Go Tell It on the Mountain (Vintage International)

They say that "Go Tell It on the Mountain" is the book that James Baldwin had to right before he could right anything else. Like Job, Baldwin bears witness to the struggles of everyday African Americans in the era of Jim Crow.

In this particular novel, he looks at the effects from a number of different viewpoints, whether as a man struggling to find his identity in New York City, or a woman who was raped by a group of white men in the South.

The book meanders between reality and religion a little too much for my taste, but the novel's values still hold true today for everyone, from trying to gain the approval of one's father to towing the line of racial and religious acceptance. Baldwin writes: "narrow was the way that led to life eternal" (28). This is true today as people try to find themselves personally as all arrows are pointing a certain direction (i.e. "Fences" by August Wilson and "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed.)

If you look at the novel from a religious standpoint, it is a story of sin followed by repentance. Every character has a story that winds through the early 20th century to get them to Harlem in the decade of the Great Depression. Every character has sinned, but has found and ridded themselves of their misgivings. Every character has been deep down in the valley, but, in the end, they are able to tell their stories atop the mountain of piety. That's how the titular metaphor goes.

I got this book for a college class. I personally didn't like the book but i'm sure someone else would. It wasn't in the best condition, but considering the age of the book is kinda understanding. The shipping was on time as well.

This is an excellent semi autobiographical novel about an African American young man living in New York. He deals with his family, society, and church.

The novel itself combines ethic dialogue with very artistic narrative. I felt that some of the narrative was drawn by bible stories. There is a passage near the end of the novel that reminded me of The Book of Ezekiel and The Book of Revelation. Many of the characters in the book had biblical names. One such character is Deborah and I felt there was some commonalities between the two "Deborah's".

I liked this novel very much. I attempt to read African American Literature on an ongoing basis, but not to the exclusion of their literature. With that in mind I have read numerous works both of fiction and non fiction of African American Literature. In terms to novels, fiction, I would currently place this second as my personal favorite, behind "An Autobiography Of An Ex Colored Man" by James Weldon Johnson. I am very glad I read this novel. Thank You...

Go Tell It On the Mountain is James Baldwin’s classic novel about life for African Americans. The book is written in three parts. Part one begins the story of the Grimes family who are living in Harlem. The father, Gabriel, is very religious and strict and as a result his two oldest sons, John and Roy, come to dislike and resent him. John is the main focus of this section. He is described as essentially good and God-fearing, but unsure about the direction of his life. Roy is more problematic and prone to getting into trouble. The family also includes two younger sisters and the mother, Elizabeth, who has to put up with a difficult life. Part two takes the story back to an earlier time in the South. Gabriel is a boy who gets into trouble, his sister Florence becomes disgusted and moves to New York. As their mother is dying Gabriel makes a vow to become religious and becomes a preacher but does not change his ways. He marries Deborah, but has a relationship with Ester. She leaves and has a son, Royal. Gabriel does not acknowledge the relationship and Ester and Royal both die. Meanwhile Florence marries Frank but after ten years he leaves and eventually dies in WWI. Elizabeth meets Richard who ends up killing himself after being falsely accused of a crime. Elizabeth is pregnant and gives birth to John. After Deborah dies, Gabriel comes north and marries Elizabeth and they have three children plus John. In part three the narrative returns to the present and mainly concerns John who is a young man and after a religious experience he and his friend Elesha go off together.

This novel is a powerful story of the African-American experience in the first half of the 20th century and especially the impact of religion on this experience. While times have changed it is well worth reading this book as an insight into that way of life.

James Baldwin's first novel, published in 1953, is written in the third person but we quickly discard all novelistic technicalities and experience this remarkable story of adolescence through the senses of its 14 year old protagonist. Baldwin's writing has an immediacy and lyricism that blunts its hard-edges of ever-present racism - which although rarely overt is always lurking like a storm in the distance - and its first confused stirrings of a sexuality that is radically different than its time and place will ever sanction. With religion as yet another powerful presence, this tale of a brilliant young man struggling to create his identity despite the powerful restrictive forces arrayed against him, has the universal resonance of all great literature. Go Tell it on the Mountain has even greater impact because of its relative shortness. The novel's impact is heightened because of its tightly focused vision.

Baldwin, like many great American writers before him, chose exile in Paris as a means of escape from stultifying conformity as well as an even more unique struggle for sexual and racial freedom. His need for freedom is the ever-present force that drives this novel. We cannot read it without an awareness of the profound course of action that its author eventually undertook in order to experience some semblance of personal liberty. That realization adds the impact of something like a powerful manifesto to this beautifully nuanced first novel.

Like all of the Everyman's Library editions, this one is attractive and sturdy. It is printed (in BEMBO I believe) on exceptionally thick paper with a particularly striking, deep crimson cloth cover and a protective dust cover, making this an heirloom edition at a bargain price. As is also usual with Everyman's Editions, there is an informative introduction, a multi-genre chronology and a silk ribbon as a place-holder. In all respects, this is a worthy celebration of a great writer's first novel. It is a novel that is transcendent in message and importance, as it marks the birth of a clearly defined movement for freedom whose maturity was still at least a decade in the future. One of the beauties of Go Tell it on the Mountain is that it occupies a unique space in American cultural identity: both as a great novel as well as marking the approximate birth of a sociological phenomenon whose powerful forces are still unfolding and whose ends are still not in sight. That adds uniqueness as one of the attributes that sets this novel apart. If you haven't read it yet, I strongly recommend that you do so, This Everyman's Library edition is attractively priced for its fine qualities.

This is a complex and nuanced work. To me, it's a book about how society, through religion and other social mores, forces people to behave within certain societal boundaries. It's a story of how the son of a preacher grows up in Harlem and the conflicts that he experiences as he grows up. Part of the reason that the novel is so good is because it's partially autobiographical and the author is drawing from his own experiences and emotions to flesh out the characters. This autobiographical nature gives the work a vivid freshness and three dimensionality that is sometimes not found in purely artificial novels.

The work is particularly powerful because it forces the reader to reinterpret their own experiences and how religion and society has shaped their existence. It makes the reader more self aware and that to me is extremely valuable. I had similar experiences with the church in my personal life and part of the reason that I am not a practicing Catholic is because of the perception of social meddling that I felt while I was growing up. I came to internally rationalize that the Church and God are two vastly different things for me. This work is validation of my own internal feelings and conflicts that I experienced while growing up.

The work has been embraced by the LGBT community because, in several passages, the protagonist expresses conflicts regarding his sexuality. He articulates how he finds himself very distracted because of people's sexuality as he goes through puberty. In one passage, he finds attraction to someone of the same sex. Although it can be convincingly argued that the character was homosexual, it can also be argued that those conflicting emotions were nothing more than the erratic emotions that a pubescent adolescent -- feelings people normally feel as they go through that conflicted phase. Most certainly, when you take this novel along with Giovanni's Room (Everyman's Library (Cloth)), the homosexual aspects really do jump out at you. Both novels are worthwhile reads but Giovanni's Room is about homosexuality while Go Tell It On the Mountain is a broader story about society and forced conformance.

