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James Baldwin

Go Tell It on the Mountain (Vintage International) Paperback – September 12, 2013

by James Baldwin (Author)

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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."

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publication date

September 12, 2013
Dimensions

5.16 x 0.7 x 7.99 inches
ISBN-10

0375701877
ISBN-13

978-0375701870
Lexile measure

970L
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Popular Highlights in this book

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It was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding the other.
Highlighted by 1,221 Kindle readers
His father said that all white people were wicked, and that God was going to bring them low.
Highlighted by 1,094 Kindle readers
Their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord; indeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because they made that presence real.
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From the Publisher

the book i had to write if i was ever going to write anything else said james baldwin

Editorial Reviews

Review

“With vivid imagery, with lavish attention to details, Mr. Baldwin has told his feverish story.” —The New York Times

“Brutal, objective and compassionate.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“It is written with poetic intensity and great narrative skill.” —Harper’s

“Strong and powerful.” —Commonweal

“A sense of reality and vitality that is truly extraordinary. . . . He knows Harlem, his people, and the language they use.” —Chicago Sun-Times

“This is a distinctive book, both realistic and brutal, but a novel of extraordinary sensitivity and poetry.” —Chicago Sunday Tribune

About the Author

JAMES BALDWIN was born on August 2, 1924, and educated in New York. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews and immediately was recognized as establishing a profound and permanent new voice in American letters. "Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else," he remarked. Baldwin's play The Amen Corner was first performed at Howard University in 1955 (it was staged commercially in the 1960s), and his acclaimed collection of essays Notes of a Native Son, was published the same year. A second collection of essays, Nobody Knows My Name, was published in 1961 between his novels Giovanni's Room (1956) and Another Country (1961).

The appearance of The Fire Next Time in 1963, just as the civil rights movement was exploding across the American South, galvanized the nation and continues to reverberate as perhaps the most prophetic and defining statement ever written of the continuing costs of Americans' refusal to face their own history. It became a national bestseller, and Baldwin was featured on the cover of Time magazine. Critic Irving Howe said that The Fire Next Time achieved "heights of passionate exhortation unmatched in modern American writing." In 1964 Blues for Mister Charlie, his play based on the murder of a young black man in Mississippi, was produced by the Actors Studio in New York. That same year, Baldwin was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and collaborated with the photographer Richard Avedon on Nothing Personal, a series of portraits of America intended as a eulogy for the slain Medger Evers. A collection of short stories, Going to Meet the Man, was published in 1965, and in 1968, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, his last novel of the 1960s appeared.

In the 1970s he wrote two more collections of essays and cultural criticism: No Name in the Street (1972) and The Devil Finds Work (1976). He produced two novels: the bestselling If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) and Just Above My Head (1979) and also a children's book Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood (1976). He collaborated with Margaret Mead on A Rap on Race (1971) and with the poet-activist Nikki Giovanni on A Dialogue (1973). He also adapted Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X into One Day When I Was Lost.

In the remaining years of his life, Baldwin produced a volume of poetry, Jimmy's Blues (1983), and a final collection of essays, The Price of the Ticket. Baldwin's last work, The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985), was prompted by a series of child murders in Atlanta. Baldwin was made a Commander of the French Legion of Honor in June 1986. Among the other awards he received are a Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Partisan Review fellowship, and a Ford Foundation grant.

James Baldwin died at his home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in France on December 1, 1987.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I looked down the line,
And I wondered.

Everyone had always said that john would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. It had been said so often that John, without ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself. Not until the morning of his fourteenth birthday did he really begin to think about it, and by then it was already too late.

His earliest memories—which were in a way, his only memories—were of the hurry and brightness of Sunday mornings. They all rose together on that day; his father, who did not have to go to work, and led them in prayer before breakfast; his mother, who dressed up on that day, and looked almost young, with her hair straightened, and on her head the close-fitting white cap that was the uniform of holy women; his younger brother, Roy, who was silent that day because his father was home. Sarah, who wore a red ribbon in her hair that day, and was fondled by her father. And the baby, Ruth, who was dressed in pink and white, and rode in her mother's arms to church.

