Go Tell It on the Mountain (Vintage International)

I came to James Baldwin late, long after I had read great African-American novelists like Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, and Ralph Ellison. I'm glad I saved him for my maturity, given the wisdom and richness of his prose. I was reading "Go Tell It on the Mountain" today while alternating the book with the coverage of George Floyd's funeral in my own home town (as well as Mr. Floyd's) of Houston. How the novel and the service meshed! Baldwin, in this story set in Harlem in the mid-30's, so powerfully conveys the centrality of the church in black lives, the incredible tradition of pastoral oratory, the promises and perils of the Great Migration to the North in the interwar period (continued much later when George Floyd moved from Houston to Minneapolis to begin a new life), and the dignity and strength of black women. More than one young black man in "Go Tell it on the Mountain" dies from violence. And just as in Baldwin's "If Beale Street Could Talk," New York cops arrest black men on the flimsiest of suspicions and brutalize them in custody. How little has changed in the better part of a century since the author's own Harlem childhood in the Depression! This book is rightly a classic. I wish that Baldwin were required reading not just in every college but in every police academy in this country. His is exactly the kind of loving honesty about the black experience that our society desperately needs.

Good

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!

so at age 52 and having come from a mother who owned her personal library I thought I had read this book. I know the title well, but a month ago my youngest son 26 passed away. And I started reading again to clear my heart n ease my fury. What I can say now is this time reading this book meant so much more. I found myself struggling to understand the flow of the author but I couldn't stop reading. Determined to understand why something was pulling me to remember the story. Then as the story closed and the pages fell into place in my mind, my heart lifted and I understood why this book is so special. Even as I write this I know I have seen this in my dreams and for the1st time since I kisses my son a final goodbye do I feel like I am exactly where I am supposed to be in time n the loss of my son is not a burden I cannot carry, and my son is where he was destined to be. In the months before he passed he was shot and became a paralyzed, a fate he took on with the heart of a lion and a courage that made me stronger. As I completed the book I have a feeling that it was intended so I could understand, the words written so long ago found me and crazy as it sounds helped me to smile and see the pain fear darkness in my sons heart that changed to a place so full of faith that he defied the impact of his injury and did everything that "they" said he wouldn't do and when he was tired and needed to put his burden down he said his goodbyes closed his eyes and called for his father to take him home. I am forever charged but I am not as broken as I was before I read this book. Excellent and steady work Mr. Baldwin Thank you🙏

How did I go all through school and not know of James Baldwin. His words weave together in your mind and paint vivid pictures of what his characters see, but more importantly he makes you feel what they feel. The family in this book in some ways is so like my own. 100 years apart, different color skin, but ruled by religion to some degree, yet ruled by past sins and buried secrets even more. He lets you see the good and bad in all things in his character’s hearts and minds. As the reader you know everything, everything but the ending. An incredible book. So glad I read it.

In my mind, as I was reading this, I could not chase away the comparison to Richard Wright's Native Son (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations) . A simple gloss on the plots of both would tell you the same thing. A young African-American man grows up in a northern city during the early part of the twentieth century. The cultural conditions are different for Wright's proxy character and Baldwin's. Bigger's cultural antagonist is white culture, while John's is the religious inheritance of his people. While the world of _Go Tell it on the Mountain_ makes me feel less guilty and indignant than the milieu of Bigger Thomas's Chicago, the world is more alienating because so unfamiliar. The unfamiliarity carries over to the structure of the book. While it ends and begins in the same place, the bulk of the text is discursive and showing the back-story behind John's life. I kept finding myself on my toes tracing where I was. While this can be an effective technique to really think about what is going on, it does take the reader away from the story. For me, this is a narrative with some momentum, so it is troubling that Baldwin uses the structure to slow the reader down. The book is powerful and well-written, but it is lacking a certain something that you can find in The Fire Next Time (HRW Library) that I cannot fully place but is not here.

A powerfully fecund and original mind! James Baldwin brooks no deceit nor conceit, as he engages. In full throttle, in this book, he can be mercilessly unyielding as he fearlessly and unapologetically expose and excoriate the tainted and timid. He savagely endures no prisoner. Nonetheless, he’s remarkably deep and candid! The writer is ferociously committed and capable of delving into and navigating the most intricate and labyrinthine contours of the human soul, and clinically, analysing its subtleties: foibles, pretensions, relationships etc. And he extends this unerring capacity to capturing the sheer essence of the spiritual and elemental forces of life and nature, and their respective constituents. With studied ease and confidence, he repeatedly and effortlessly unleashes his talent to achieve this feat throughout the book. Amazing talent! Such talent....., certainly, prodigious and beyond the mere ability to craft majestic and tantalising prose. On the whole - and in the wider context - the book is a masterful portraiture of the relentless ugliness, darkness, misery, melancholy and gloom that typifies and envelops black life in the early 20th century America. A naked byproduct of the scandalously shameful American racism that lingers till date. The work is ceaselessly deep, compelling and enthralling! And no wonder it’s, dutifully, enshrined a classic. A book for all time and for all that seek to know!

Beautifully written deep meditation on belief, grace, hypocrisy, love. Magnificence in simplicity. Read it and be challenged to remain as you once were.