Regardless, and to me, this story is not so much a gay story but a profound statement on how society imposes itself on people and how religion & the church shapes society -- sometimes, to the detriment of the individual.

This is literature of a very high order and I highly recommend it to anyone, regardless of whether you are religious or nonreligious, heterosexual or homosexual. It's a very worthwhile read.

As always, this Everyman's edition is top notch. Wonderful acid free paper, tight binding, beautiful cloth cover, nice cover design. Overall, just wonderful. Thank you. A very wortwhile addition to the collection.

I once wrote a term paper on GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN for an American literature class in a Baptist college. I wish I still had that paper since I have no idea what I said or could have said about it at that time in my life that would have any sense. That was at a time when Leroi Jones (before he changed his name) and James Weldon Johnson were the only black writers included in what was then considered the bible, the NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. I know I thought I was super cool since I had just discovered this fantastic writer and was fairly sure that my professor, though brilliant but white of course and in her sixties, had certainly not read Mr. Baldwin.
Even though I am aware that Mr. Baldwin spent ten years writing this his first published novel, I was blown away this time around with how perfect it is. It is as if he came into the world writing this outrageously wonderful prose. Countee Cullen, his instructor at that high school in Harlem must have been a fine one indeed.
The novel, the title of which is taken from a well-known hymn, obviously has many autobiographical overtones since Mr. Baldwin grew up in Harlem and had a harsh stepfather who was a minister—as was Mr. Baldwin for about three years from the age of fourteen to seventeen—in a Pentecostal Church there. The novel takes place over a twenty-four-hour period in young John Grimes’ life. Through flashbacks, we learn of what has also happened previously to his stepfather Gabriel, his mother Elizabeth and his aunt Florence. Apparently they were part of the great migration of black folk who left the South by the tens of thousands for a better life in other parts of the country that Isabel Wilkersib writes about in her well-written nonfiction book: THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS.

Certainly there are a lot of parallels between this fictional Pentecostal church in Harlem and the fundamentalist country Baptist Church of my youth. (We didn’t even call ourselves “Southern Baptists since they were too liberal.} Preachers fervently reminded sinners that they would burn in hell for all eternity if they did not confess their sins and come to Jesus. The big difference, of course, is that these characters had to contend with racism and the concomitant violence that accompanies it in all its many aspects; and unfortunately, most of us white people in those country churches were racists too.

Mr. Baldwin’s prose is seeped in both Old and New Testament references and the rhythms of the King James Version of the Bible, which we would expect, given the writer’s background and the subject matter. And there is all that racism and violence everywhere: “And blood, in all the cities through which he [Gabriel Grimes] had passed, ran down. There seemed no door, anywhere, behind which blood did not call out, unceasingly, for blood; no woman, whether singing before defiant trumpets or rejoicing before the Lord, who had nog seen her father, her brother, her lover or her son cut down without mercy; who had not seen her sister become part of the white man’s great whorehouse, all too narrowly, escaped that house herself. . .”

In an interview with Studs Turkel in 1961 Mr. Baldwin says about writing this novel: “I thought I would never be able to finish it—and I finally realized that one of the reasons that I couldn’t finish this novel was that I was ashamed of where I was from and where I had been. I was ashamed of the life in the Negro church, ashamed of my father, ashamed of the Blues, ashamed of Jazz, and, of course, ashamed of watermelon: all those stereotypes that the country inflicts on Negroes. . . I ran from it.” In another interview with Richard Goldstein in 1984, he further says that GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN is not about a church; it’s what happens to you when you cannot love someone. Who should know better about what a novel is about than the author I ask.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN remains a classic of American literature.

Go Tell It On The Mountain is a novel that begins in early 1930's Harlem.It centers around an unhappy family and gradually gives you their back story.Much time is spent on the Southern background of the parents .By the time the novel is finished , it's pretty clear why everyone would be unhappy.
The novel is framed with biblical quotations and the religous framework is all pervasive.Much of the families life centers around the independent pentecostal church they attend.This novel is about the African American religious experience as much as it is about anything.
Some of what goes on in the church was a little confusing to me.That was of little importance.It succeeds in being a moving portrait of sad and often oppressed people.Let's face it, you'd be angry and depressed if you faced what these people have faced.

It has been a wonderful year for African-American storytelling. The Sellout, Negroland and Between the World and Me are all impressive. A satire that makes you laugh out loud but also stings like a slap; a memoir about loss and gain; a father's angry, loving letter to a son about the real, ongoing perils of being black--a clear-eyed look at what has not changed. Black life is discounted in our society. As powerful and as impactful as each of these modern works is, none come close to the beauty and brilliance James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain.

Few authors can tackle great and small themes with Baldwin's deftness and eloquence. Yes, this is the story of a people but also of persons. Individuals who each carry their personal burdens and tragedies into a society that seems determined to diminish or keep them down. They are preyed upon but also prey upon each others--a sister waits to bring a brother down; a husband abuses a wife and son for sins he too has committed; wives drive husbands away because they resent both their need and his imperfections. It is a morass few could extricate themselves from, but Baldwin does with deftness.

More than 60 years ago, Baldwin was speaking truth to power. In a book where white characters are practically nonexistant, white authority is so pervasive, it is felt every day by everyone. Each character knows white people are more than indifferent to their suffering, they are its progenitor. Racism breaks black men and wears down black women. A viewpoint so hard and cold would seemingly lead only to despair. But in Go Tell It On The Mountain, Truth is tempered by Love. John Grimes, the 14 year old boy who struggles with the hatred of and for his step-father his saved when he realizes he will not be religious in a traditional sense--but he will follow Christ's example: he will struggle against injustice; he will speak and live the truth; but he will not become like his enemies. He will not hate those who hate him.

This is a brilliant book; epic and personal. The story of ordinary people, majestically told. Essential reading.

I read James Baldwin's first novel, "Go Tell it on the Mountain" (1953) in 2012 in a book group devoted to Black Voices in literature. I have just read the book again as part of a reading group without any particular focus in its themes. Rereading the book reminded my of my friends in the Black Voices group and resulted in a moving reunion over dinner. I loved this book when I first read it and on the rereading.

Baldwin's novel is set primarily in a storefront African American Pentecostal church in Harlem in 1935 during the Great Migration. The book includes many backstories and flashbacks between life in Harlem and elsewhere in the North and life in the South. Baldwin's book explores the role of religion in African American life, North and South, and in American life. The book also offers a portrayal of race relations in the United States, both North and South, through the first half of the 20th Century. The novel has an autobiographical component and is in part a coming of age story.

The primary character in the story is John Grimes, who has just turned 14 when the story begins. The story describes John's difficult relationship with his family, including his father Gabriel, a deacon at a Harlem storefront church called the Temple of Fire Baptized, and formerly a fiery southern preacher. Other characters in John's family include his mother, Elizabeth, and Florence, Gabriel's sister and thus John's aunt. Each of these three people spent their early years in the South and ultimately found themselves in Harlem as part of the Great Migration. There are a host of other important characters in the book, including several other children of Gabriel and Elizabeth and Elisha, 17, a preacher at the Temple of Fire Baptized and John's friend, to whom John appears to have a sexual attraction.

