In one of the greatest American classics, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy’s discovery of the terms of his identity. Baldwin’s rendering of his protagonist’s spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, … 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.”
“With vivid imagery, with lavish attention to details … [a] feverish story.” —The New York Times
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Baldwin writes like a god.
Well rounded characters and beautiful writing transport the reader into the story of Baldwin’s first novel. Extraordinary
I’ve always been in awe of great writers like James Baldwin, and his stunning debut novel Go Tell It on the Mountain is a must-read. It captures the African-American voice and experience effortlessly and masterfully. This story of a young, black boy engaging in the harsh world around him is relatable in so many ways. The realism of the story, paired with the overarching presence of God, delivers a novel that’s undeniably human, overseen by God, crafted by the insightful Baldwin.
A young man comes of age in 1930s Harlem, under the shadow of his preacher stepfather.
This was a difficult read, very beautiful, but so intense and painful that it was hard to stay with it at times. Religion is treated as a method toward freedom and self-respet–or being hedged in by obligations, either worthy or unworthy. In the end, the only way out seems to be through: by understanding and accepting–but not pardoning–the people around the main character.
Recommended, for the good of humanity in general.
Mr Baldwin is a gifted writer but I found this book boring. It might be because of the dated style. I finished it because I always do.
James Baldwin captured in the language of archetypes what it was like to grow up in a Pentecostal church full of rigidities and hypocrisies along with a deep hunger for God in the midst of hard times. Even with the great differences between my own experience and that told in the book, I found that I knew what he was describing, on many levels. I was deeply moved: I relived my own experience of 1953 as a nine-year-old boy trying to please rigid and demanding elders in family and church. Baldwin’s precise and beautiful narrative balances perfectly with the vernacular patter of his community–a patter very close to that of my Arkansas grandparents. Marvelous!
The novel that really moved my interest in African American literature. The story of the tensions within a church-going family which mostly law is going to help them more than grace.
A gut-wrenching novel … full of deep spiritual truths, profound insight, amid a turbulent search for contextual explanation as to ‘why’ poor John’s life is currently in the state it is. Full of religious imagery and biblical fervor, the sufferance of the characters involved is unpacked one after the other. The reader is drawn ever deeper into the reasons, the twists, turns and connections in the difficult lives of John’s family and extended family ties. Their roads traveled, with the karmic web of endurance and perpetual sufferance of the main characters, though painful, unrelenting and at times frustrating, an absolutely riveting page-turner. Baldwin doesn’t give the reader pause, no let up … at all. The ending is almost suffocating in its vivid intensity and lyrical momentum, as the web of woes, lies and secrets unravel, leaving the reader totally exhausted and worried about the fall-out – a truly excellent read!