It felt like something I would have been assigned for homework in the 1960s. It really had no narrative. Sorry I stuck it out to the end