The book is in three parts. The first part "The Seventh Day" sets the stage for the book. It takes place in the Grimes' poor apartment on John's 14th birthday as his younger brother, Roy, comes home with a stab wound. Stabbings and violence run through the novel and through the Grimes family. As the story unfolds, it develops that Gabriel had an earlier son, Royal, a wild young man, who died young from a stabbing in the throat. The family life is harsh and tense and filled with seething tension.

After a scene of violence in which Gabriel strikes his wife, the scene shifts for the lengthy second part of the book to the Temple of Fire Baptized for the Saturday evening service. It is the expressed wish of the family that John, a quiet, small, intelligent boy will find God and be saved.

Part two of the book, "The Prayers of the Saints" is the heart of the novel. The "Saints" are Gabriel, Florence, and Elizabeth together with other praying women who are faithful in their church attendance.. As they pray that Saturday evening, the minds of John's family members are filled with flashbacks of their earlier lives and relationships to each other. They grew up against a backdrop of racism, but there is much more to each of their stories.Each of the three carry heavy burdens, and none more so that the preacher, Gabriel, with a heavy secret life of guilt and sin. Their stories are vividly told and poignant.

In the final part of the book, "The Threshing Floor", John has his epiphany and salvation experience. This experience is ambiguous in character and the reader is left in skepticism about whether one would wish for such an experience or rely upon it if it happened. Baldwin describes it vividly. In a sleeting March early morning following John's conversion experience, family tensions again rise to the fore, especially in the continued angry and hateful relationship between John and Gabriel.

The book is written in a heavily omniscient third person narrative, as the narrator explores in depth the lives and secret places in the hearts of all the characters, including particularly John. The narrator's language is highly formal, elaborate, and literate full of detail, extensive description, repetition, and force. In the dialogue passages Baldwin captures the language and speech pattern of the African American South. The book is replete with Biblical allusions.

The novel shows remarkable insight into its characters, into racism, family relationship, and religion. Baldwin shows a deep appreciation for ambiguity. The books tone varies from the harsh to the compassionate. The religious themes are the strongest and most complex in the book as Baldwin explores the difficult relationship between the religious life and human sexuality. As a young man, Baldwin himself left the church where he had been an adolescent minister and never again professed adherence to any organized religion. Much the book portrays religion as sexually repressive, superstitious, and hypocritical. There is a suggestion as well that the African American churches discouraged their adherents from addressing the woeful discrimination against them. Yet there is a sense of mysticism and wonder in this book and of piety beyond the formalities. Baldwin portrays the church and the religious search with sympathy and understanding.

This book was an outstanding choice for a book group focused on Black Voices, for a more generally based book group, and for individual, private reading and thinking. The novel will bear repeated readings. It took a long time for me to find this book. "Go Tell it on the Mountain" is widely regarded as an American classic, and so it is. It deserves the accolades it has received and more.

Robin Friedman

I can't think of a modern novel more totally steeped in religious imagery and iconography. 'Go Tell it on the Mountain' radiates christian thematics from almost every paragraph.

The almost prophetic narrative voice that Baldwin summons in this is both far-sighted and scathing. It's obvious that everyone from Toni Morrison, to Ralph Ellison, To Ta-Nehisi Coates, to even Martin Luther King and Barack Obama, when they write about the black experience in America, do so from out of Baldwin's shadow.

What makes this really remarkable is that it's Baldwin's first novel. His style is immediately distinct, and completely his own. The shifts in time and perspective (a skill set many seasoned writers never master) are perfectly executed and help shade in the dark history of a tormented people's experience. This is a dense, and hugely confident first book. Baldwin's stylistic influence is hard to overstate.

Before James Baldwin became one of the leading essayists of the Civil Rights movement, he wrote the novel, “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” The novel was part-autobiographical, as Baldwin was an ordained minister who grew up under the supervision of a severe, religious, stepfather. Baldwin also had a powerful religious conversion at the age of 14.

Christianity is entwined with the Civil Rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s because the leaders came from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: including men such as Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, and Fred Shuttlesworth. The Biblical cadences in Baldwin’s book are directly comparable to the rhythm of songs and speeches of the Civil Rights movement. Several scenes in the novel have parallels with stories from the Bible.

The powerful story is told in three parts. In the first part, fourteen-year-old John Grimes is having a personal crisis. ‘Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up,’ begins the novel--but John had some doubts, and his role models didn’t seem that holy.

The second part, The Prayer of the Saints, peals back dimensions of the three main adult characters of the novel--Aunt Florence, Gabriel Grimes, and Elizabeth. These dimensions are opened through flashbacks of the main adult characters at the tarry session.

The overriding emotion of the novel is anger. There is no sense of humor, no jokes, little comic sense of relief. The character with the most carefree attitude in the story, Frank, has a small role, and he only serves to make one of the main characters bitter about life. You might find that the religious overtones are overwhelming and the story too depressing to read, depending upon your frame of mind. I couldn’t read this novel the first time I tried to do so, but a year later the story seemed to read itself.

Anger even seeps into Christianity. Sometimes the Church offers inspiration and guidance; at other times, it forces repression and hypocrisy on its “Saints,” as well as its members.

The third part of the novel, the conclusion, is almost an afterthought to the process that it takes to get there. But you can’t skip it, because you have to know whether the contents of the explosive letter are divulged, and to what degree. Nor should you skip this novel, even if you, like me, could not read it the first time around. Come back to it another time and it may just read itself for you like it did for me.

Stark and fluid and melodic by turns, "Go Tell It on the Mountain" is the profound and wrenching story of the physical and emotional journeys of 14-year-old John, his Aunt Florence, his father, and his mother. If you read it as a teen or young adult, you likely will find it even more powerful a second time through.

In this book, originally published in his 29th year, James Baldwin crafted passages that throb across the decades with a terrible beauty, informed by privation, prejudice, and inner strength. First printed 63 years ago, "Go Tell It on the Mountain" is as taut and magnetic now as it must have been back in 1953, more than a decade before the March on Washington and the enactment of the U.S. Civil Rights Act.

This beautifully typeset and hardbound edition is notable for its inclusion of a beautiful introduction by Edwidge Danticat and a chronology that juxtaposes events in Baldwin's life with historical events and "literary context" (writings published by his contemporaries).

There is much to commend in Danticat's introduction. It is one of the best I've read in any book -- pithy, direct, and specific. However, exactly because it is so well done, would have preferred it as an afterword. If you have not read this story, I suggest you venture straight into Baldwin's whirlwind, and after you have digested it, read Danticat's introduction for affirmation of your impressions and added context for several stylistic points.

Although production values of this edition are high, note that the point size is rather small.

Go Tell It on the Mountain was Baldwin's first novel, 1953, largely autobiographical. A powerful, melodramatic, realistic story, notwithstanding a fair dose of ecstatic hallucinations, with wonderfully accurate, poetic prose. A troubled teenager's worries about his dreams, his stepfather, his race, his sexual fantasies, his sights of depression time New York City, the domestic violence at home. A childhood in a large, poor, religious family in Harlem, 1930s: the church on a Saturday, the ecstasy of the flock, the sins of the sheep. Very much focused on religion. When I tried to read this nearly 50 years ago, it surprised me, from the author of The Fire Next Time. My own problem.
This time, no such trouble.