The church was not very far away, four blocks up Lenox Avenue, on a corner not far from the hospital. It was to this hospital that his mother had gone when Roy, and Sarah, and Ruth were born. John did not remember very clearly the first time she had gone, to have Roy; folks said that he had cried and carried on the whole time his mother was away; he remembered only enough to be afraid every time her belly began to swell, knowing that each time the swelling began it would not end until she was taken from him, to come back with a stranger. Each time this happened she became a little more of a stranger herself. She would soon be going away again, Roy said—he knew much more about such things than John. John had observed his mother closely, seeing no swelling yet, but his father had prayed one morning for the "little voyager soon to be among them," and so John knew that Roy spoke the truth.

Every Sunday morning, then, since John could remember, they had taken to the streets, the Grimes family on their way to church. Sinners along the avenue watched them—men still wearing their Saturday-night clothes, wrinkled and dusty now, muddy-eyed and muddy-faced; and women with harsh voices and tight, bright dresses, cigarettes between their fingers or held tightly in the corners of their mouths. They talked, and laughed, and fought together, and the women fought like the men. John and Roy, passing these men and women, looked at one another briefly, John embarrassed and Roy amused. Roy would be like them when he grew up, if the Lord did not change his heart. These men and women they passed on Sunday mornings had spent the night in bars, or in cat houses, or on the streets, or on rooftops, or under the stairs. They had been drinking. They had gone from cursing to laughter, to anger, to lust. Once he and Roy had watched a man and woman in the basement of a condemned house. They did it standing up. The woman had wanted fifty cents, and the man had flashed a razor.

John had never watched again; he had been afraid. But Roy had watched them many times, and he told John he had done it with some girls down the block.

And his mother and father, who went to church on Sundays, they did it too, and sometimes John heard them in the bedroom behind him, over the sound of rats' feet, and rat screams, and the music and cursing from the harlot's house downstairs.

Their church was called the Temple of the Fire Baptized. It was not the biggest church in Harlem, nor yet the smallest, but John had been brought up to believe it was the holiest and best. His father was head deacon in this church—there were only two, the other a round, black man named Deacon Braithwaite—and he took up the collection, and sometimes he preached. The pastor, Father James, was a genial, well-fed man with a face like a darker moon. It was he who preached on Pentecost Sundays, and led revivals in the summertime, and anointed and healed the sick.

On Sunday mornings and Sunday nights the church was always full; on special Sundays it was full all day. The Grimes family arrived in a body, always a little late, usually in the middle of Sunday school, which began at nine o'clock. This lateness was always their mother's fault—at least in the eyes of their father; she could not seem to get herself and the children ready on time, ever, and sometimes she actually remained behind, not to appear until the morning service. When they all arrived together, they separated upon entering the doors, father and mother going to sit in the Adult Class, which was taught by Sister McCandless, Sarah going to the Infant's Class, John and Roy sitting in the Intermediate, which was taught by Brother Elisha.

When he was young, John had paid no attention in Sunday school, and always forgot the golden text, which earned him the wrath of his father. Around the time of his fourteenth birthday, with all the pressures of church and home uniting to drive him to the altar, he strove to appear more serious and therefore less conspicuous. But he was distracted by his new teacher, Elisha, who was the pastor's nephew and who had but lately arrived from Georgia. He was not much older than John, only seventeen, and he was already saved and was a preacher. John stared at Elisha all during the lesson, admiring the timbre of Elisha's voice, much deeper and manlier than his own, admiring the leanness, and grace, and strength, and darkness of Elisha in his Sunday suit, wondering if he would ever be holy as Elisha was holy. But he did not follow the lesson, and when, sometimes, Elisha paused to ask John a question, John was ashamed and confused, feeling the palms of his hands become wet and his heart pound like a hammer. Elisha would smile and reprimand him gently, and the lesson would go on.

Roy never knew his Sunday school lesson either, but it was different with Roy—no one really expected of Roy what was expected of John. Everyone was always praying that the Lord would change Roy's heart, but it was John who was expected to be good, to be a good example.

When Sunday school service ended there was a short pause before morning service began. In this pause, if it was good weather, the old folks might step outside a moment to talk among themselves. The sisters would almost always be dressed in white from crown to toe. The small children, on this day, in this place, and oppressed by their elders, tried hard to play without seeming to be disrespectful of God's house. But sometimes, nervous or perverse, they shouted, or threw hymn-books, or began to cry, putting their parents, men or women of God, under the necessity of proving—by harsh means or tender—who, in a sanctified household, ruled. The older children, like John or Roy, might wander down the avenue, but not too far. Their father never let John and Roy out of his sight, for Roy had often disappeared between Sunday school and morning service and had not come back all day.

