Go Tell It on the Mountain
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4.3 • 253 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
James Baldwin’s bestselling first novel—a coming-of-age story that depicts incredible resilience in pursuit of self-invention, now hailed as an American classic
“A novel of extraordinary sensitivity and poetry.”—Chicago Tribune
Originally published in 1953, Go Tell It on the Mountain was James Baldwin’s first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage born of compassion, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy’s discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem. Baldwin’s rendering of a young person’s spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understood themselves.
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