James Baldwin's first novel was published before he reached the age of 30 and yet it seems almost preternaturally mature and complex and the work of someone who has ruminated over these issues for many more than three decades. It is an autobiographical novel, as so many first novels are, and yet it avoids the limitations of a young author's narcissism and gets into much older characters' heads just as skillfully as it rests within the fourteen year-old protagonist's.

Most of the surface story takes place on John Grimes' fourteenth birthday at a pivotal spiritual 'threshing floor' prayer meeting at his father's Harlem church. The first section appears to be a conventional 'coming of age' story on its surface and on that level it succeeds immensely but it is also a very compact distillation of all the issues that an adolescent black boy in Harlem in the mid-1930's would experience. He has always felt isolated and set apart from the rest of his family, primarily because of the stern religious power of his father. He has never seen his father smile at him and very little at other people for that matter. He has received no affection or tenderness from him, only physical punishment and solemn pronouncements of the moral obligations of living a Christian life. He loves his mother but feels that she is too weak-willed to challenge her husband. He is restless and inquisitive and intellectually and emotionally hungry, yet at fourteen he still feels the pressure of his upbringing to be 'in the spirit' of his church, to get swept up in the rapturous prayer states of the elders or 'saints' of the church and the weight of judgment inflicted on him by his father. He also admires an older boy, Elisha, who is a model Christian who even so was brought up in front of the congregation along with the girl with whom he was simply being friendly as a preemptive strike against the Devil's assault into their hearts. This was John's father's doing and he shamed publicly the two adolescents who had not yet harbored lustful thoughts for each other as if they had already committed egregious sins. The congregation approved of this nipping of sin in the bud before it could even bear fruit. Elisha and his friend, though shamed, were extremely grateful for this action, seemingly symptomatic of this church. John's fascination with Elisha contains an erotic undercurrent; their playful wrestling seems to be the most satisfying physical contact with Elisha that he can receive.

After the first section we have three subsequent sections titled, 'Florence's Prayer,' 'Gabriel's Prayer' and 'Elizabeth's Prayer'. Though these are labeled prayers they don't all contain actual prayers although they all occur during the evening prayer service. Each contains extensive flashbacks. Florence is Gabriel's older sister, who has resented him since they were children. She considered him the favored child, despite the fact that he was selfish and indulged in promiscuous sex and alcohol consumption before his conversion. She knows secrets about his past behavior (including a bastard son from an earlier alliance while being married to his first, barren wife) and is holding it as blackmail against him. She doesn't ordinarily attend church service but she is here on this night, partly because she wants to 'set her house in order' before she dies of a terminal illness.

The second section is Gabriel's and we see his version of how he came to be converted and why he married his first wife. He had a dream which he interpreted as the Lord's prophecy that he would have a holy lineage and that the bloodline of righteousness must continue. The first wife was barren whereas he had an affair with a woman who moved to Chicago after telling him she was pregnant. She had told him that if he would not leave his wife he must bear some financial responsibility. He stole money from his wife to send her to have the baby and give it away. She died in childbirth and her body was brought back, along with her baby, her to be buried, him to be raised by another family. Gabriel watched him grow up and later learned that he was killed in a knife fight. The first wife died childless and he originally grew friendly with his current wife, Elizabeth, who had worked with his sister, as an attempt to bring this fallen woman (she already had the baby John by a first alliance) to a state of grace, then to marry her and raise her son as his own. This did not happen. He feels he has been promised a continuation of a royal line. As John is not his biological son but a reminder of the first, abandoned son, he cannot forgive John and places his hopes on the first son Elizabeth bears him, the young hell-raiser Roy. John is unaware of this fact through the end of the novel, wondering why his father hates him.

The third section, Elizabeth's, presents her background and the relationship she had with the father of John, who killed himself after being convicted of a crime he did not commit, without knowledge that she was carrying his son. Gabriel, as we have seen in the first section, has been an intolerant, tyrannical fundamentalist authoritarian who slaps his wife and fights with his sister after she has attempted to intervene. Elizabeth sees in John her only remainder of her first love.

The next section, 'The Threshing-Floor' is an extended spiritual crisis for John. He is struck by the spirit, as so many of the saints in the church had hoped, falls to the floor, and undergoes a hallucinogenic spiritual struggle. Intimations of the Biblical John of 'Revelations' intrude in his consciousness as he sees fires coming down from Heaven to purge away Man's wickedness. Yet this holy intervention seems hardly unequivocally benevolent. These spiritual labor pains contain very disturbing images and passages such as the following:
'He would weep again, his heart insisted, for now his weeping had begun; he would rage again, said the shifting air, for the lions of rage had been unloosed; he would be in darkness again, in fire again, now that he had seen the fire and the darkness…where joy was, there strength followed; where strength was, sorrow came—forever? Forever and forever, said the arm of Elisha, heavy on his shoulder.'
As he emerged from this altered state, traumatized by this spiritual beating, the ladies of the service reinforce his rebirth in the Lord. He agrees with their affirmation, yet he still seems dazed. His verbal proclamation that he is saved is unsatisfactory to his still scowling father, who says he must live it. Even at the end, after a kiss of benediction on his forehead from Elisha, he smiles at his father, who fails to reciprocate. The spiritual victory seems to remind him with every rapturous reflection that much struggle lies ahead, ending in ambivalence.

As many readers may have noticed, the names Elisha, Gabriel and John all contain Biblical allusions. Biblical imagery permeates this novel and familiarity with the Old Testament and how this kind of African American church interprets it enhances understanding of the symbology of these people's faith. This is as integral to an understanding of 'Go Tell it on the Mountain' as Irish Catholicism is to James Joyce's similar coming of age novel, 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'. The viewpoints of John's stepfather, mother and aunt take us out of the young James Baldwin surrogate character's mind and, by learning their backstory, we can acquire an understanding of how they have evolved, even the extremely unsympathetic Gabriel. Just as religion permeates this novel, so does the African American treatment by a dominant white society. This is the fabric of their lives and our understanding of these characters' plight is expanded to a greater understanding of the people who participated in the Great Migration at the heart of the 20th century. It is an outstanding, assured and confident debut novel for a young writer with a breadth of perception and wisdom that illuminated a world that many in the literary world knew little about at mid-century. At such a young age, Baldwin knew that the top of the testimonial mountain is as fiery as the depths below.

One of the goals of fiction is to show us what it would mean to live other lives - to temporarily become someone we are not and to empathize with their experience. Great writers like James Baldwin invite us in. Go Tell It on the Mountain is a somewhat autobiographical novel that describes his life in New York City in the 1930s along with the lives of the generation that came before him and moved from the South and the Midwest. We enter the lives of the young John (who represents Baldwin), his mother, his stepfather and his stepfather's sister. All are poor and black. His mother and stepfather are deeply religious. And Baldwin draws us deeply into their experience. We feel their pride and their guilt. We understand the limits of their love for each other. And we see how the past has bound them.