The Sunday morning service began when Brother Elisha sat down at the piano and raised a song. This moment and this music had been with John, so it seemed, since he had first drawn breath. It seemed that there had never been a time when he had not known this moment of waiting while the packed church paused—the sisters in white, heads raised, the brothers in blue, heads back; the white caps of the women seeming to glow in the charged air like crowns, the kinky, gleaming heads of the men seeming to be lifted up—and the rustling and the whispering ceased and the children were quiet; perhaps someone coughed, or the sound of a car horn, or a curse from the streets came in; then Elisha hit the keys, beginning at once to sing, and everybody joined him, clapping their hands, and rising, and beating the tambourines.

The song might be: Down at the cross where my Saviour died!

Or: Jesus, I'll never forget how you set me free!

Or: Lord, hold my hand while I run this race!

They sang with all the strength that was in them, and clapped their hands for joy. There had never been a time when John had not sat watching the saints rejoice with terror in his heart, and wonder. Their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord; indeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because they made that presence real. He did not feel it himself, the joy they felt, yet he could not doubt that it was, for them, the very bread of life—could not doubt it, that is, until it was too late to doubt. Something happened to their faces and their voices, the rhythm of their bodies, and to the air they breathed; it was as though wherever they might be became the upper room, and the Holy Ghost were riding on the air. His father's face, always awful, became more awful now; his father's daily anger was transformed into prophetic wrath. His mother, her eyes raised to heaven, hands arced before her, moving, made real for John that patience, that endurance, that long suffering, which he had read of in the Bible and found so hard to imagine.

On Sunday mornings the women all seemed patient, all the men seemed mighty. While John watched, the Power struck someone, a man or woman; they cried out, a long, wordless crying, and, arms outstretched like wings, they began the Shout. Someone moved a chair a little to give them room, the rhythm paused, the singing stopped, only the pounding feet and the clapping hands were heard; then another cry, another dancer; then the tambourines began again, and the voices rose again, and the music swept on again, like fire, or flood, or judgment. Then the church seemed to swell with the Power it held, and, like a planet rocking in space, the temple rocked with the Power of God. John watched, watched the faces, and the weightless bodies, and listened to the timeless cries. One day, so everyone said, this Power would possess him; he would sing and cry as they did now, and dance before his King. He watched young Ella Mae Washington, the seventeen-year-old granddaughter of Praying Mother Washington, as she began to dance. And then Elisha danced.

At one moment, head thrown back, eyes closed, sweat standing on his brow, he sat at the piano, singing and playing; and then, like a great, black cat in trouble in the jungle, he stiffened and trembled, and cried out. Jesus, Jesus, oh Lord Jesus! He struck on the piano one last, wild note, and threw up his hands, palms upward, stretched wide apart. The tambourines raced to fill the vacuum left by his silent piano, and his cry drew answering cries. Then he was on his feet, turning, blind, his face congested, contorted with this rage, and the muscles leaping and swelling in his long, dark neck. It seemed that he could not breathe, that his body could not contain this passion, that he would be, before their eyes, dispersed into the waiting air. His hands, rigid to the very fingertips, moved outward and back against his hips, his sightless eyes looked upward, and he began to dance. Then his hands closed into fists, and his head snapped downward, his sweat loosening the grease that slicked down his hair; and the rhythm of all the others quickened to match Elisha's rhythm; his thighs moved terribly against the cloth of his suit, his heels beat on the floor, and his fists moved beside his body as though he were beating his own drum. And so, for a while, in the center of the dancers, head down, fists beating, on, on, unbearably, until it seemed the walls of the church would fall for very sound; and then, in a moment, with a cry, head up, arms high in the air, sweat pouring from his forehead, and all his body dancing as though it would never stop. Sometimes he did not stop until he fell—until he dropped like some animal felled by a hammer—moaning, on his face. And then a great moaning filled the church.

There was sin among them. One Sunday, when regular service was over, Father James had uncovered sin in the congregation of the righteous. He had uncovered Elisha and Ella Mae. They had been "walking disorderly"; they were in danger of straying from the truth. And as Father James spoke of the sin that he knew they had not committed yet, of the unripe fig plucked too early from the tree—to set the children's teeth on edge—John felt himself grow dizzy in his seat and could not look at Elisha where he stood, beside Ella Mae, before the altar. Elisha hung his head as Father James spoke, and the congregation murmured. And Ella Mae was not so beautiful now as she was when she was singing and testifying, but looked like a sullen, ordinary girl. Her full lips were loose and her eyes were black—with shame, or rage, or both. Her grandmother, who had raised her, sat watching quietly, with folded hands. She was one of the pillars of the church, a powerful evangelist and very widely known. She said nothing in Ella Mae's defense, for she must have felt, as the congregation felt, that Father James was only exercising his clear and painful duty; he was responsible, after all, for Elisha, as Praying Mother Washington was responsible for Ella Mae. It was not an easy thing, said Father James, to be the pastor of a flock. It might look easy to just sit up there in the pulpit night after night, year in, year out, but let them remember the awful responsibility placed on his shoulders by almighty God—let them remember that God would ask an accounting of him one day for every soul in his flock. Let them remember this when they thought he was hard, let them remember that the Word was hard, that the way of holiness was a hard way. There was no room in God's army for the coward heart, no crown awaiting him who put mother, or father, sister, or brother, sweetheart, or friend above God's will. Let the church cry amen to this! And they cried: "Amen! Amen!"

The Lord had led him, said Father James, looking down on the boy and girl before him, to give them a public warning before it was too late. For he knew them to be sincere young people, dedicated to the service of the Lord—it was only that, since they were young, they did not know the pitfalls Satan laid for the unwary. He knew that sin was not in their minds—not yet; yet sin was in the flesh; and should they continue with their walking out alone together, their secrets and laughter, and touching of hands, they would surely sin a sin beyond all forgiveness. And John wondered what Elisha was thinking—Elisha, who was tall and handsome, who played basketball, and who had been saved at the age of eleven in the improbable fields down south. Had he sinned? Had he been tempted? And the girl beside him, whose white robes now seemed the merest, thinnest covering for the nakedness of breasts and insistent thighs—what was her face like when she was alone with Elisha, with no singing, when they were not surrounded by the saints? He was afraid to think of it, yet he could think of nothing else; and the fever of which they stood accused began also to rage in him.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group; Reprint edition (September 12, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0375701877
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0375701870
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 970L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.16 x 0.7 x 7.99 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #9,837 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #34 in Classic American Literature
- #276 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #809 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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James Baldwin

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James Baldwin (1924-1987) was a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic, and one of America's foremost writers. His essays, such as "Notes of a Native Son" (1955), explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-twentieth-century America. A Harlem, New York, native, he primarily made his home in the south of France.

His novels include Giovanni's Room (1956), about a white American expatriate who must come to terms with his homosexuality, and Another Country (1962), about racial and gay sexual tensions among New York intellectuals. His inclusion of gay themes resulted in much savage criticism from the black community. Going to Meet the Man (1965) and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968) provided powerful descriptions of American racism. As an openly gay man, he became increasingly outspoken in condemning discrimination against lesbian and gay people.

Photo by Allan warren (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Jay Ruud

An Indispensable Classic

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2020

Verified Purchase

James Baldwin’s debut novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, the semi-autobiographical story that culminates in 14-year-old John Grimes’ born-again experience as he physically struggles on the floor of his stepfather’s storefront church, is generally considered his masterpiece. It comes in at No. 39 on the Modern Library list of “Best English-Language Books of the 20th Century,” and also made Time magazine’s 2005 list of the “100 Best English Language Novels since 1923.” Thus, along with Richard Wright’s Native Son and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Baldwin’s novel forms a kind of triumvirate of the most significant novels by African Americans between the Harlem Renaissance and what we usually think of as the Civil Rights Movement.

But Baldwin’s book is simultaneously broader and narrower in its concerns than either Wright’s or Ellison’s. It is broader in that it is about more than being Black in America. It’s also about universal concerns like growing up, sexuality and sexual identity, faith and its loss, love and its loss. It is narrower in that it really doesn’t try to tell us about Black experience in a white society. Rather it focuses on one very specific individual—teenaged John Grimes, in a very specific family—one in which his abusive stepfather is a Pentecostal preacher who loves his own son Roy, John’s unreliable brother, but cannot bring himself to love John; in a very specific place—Harlem in the 1930s; on a very specific day—John’s birthday. Baldwin makes no implication that John’s experience is the quintessential metaphor for all African Americans everywhere. But readers will extrapolate some general truths from the experiences of this single family.