Fourteen year old John begins the story resisting the role his family sees as his destiny...to be a preacher. He resents the pressure of his family and he feels guilt for a vague sexual sin that he has committed. He sees this as a disqualification from spiritual leadership. He is also seduced by the sophistication of white American society. He is a precocious student and voracious reader. At the end of the story he has a hallucinatory re-birth and accepts his role in the church.

His stepfather is the demon here, but Baldwin is not a lazy writer and he does not allow himself an easy target. He finds a way to rescue this character from the role of cardboard villain by inviting us into his life and thoughts. He does the same for John's Aunt and mother.

The depth of Baldwin's empathy is stunning. And the writing seems too mature for man still in his twenties - Baldwin was born in 1924.

Why not five stars? This is my personal rating and my response to the book. I felt it should have been shorter. The hallucinatory passages and those involving theology seem overwrought. The ideas contained in these passages are important. Oddly, Baldwin seems to be overly influenced by nineteenth century literature with its tendency to beat a idea to death. This is an unfair judgment on my part, I am sure. A young black writer needed to show his literacy, he needed to contradict the prejudices of the reading public. And Baldwin's portrayal of lives of Black Folk seems both truthful and literary. But the long-winded sections about ideas distracted from my enjoyment.

When it was published in 1953 what the readers did not know was that Baldwin belonged to two oppressed minorities: Black and Gay. It is probably best not to know this when reading the book (SORRY!). It likely distracts you from Baldwin's intentions. However, having known this several passages take on added meaning. His later fiction made his orientation central and lead to fewer readers and much criticism from other leaders in the civil rights movement. During his time on center-stage - the 1950s and 1960s - Baldwin was able to become a powerful voice in the struggle for racial equality. The world was not ready to accept the other central part of his identity and sadly he was marginalized. Perhaps the time has come for him to be reborn.

Go Tell It on the Mountain followed Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as twin sparkling debut novels from black American writers in the early 1950s. Like Invisible Man (and like Richard Wright's earlier Black Boy), Mountain is heavily autobiographical and, to my mind, the best of the three because of the strength of its plot, the vividness of its characters and setting, the perfect concision of its narrative arc and the colorful biblical imagery author James Baldwin deploys throughout as a natural outgrowth of character and setting (in fact, James Baldwin could teach veteran writer John Steinbeck a thing or two about how to use biblical imagery effectively as Steinbeck's own East of Eden, published shortly before Mountain, was much more ham handed in its evocation of the Old Testament in its narrative).

Mountain focuses initially on John Grimes, a boy growing up in Harlem in the 1930s who turns 14 at the start of the book. The immediate action occurs over the period of just that one day, John's birthday, but there are extensive flashbacks that tell the back stories of John's father, mother and aunt. What emerges from all this is a picture of just how much the battle between secular hedonism and fundamentalist religion dominated black American lives in this period as few other courses were open to blacks due to the oppression of legal and cultural discrimination, both in the South and in supposedly more liberal New York City.

I loved how Baldwin evokes biblical tales of fathers and sons in his depiction of the relationship between John's father Gabriel and his sons. The relationship of Gabriel and John's brother Roy, for instance, very much recalls the relationship of King David and his son Absalom. The diurnal narrative frame perfectly constricts the action in the present in a way that allows each character's different sides to emerge in vividly describes scenes of family conflict, while the flashbacks fill in the story and answer the natural questions. There are a number of revelations in these flashbacks that I won't spoil for anyone coming to this marvelous novel fresh but they are wonderfully apt.

A must read for anyone interested in the best of American literature in the mid 20th century.

This is a beautiful edition of James Baldwin's classic coming of age story that moved me when I read it as a teenager and impacted me on an entirely different level some 30 plus years later. Sometimes when I revisit classic works such as this I find that I have forgotten the sheer power of truly beautiful writing. This is a truly moving, complex story that I would recommend for any reader of literary fiction looking for both a deeply personal story of discovery and a profound examination of society and religion and how they shape our views and actions.

This story is just as relevant today as it was when it was written. This is a finely bound, keepsake edition that would be a wonderful gift for anyone forming a library of great American literature. Well worth the price and well worth your time to revisit this classic.

I can't believe I waited this long to read James Baldwin's exquisite "Go Tell It On The Mountain." Looking at some of the negative reviews, perhaps it's for the best. Perhaps one must be somewhat further along in life to appreciate the beauty, wisdom and empathy packed into this book. Baldwin wraps his pen around the poetry and majesty of the King James Bible and, through the mechanism of a family praying at a Saturday evening tarry service at a black Pentecostal storefront church, transforms it into a searing portrait of the suffering, survival and faith of an oppressed people in the Deep South and the slums of Harlem during the first third of the 20th century.

This is not an easy book or a quick read. If your taste is limited to thrillers or murder mysteries or romances, stay away. Had I encountered it as a high school reading assignment, I would have thrown it against the wall in frustration. Today, I found myself stopping to catch my breath after almost every sentence, to take it in, to think about what it had to say, to marvel at the writer's artistry. At the same time, I was completely absorbed in the characters and their stories and could hardly bear to put the book down.

I used to think "The Great Gatsby" was the finest American novel of the 20th century. "Go Tell It On The Mountain" catches up in a photo finish and joins it on my very small shelf of books so well-wrought that I wish I'd written them.

I thought the book was an "American Classic", but it left me cold. It started OK, but just got progressively worse. The end was the worst. I would not recommend this book to anyone as I would not like them to think that I read it.

Oddly, the thing that most struck me about Go Tell it on the Mountain was how similar I found it tonally to that middle section of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where Stephen Dedalus sits through a sermon that slowly turns hallucinatory. Frankly, by the end of the novel my most pressing wish was to sits the two Jameses down at a table, put a bottle of whisky in front of them, and then turn the conversation to the topic of God.

Aside from that, I found myself a bit underwhelmed by Mountain. The language is undeniably gorgeous, and Baldwin wields it skillfully to depict and subvert hypocrisies, but by and large the novel is an exploration of character wherein very little actually happens. That's just not my thing, no matter how beautifully executed. Go Tell it on the Mountain is justly renowned as offering a brilliant portrait of the black experience in Harlem; just remember that portraits, no matter how faithful, tend to be a bit static.

One of the side events of the 2008 American presidential elections, the one that resulted in the election of the first black president, was the widespread exposure of the role of the black church as a central social, political and religious institution in the black community, for good or evil. That centrality, the subject matter of black writer James Baldwin's first novel back in the early 1950s and from there carried back by him to his youth in the 1930s, is longstanding. Moreover, the black church and its activist clergy, despite it long role as adhesive, healer, protector and face of the black community is not an unambiguous legacy as Baldwin, very wickedly, and profoundly demonstrates here.

Baldwin uses the old tried and true novelistic devise of using a two-tier plot structure to delve into the lives, the loves, the likes and lies of two generations of a black family, a family that although it found itself in the North, in the black metropolis of Harlem, had deep and continuing roots in the old worn-out land of the South that most of the characters fled, willingly or unwillingly, at some point. The first tier discusses the present status of most of the main figures, including the transparently autobiographical John and his "father", Gabriel, a born-again Christian preacher, a character not unknown in the black community. The second takes place through personal recollections in a store front, primitive Christian church, also not an unknown phenomenon in the black community, or the white one for that matter.