What Baldwin’s book does more convincingly and through the truth of personal experience is document the significant role of the church in African American life, both in its positive function of unifying the community and providing inspiration, and also in its negative aspects as a source of moral judgment and exclusion. Baldwin was well aware of these aspects, having been brought up in them, and, like John in the novel, having had a religious awakening at the age of 14 and having become a preacher himself, until he eschewed his faith.

Baldwin divides the novel into three sections. The first part begins as John wakes up on his birthday, wondering if anyone in his family is going to remember what day it is. Elizabeth, his mother, is arguing with Roy about their father, Gabriel, who is aloof and authoritarian and ready to enforce his dictums with beatings. When John thinks everyone has forgotten his birthday, his mother gives him some money to buy himself whatever he wants as a present. He uses it to attend a movie, one of the things his father forbids. When he gets home, he finds that Roy has been in a fight in which he was stabbed, and Gabriel is blaming Elizabeth for Roy’s wild behavior. Florence, Gabriel’s sister, tries to intercede, but Gabriel strikes Elizabeth anyway, and then beats Roy for defending his mother. The section ends with John joining Elisha, his church’s youth minister, in cleaning the church his family attends, and Gabriel, Elizabeth, and (to John’s surprise) Florence entering the church to attend the evening service.

The second part of the book, titled “The Prayers of the Saints,” is a brilliant tour de force in which Baldwin presents us with the entire complex backstory of this family while never straying from the self-imposed straight chronological narrative of this single day in John’s life, a classical unity of time in which is revealed a classical family curse. He does it by allowing us to overhear the unspoken prayers of all the novel’s chief characters as they rehearse before God their secret sins. The section begins with the prayer of John’s aunt Florence, Gabriel’s sister, who has nearly forgotten how to pray, it’s been so long. She reveals her resentment of her brother dating back to childhood, when Gabriel’s drinking and gambling drove her to leave their southern home on a train for New York, where she had married, and lost, a good man. She also remembers her friend Deborah, Gabriel’s first wife, who knew that Gabriel had an illegitimate son in Chicago.

In Gabriel’s prayer, he remembers his conversion after a night of wild carousing, remembers his turning preacher and his defending Deborah at a revival meeting when others shunned her for having been raped at 16. He also remembers his first son, the illegitimate Royal, now dead through his own debauched life, and whose mother Gabriel had abandoned when she became pregnant, giving her money to start over in Chicago.

Elizabeth prays, recalling her own unhappy childhood, in which her mother died and an aunt took her away from her father. She recalls her lover Richard, who suffered unjustly at the hands of the police (Black Lives mattered then, too) and died before she had given birth to John. In New York, she had met Florence, who introduced her to her brother Gabriel. Elizabeth comes out of her prayer when she hears John, lying on the floor and overcome with the power of the Holy Spirit.

The climactic part three of the book, called “The Threshing Floor,” focuses on John himself, writhing on the floor of the church in the throes of the Holy Spirit. Throughout the book, the adolescent John has been struggling with his own sexuality and his church’s attitude toward sin. His thoughts and his natural inclinations, he feels, threaten to separate him from God: “You is in the Word or you ain’t—ain’t no half way with God.” Prior to the service, John had been roughhousing with Elisha, whom he admires deeply—a struggle that he compares to Jacob wrestling with the angel. In a way that seems radical by today’s standards, but which has a history in English poetry that goes at least as far back as Donne—“Imprison me, for I /except you enthrall me never shall be free,/ nor ever chaste, except you ravish me”—Baldwin equates the physical ecstasy of sex with the spiritual ecstasy of religious fervor: John is enthralled by the way Elisha’s “thighs moved terribly against the cloth of his suit,” and as the Holy Ghost speaks to him on the church floor he experiences “a tightening in his loin strings” and “a sudden yearning tenderness for holy Elisha; desire, sharp and awful as a reflecting knife, to usurp the body of Elisha, and lie where Elisha lay; to speak in tongues, as Elisha spoke, and, with that authority, to confound his father.”