The details of the various relationships of the very mixed clan can best be appreciated by the reader. What I would note here, as I have noted elsewhere when discussing James Baldwin's work, is his ear for the various voices of the black community even though he himself seemed, by the facts of his biography to have been fairly removed from the mainstream of the black community. He clearly knows "religion" and the role it plays in the community. Also of the teutonic struggle between the old ways of the de jure segregated South and the de facto segregated North. While I am more devoted to the works of Langston Hughes as an exemplar of black literary blues, James too knows that condition. James can sing those chords. And the late Norman Mailer was not wrong when he noted that his contemporary, Baldwin, in 1950s America was "one of our few writers". I will say amen to that.

For those who don't know of Baldwin's work, get acquainted with it. You are missing out on some of the best reading you will ever discover. This is a reprint of Baldwin's first literary work, written in 1953 and widely believed to be one of the best 50 books ever written. This is a lovely edition, and I was excited to read the story yet again, for about the fifth time. I swear it gets better each time.

Reading this thinly veiled autobiography of the author will bring you back into that time in America's history, when racism sifted through everyday life in religion and society, employment and education. By turns inspiring and absolutely heartbreaking, you'll truly remember this forever.

This was my second reading of James Baldwin's initial novel, first read 40 some years ago, and it rang even more powerful the second time around. Baldwin is the essential chronicler of the Black American experience, in all its anguish. The novel was first published in 1953, and was primarily set in mid-Depression Harlem, with flashbacks to the rural southern antecedents of the main characters, reaching all the way back to the days of slavery. It was Florence, who must have been approaching 60, whose mother was a slave and who "lost two children to the auction block." Baldwin only briefly sketches Florence's mother, but this slender fact seemed to explain so much of the tragic and often dysfunctional family life of the descendents of those families which had been forcibly broken up.

Religion is a major theme in the novel; that particular raucous, tambourine shaking, speaking-in-tongues spirituality espoused in store-front churches that set out the folding chairs before the service. It sure does help to know the Bible to understand many of the references. If I found any weakness in the novel, and perhaps it is a personal weakness instead, it was the lengthy passages of pure "preachin'", but I persevered, knowing that it really did give the flavor of an authentic experience. Baldwin depicts a world of good and evil, with the church as the vehicle to salvation, but he is also relentless in describing the hypocritical lives of the preachers, especially Gabriel, who "falls" and falls again. Although the church is featured as the one solid bedrock that can help anchor family life, I agree with another reviewer who points out that the anchor impeded Black economic development by promising the otherworldliness of "pie in the sky," which distracted the believers from taking actions that would remedy the injustices that society imposed, as the legacy of slavery lingered.

The novel unfolds around John, the 14 year old son of Elizabeth, who is married to Gabriel. Florence is Gabriel's older sister. In part I of the book, the stage is set; all the characters are introduced, and the drama centers around the knifing of John's younger brother, Roy. In this section we learn that John is illegitimate, and that Gabriel loves his own son, Roy, more, and has pinned his hopes of salvation on him. Yet it is Roy that seems to have the "mark of the devil" on him, no doubt reflecting the same mark on his father. It is in the second part, by far the largest portion of the book, that Baldwin tells the story, each in a separate chapter, of the three principal adults: Gabriel, Florence, and Elizabeth. These portraits are dazzling, and Baldwin has immense narrative power, revealing one aspect of their lives in a sentence or two, and then several pages later explaining how this occurred. The women "who have born the weight of men," no doubt literally and metaphorically, come off the better, and the stronger. Gabriel's hypocrisy is not as all-encompassing as, say, Elmer Gantry, for he does truly struggle with the demons within. All the characters did indeed have the steep side of the mountain to climb.

There are many scenes whose depiction can take your breath away. One that I found particularly strong was a down south revival, with 20 or more preachers. The night is when the young Gabriel makes his mark as a preacher. Afterwards, the preachers partake of a banquet. They are seated separately, upstairs, the women serve them. They tell ribald jokes, and even ridicule one of their servers who had been gang-raped by whites. That woman would become Gabriel's first wife, but the insights he might have gathered from his fellow preacher's conduct did not endure.

For those who have a copy of the collection of photographs entitled "The Family of Man," it is impossible for me to look at the picture on page 129, the black woman laying on the bedcovers, the black man sitting on the edge, each in deep middle age, obviously talking about "their troubles," without thinking that this is a picture of Gabriel and Elizabeth Grimes.

Finally, in terms of foreshadowing, one wonders when Baldwin wrote this book if he anticipated his own fate. Florence's husband dies, and is buried in France, during what was once called "The Great War.". Baldwin could no longer stomach the anguish that he depicted, eventually seeking solace in France. He is buried high on the hill, at St. Paul de Vance, overlooking the Mediterranean. A wonderful 5-star plus read, especially again.

James Baldwin often said that for his first novel he had to grapple with his childhood in Harlem and his memory of his abusive stepfather if he were ever to write anything else; the novel that appeared in 1953 was so stellar and accomplished that critics expected to get more of the same from him (and were stunned when his next effort, GIOVANNI'S ROOM, instead was about gay white men in Europe). There are few major debut novels that are grimmer, but that are also more resonant and more powerful.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN forms itself around young John Grimes's ability to come into his own voice (a Pentecostalist's speaking in tongues on the "threshing floor" of his family's church), and how that moment was preceded by the tremendous and shattering efforts of his adopted father and aunt to come Northwards, where their lives were not much better than in the South, but which had more promise, and of his mother to form a home for herself. The structure of the novel (which breaks down in the middle into "prayers," or narratives, of his parents and aunt) owes much to Faulkner, but Baldwin's voice is like no one else before him; this is one of the greatest of all novels of the Black Northern migration of the twentieth century.

This is being published at the same time as James Balwin's GIOVANNI'S ROOM, which was one of the most shocking novels of the Twentieth Century with its graphic depiction of a man falling into a homosexual affair. But for all the controversy that book caused, it did not change the fact that Baldwin's finest novel was GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN. At the end of the 20th Century, when the Modern Library rated the 100 best English language novels, this splendid novel made #39 on the list. I personally think this was the finest African-American novel of the century, better than Wright's NATIVE SON, better than Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN.

The great joy of this coming out on Everyman's is that the novel gets the royal treatment. Everyman's produces the finest novels in the world today. They are absolutely gorgeous, with their board wrapped in cloth covers and the intensely creamy, nonreflective, acid free paper. You can find better books, like the gorgeous productions by the Folio Society, but those are not mass produced. I like Everyman's better than the Library of America. I find the books to be wonderfully inviting. They look great and they feel right in your hand.

I would love to see Everyman follow up the release of these two novels by releasing a volume of his nonfiction. People know his novels today, but many don't remember what a great essayist he was. Hopefully we'll get that in the future.

In many ways, "Go Tell It on the Mountain" is an act of exorcism, wrestling with the demons of an adolescent past. Baldwin's first novel examines his love-hate relationship with the religious traditions from his youth, tackles (albeit indirectly) his conflicted and nascent homosexuality, and (above all) struggles with his ambiguous feelings about his true-life stepfather, whom he detested while he was an adolescent and whom he tried to understand when he was an adult.

The narrative unfolds in a single 24-hour period (sunrise to sunrise), although flashbacks are scattered throughout to explore the backgrounds of the characters and, in particular, to describe their past wrongdoings. The opening and closing sections describe 14-year-old John Grimes and follow his family as they prepare for and then depart from a religious service. The middle core of the novel, consisting of three chapters, takes place in the neighborhood storefront church on Saturday night, a spiritual oasis in a cesspool of back-alley crime and lowlife iniquity.

These three chapters are the prayerful meditations of, respectively, John's no-nonsense aunt Florence, whose act of liberation from unappreciated familial duties early in life led her to the "freedom" of Harlem; his abusive father Gabriel, who lived a life of easy debauchery until he converted and became a Baptist minister; and John's mother Elizabeth, who is quiet and forbearing and who is beginning to comprehend the extent to which Gabriel has not lived up to the bargain of their marriage. Hovering in the background of this quarrelsome family is Elisha, a young leader at the church, to whom John is attracted both spiritually and, to John's vexation, physically ("in his heart, yearning tenderness for holy Elisha; desire, sharp and awful as a knife, to usurp the body of Elisha").

There's always the temptation to read too much biography in an autobiographical novel. Although the characters and events in "Go Tell It on the Mountain" are surely shrouded in a mask of fiction (for example, it does not appear that Baldwin ever knew learned the identity of his biological father), there are just as surely parallels with Baldwin's own life and family. His stepfather was also a Baptist minister whose animosity towards the young Baldwin was especially pronounced. As a teenager, Baldwin also underwent an intense religious awakening and became a minister for a Pentecostal assembly in Harlem. And, of course, Baldwin rather famously wrestled with his own sexuality. When the novel was initially published, he tried to downplay its autobiographical elements, but, reflecting on the novel three decades later, Baldwin admitted that it "comes out of the tension between a particular father and a particular son. No matter that he was not my biological father."

The only passages I thought cumbersome were those that detailed the sermons preached by Gabriel as he began his ministry as a young man. (The problem with such literary representations is that the best evangelical sermons depend largely on performance, delivery, and audience response--largely to mask the fact that they are inherently formulaic and often studded with cliches, repetition, and all-too-familiar biblical allusions.) Otherwise, the novel is very tightly written and emotionally raw, and it dynamically presents the paradox of human transgressions and moral rectitude, the complexity of a genuine conversion experience, and the ambiguity that remains in its immediate aftermath.

The first time I encountered this book was on a summer reading list in middle school. The title alone was so appealing I spend the rest of English class daydreaming what it was about. I didn't get around to actually reading it for nearly 30 years. Now I wish I had read it much sooner.

Not then, at the tender age of 13. The rude realities of Harlem life circa 1930 come at you right away. Never mind that the protagonist, John, is 14; I probably wouldn't have gotten very far given the novel's unsentimental look at the hard realities of life, the baseness of sex, and the shortcomings of religion.

Yes, "Go Tell It On The Mountain" is a tough book, but it's brilliant, too. Baldwin gives us the story of John, who in the course of a single day wavers between faith and doubt, love and hate, community and isolation, culminating at a "tarry service" at a Harlem storefront church where the man he calls father, Gabriel, is deacon. Gabriel is not, however, John's real father, nor is he that great an exemplar of faith, something we learn as Baldwin's narrative effortlessly takes us across time and space into the heads of John, Gabriel, and others at the tarry service, where extraordinary events are about to take place.

I wasn't expecting "Go Tell" to be so good, but it is, not because Baldwin draws on big themes so much as the visceral way he presents them, every emotion raw. John's enormous self-doubt is the fulcrum upon which the rest of the novel turns; looking at himself in the mirror, he wants to know "whether his face was ugly or not".

It's a story about growing up black and poor in a racist society, but it's more about the stuff of life, a universal tale about growing up. Gabriel is a tough man, but when we get inside his head we discover a more complicated story, about a man who tries to stand up for his faith but keeps being undone by his baser passions. His religiosity, an easy target for many readers, only serves to cloak his essential stubbornness.

For a first novel, "Go Tell" is amazingly accomplished. Baldwin moves effortlessly back and forth in time, like Faulkner, yet you feel completely connected to reality throughout. His narrative has the moment-by-moment feeling of Joyce, but without the ephemera. He finds the core of every character he lights upon, which he reveals with such studied gradualness he sweeps you along with every soap-opera-ish development.

Baldwin's 1953 novel seems a proclamation of his life's calling. John is not presented as a fledging writer, but his truth-seeking, and truth-finding, is one any committed person of letters can relate to. At the end of the book, when the sun lights upon John's forehead and affixes a "seal ineffaceable forever", it is the writer's call he is discovering.

Baldwin says this was the book that made his career possible; I sense many others could say the same. It's a book with a lot of gas in the tank. Like I said, I only wish I had read it sooner.

Sometimes, when you finish a book, you look up and take a deep breath and say, "Wow." This is one such novel.

The descriptive and intricate prose is woven so tightly and consciously that Baldwin amazingly delivers prose masterfully without having to use complex language - this book will never send you to the dictionary. Some courtier designers need fine fabric to make quality attire. This designer can take rags and sew them into gowns with only his sewing skills - Baldwin is an artist of words.

Overlapping the life stories of John's mother (Elizabeth) and stepfather (Gabriel), together with Gabriel's alienated sister (Florence) against the backdrop of John's 14th birthday, reveals to us the soul and character of the individuals and how their torments and incredible journeys affect and play upon John's coming-of-age manhood rite - which in this case is an out-of-body experience/revelation to the Lord before the congregation at Gabriel's church.

John's 14th birthday will and should never be forgotten by he or the congregation. And, we readers, who are delivered into the secret realms of the tortured pasts of Elizabeth, Gabriel and Florence, can better appreciate and, in turn, should better remember the moment the young John emerges as a man.

In the end, as a less-than-religious person, I asked myself whether Baldwin's constant references to the Bible (the story of Noah and Ham plays a large part in the end in contrast to the tortured relationship between Gabriel and John) and religious revival experience of John are meant to employ others to follow their lead, or to dispel their self-proclaimed truths because of the contradictions between religion and the religious which we have been permitted to learn about in Gabriel and others. But, I would have to conclude that Baldwin leaves that decision to you - but allows you to make the decision knowingly or after having learned about how what Gabriel preaches is not synonymous with what Gabriel lives.

I would give this 6 stars if I could. Few books have touched me as much as this book has.

For me, the central problem of James Baldwin's beautiful and poetic account of growing up in a religious, African American family is the ending. The question is this: does Baldwin take this ending to be merely a description of what sometimes happens or is he implying this is what should happen?

Throughout the novel, religion is seen as a force that stagnates, lies to and weakens the characters. However, by the end, it has become a force that the main character thinks will help him get through all the trials he still must face. It hasn't solved anything. In fact, nothing has been solved at all. We've been merely given a view of all that's come before and how those past events will probably shape the future. For example, John still has to face his unloving step-father - even though he is still unaware that the man isn't his biological father. How knowing he was "saved" will help him is hard to imagine.