Baldwin would not write openly about a homosexual relationship until his next novel, Giovanni’s Room, in 1956. But it is clearly suggested in this novel, though it is not a crucial element in the plot since any form of sexuality would cause the 14-year-old protagonist shame and confusion in the stifling atmosphere of this particular tradition. John hopes that his born-again experience will bring him closer to his stepfather. You can probably guess how well that works. I won’t give away the ending, but I will say that it is more positive than you might imagine. For a book that deals with violent conflict with a difficult father, sexual ambivalence, religious guilt and shame, and, oh yeah, living in a racist society, it’s surprisingly affirmative—as if something has been exorcised, something has been blessed. If you haven’t read it, you ought to.

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Justin McD

Very good read

Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2023

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A great book. Have never gone so far in one day. After you read it you’ll get it

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EpicFehlReader

Get swept up in the beautiful, honest prose!

Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2016

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While only being just barely over 220 pages long, this novel certainly has a family saga feel to it! It's also definitely one of those books that falls on my "multiple readings likely required to catch everything" list. No problem there though, because the writing here is stunning! Even when he talks about the most mundane, everyday moments, Baldwin's superb word choice just makes you want to wrap up in these stories, grim as they may be sometimes. The poet Langston Hughes had this to say of Baldwin:

"He is thought-provoking, tantalizing, irritating, abusing and amusing. And he uses words as the sea uses waves, to flow and beat, advance and retreat, rise and take a bow in disappearing,,,the thought becomes poetry and the poetry illuminates the thought."

Go Tell It On The Mountain marks my first experience of reading Baldwin and I could not have described it better than Hughes. :-)

This short novel is broken down into three parts. Part 1 introduces the reader to John and his brother Roy living in Harlem, NYC. John is the son expected to follow in his father's footsteps of being a pastor, while not much is really expected of older brother Roy. Much of the story here is on John, as he asks himself if a life with the church is really what he wants. The reader also sees the somewhat strained relationship John has with his parents, his father outwardly a respected church figure but secretly a spouse abuser, John's mother appearing as a bit of a pushover / doormat type. But as the story progresses, we learn there's quite a bit more to the story than you might imagine.

Part 2... well, Part two has three segments on its own. I'll call them 2.1 / 2.2., etc. Okay, so 2.1 is essentially the story of John's Aunt Florence (sister to John's father), her past and present and how all those pivotal moments throughout her life brought her to be a key figure in John's life in present time. Part 2.2 then looks at the life of Gabriel, John's father; the fragile, nearly severed at times bond between Gabriel & Florence, as well as how Gabriel went from a life of shady activity and constant bad life choices to that of respected church figure. The reader also learns the history of Gabriel's life with first wife Deborah (not John's mother). Parts of the story here reminded me a bit of the biblical story of Abraham, Sarah & Hagar. Part 2.3 gets into how Gabriel and second wife Elizabeth (John's mother) got together, as well as looks back on Elizabeth's life before she came to know Gabriel.

Part 3 is a sort of wrapup, in a way. It brings together all the characters the reader has come to know to one church service in present time where final questions and thoughts are hashed out and addressed and final "say your peace" moments are aired out. It takes all this family history you've read about up to this point and finally connects all the dots to make this amazing & rich family tapestry that I think most any reader will find relatable on some level. John talks about a nightmare that has left him a changed man and Gabriel is forced to answer for some of his past wrongs.

It's not just the writing itself -- lines like "the waters of anguish riding the world" -- that grabs you in this book, but also the themes. So many powerful themes! One of the strongest being the idea of how even one small choice not thoroughly thought through can have the potential to have massive repercussions that can ruin numerous lives in the quietest of ways. I guess that's the stamp of great writing on this novel -- in some ways the story is pretty straightforward, yet in other ways it's deep and resonate even in the everyday-ness of it all. Though it's a short read, I recommend savoring this one and really getting to know all the characters & their struggles. Relate and commiserate with them!

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RBBnyc

A Book for Which I Respect Baldwin's Genius

Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2023

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I won't lie, this was not an easy read. I stayed with it, and glad I did so, because it's the story of how no parent lives in a vacuum -- they are people with their own traumas and struggles. As we grow older, we come to understand the conditions in which our elders were raised, and it often tempers our view of their deeds. Baldwin excels at drawing real people ,.. not 100% evil, not 100% good. All flawed to themselves, the people around them, and if it's your belief, the eyes of God.

I struggled with the Christian vernacular heavy throughout the book. If you are not well schooled in the Bible, or you do not enjoy religious imagery and rhetoric, you may have a problem sticking with this narrative. That said, for those who do have Christian faith, I'm sure it resonates that much more.

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Top reviews from other countries

Vigilantius

Gripping, visceral but too much ranting about sin

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 19, 2023

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It is a hell of a tale, told variously from the points of view of the mother, father, aunt, girlfriend and the central lad growing up in Harlem in the 1930s – closely echoing the Baldwin’s own life. The demon in the boy Johnny Grimes’s life – as for Baldwin – is his father, a raging, obsessed preacher who fled from the south to escape poverty and the women he used. The spectre of slavery, not long passed, and the continuing racial prejudice of ‘white folks’ contaminates everything, albeit in a somewhat monochrome way.

There are many long passages of preaching or musings from inside the evangelical mindset, which are too much for me – though I am Christian. I was never convinced of the spiritual integrity of these passages, though they are certainly overwhelming. Though are realistic, my problem is their negative focus on sin and judgement. Loyalty to the evangelical church community is the only positive, rather than love or compassion for fellow humans, irrespective of their creed or colour. Johnny Grimes’s short-lived religious awakening seems to have far more to do with the preachers and the intensity of the services than Jesus.

The misery of the small family, persecuted by the abusive father, is grippingly alive, with sadly too little joy to leaven the heaviness. What kept me going was the drama, pathos and credibility of the main personalities.

Davor

A good read

Reviewed in Canada on August 7, 2023

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A thoughtful book.

Client d'Amazon

good but not his best

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 21, 2023

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This is a fascinating first novel and as many do, is clearly directly influenced by Baldwin's own life. Rather than be strictly autofictional though (I find many modern first novels are a little too diaristic) this is more ambitious, jumping around in time to tell the story of a family and how they came to the ongoing events of the novel.

I would say it's worth reading, especially if you're already reading Baldwin but that it's not my favourite of his. That is stiff competition to be fair!

Mathew. P .N . Gitau

An introduction to the afro-American social crisis of 1930s

Reviewed in Australia on May 12, 2022

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Religion has always been a crucial topic in the Afro-American society. For a race so into the practice of religion , would it translate to more peace and order? Can the ‘anointed’ one led a better life? Did the teachings of religion see sons of former slaves forgive their former masters?
James Baldwin in his own way he portrays the real image of a 1930 Afro-American society . Broken families , adultery, hatred , homosexuality, deceit , blackmail and many more issues are addressed. We follow through the lives of Gabriel, Elizabeth, Florence , Deborah, Richard , Roy , Elisha and more importantly John .
The hatred within Gabriel’s family- who happens to be a deacon and a former pastor - is well illustrated through the entire book.
James Baldwin however unlike his proceeding books quite avoided to address the concept of sexuality . He however became more outspoken on sexuality in his later books especially a fan favourite - Giovanni .
As a reader the book is incomplete , I expected John to seek a different life . To defy the norms and seek a more fulfilling life but yet on that night he got saved . A sequel to the book is needed , how did John transverse his new found salvation yet he had some hidden feelings for Elisha. Did Roy get better ? Did John find a way to forgive his father ? . Did Florence and Gabriel ever come into better terms ?

Mathew P Ndegwa Gitau

T. E O'C

Brilliant ideas, thin on plot

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 29, 2021

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I really liked this book. As a a non religious person, I'm always interested to see how people with faith analyse their own belief systems and the questions that can arise.

Essentially telling the story of a 14 year old boy's first religious experience, the book sets up a situation where a child has a vision of God in a church. It then goes back in time to examine how various members of his family found their own way to the church.

Examining the role of religion in post slavery and pre civil rights USA, the book is funny, engaging and has really well rounded characters. Some of the lines need to be read twice because of the subtle nudges and double meanings of expressions (for example the father character telling one of his sons he was going to be seeing Jesus as a threat), but always told with a sense of humour and heart, Go Tell It To The Mountain is well worth a read, and an interesting time capsule for the attitudes to racism in the 50s from the victims side.

One star off because very little happens in the actual "real-time" story line, but a fabulous piece of literature all the same.

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