The most heart-breaking incident in the book is what happens to John's real father. Though pathos abounds in this book, that is the incident that truly hurts the most.

Throughout, the writing is poetic and precise. Baldwin certainly matured in works like "Giovanni's Room" and developed his themes of homosexuality - a thread hinted at here but left unresolved like all the book's themes.

The problem is just that we're left with so much unfinished. It's almost like Baldwin stopped writing the book in the middle. It seems he wants the import of John's religious experience to make everything else at least bearable. However, how this is to be accomplished in light of such darkness is hard to imagine or even if something else might be more desirable. Moreover, is Baldwin suggesting that all the negatives of religion he has been cataloguing throughout the book are somehow justified?

In any case, "Go Tell It on the Mountain" is a gorgeous book about very ugly things. Good luck sorting out that ending.

"The Lord called me out, He chose me, and I been running with Him ever since I made a start."

Running with the Lord, running to the Lord, running from the Lord, it's all here. Yet it is amazing how, in a book so imbued with religion, a book that takes place mostly in the Harlem store-front Temple of the Fire Baptized, you are never entirely certain that the fierce pentecostal fire that at one time or another grips most of the characters is a chariot of glory or a flaming wheel to which they are bound in torture. Indeed the author (who is surely reflected in the novel's protagonist, the fourteen-year-old preacher's son John Grimes) became a preacher himself in his teens, but rejected the ministry when he left school. Some of the reasons, no doubt, were tensions with his adoptive father and the realization of his homosexuality. Both themes are present in the book, the one prominent, the other merely hinted, but it is too early for the great escape. It is extraordinary how, by casting his novel in the classical twenty-four hour time-frame—from the morning of John's birthday to dawn the next day—and containing it within that one high-pressure setting, Baldwin manages to compress the lives of his major characters into a tight kernel of energy that might explode at any time but miraculously does not do so.

Religion, the Bible, and the vernacular of his people give Baldwin his extraordinary language. It vaults him high above mere storytellers and places him in the company of the truly visionary American writers: Melville at his most concentrated, the Faulkner of THE SOUND AND THE FURY, and, following surely in his footsteps, the Morrison of BELOVED. And such power! Here is a portion from the early pages where the youth minister Elisha (to whom John Grimes is clearly drawn) is taken by the Spirit during a church service:

"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 upwards, 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."

The first part of the novel, "The Seventh Day," introduces the Grimes family: Gabriel, the preacher; Elizabeth, John's mother; his aunt Florence; and Roy and Sarah, his siblings. After he has completed his chores, his mother gives John a little money, and he ventures into Manhattan to spend it on a movie. But he returns to a crisis that propels the family back to their church for the "tarry service" which occupies the final two-thirds of the book. [This term was unknown to me; it apparently refers to an all-night vigil in which the congregants await the gift of the Holy Spirit, often falling at the foot of the altar in a kind of fit while others in the congregation pray for them to Come Through.] Baldwin has already opened with one charismatic religious set piece; wisely, he doesn't seek to repeat it here. Instead, he uses the service for three long chapters collectively entitled "The Prayers of the Saints," in which John's aunt, his father, and his mother revisit their respective paths that have brought them to this point. I found myself thinking of Faulkner here too for the skill with which Baldwin will startle with unexpected information and only then back-track to explain how it came about. Although there are three voices involved, the focus is mainly on the preacher Gabriel Grimes, whose running with the Lord has followed a twisted path, and whose position as God's minister has by no means delivered him from evil.

In all of this, John is a silent member of the congregation, waiting, watching. Although he cannot possibly hear the internal prayers of his aunt and parents, you feel that he has been plunged into a deeper knowledge of his family, a terrible tension between love and hatred. In the short final section, "The Threshing Floor," John will undergo his own battle with God—or is it an encounter with the Devil? While the novel ends with a kind of resolution, you know that this is not the last round in the struggle for John's soul -- or in Baldwin's search for his own.

My mother and I read this book together. It was very hard for us to read because it was so tedious. The characters in the book seemed to seek a relationship with God. However, their relationships with God were not joyous, but more almost painful. I think that religion oppressed them. They also had many tensions: -black man versus black man -black man versus white man -man versus woman -sinner versus the saved -inner-self tension
They sought a relationship with God to relieve themselves of this oppression and tension. Songs, which played a major part of the worship service, gave them temporary relief from oppression, but it was nothing more than temporary. John was almost relieved of oppresion when he went to hell and back in the end. However, just walks right back into his house, a harbor for oppression.
One of the reasons it was so frustrating to read was because, like the characters, you became oppressed with all that emotional buildup. There were little bits of relief for the reader, but then it just all started over again. It was like a Greek tragedy- with catharsis, except the final huge emotional release never happened. John was like the hero with a fatal flaw and the tragic fate. Also, the book was filled with intense run on sentences full of modifiers that made it hard to read. Then it skipped back and forth vey unevenly from generation to generation.
You should read it just for the experience. Some of the characters are very interesting.
I have heard that Giovanni's Room is much better.

Gimme that old time religion---thats the story. Much of the action takes place in the Harlem section of NY City. The people in this book live their religion. The plot involves the older generation trying to bring the young people to Jesus. This is exactly the kind of religion that unbelievers run from-----FAST. Baldwin writes well and I think he has painted a true picture of the black churches during this period of the early 2t0h century. Their services were loud, emotional and inspirational. Gabriel is a preacher and the father of 4 children. He rules his family with prayer and his belt. His children hate him and he is literally pushing his children out of the door and out of the church. These people live in a unforgiving world and they call upon God for help. All of the book is religion, desperate people are calling out to God. I know this is a classic, but I got bored with the story about half way through. Much of the 1st half takes place in the south and in church. Then our main characters move to Harlem. The redeeming feature is that we have just enough sin to keep the story moving.

This was my second time reading this masterpiece;the first time in the early 70s. I don't remember what I thought about it then, though I remember it leaving an impression. The writing then and moreso now is writing at its best from a master in my opinion. Yes it is complex, convoluted, disturbing at times but for me it flowed. Not everyone can write fire and brimstone, sin and redemption in literary terms. I am in awe of his genius.
During one night at a prayer service, four individuals stories are told. John, on this day has just turned fourteen years old and is trying to make sense of his life. Gentle, intelligent, he wanted so much to please the man who he thought of as his father. He had potential to expand his life beyond the limitations in front of him. Gabriel, wretched, tortured soul, a man who refused to take responsibility for his actions. Saved, sanctified and fill with the Holy Ghost, his mistreatment of his first wife, Deborah, his discard lover, Esther, his present wife Elizabeth and his son John is what kept him from being the minister that he was in his youth before he fell from grace. Elizabeth, proud and determined, she wanted John to have the same love from Gabriel that he gave to his other "natural" sons. A woman who accepted her circumstances; she has lost her first true love, Richard and was resigned to accepting Gabriel's hand in marriage to redeem her sin. Florence, too proud for her own good Bitter, resentful of her brother Gabriel and now perhaps facing death, she has lived a live of unfulfilled dreams.
Where we they all stand after they haved poured their hearts and souls on the alter? Secrets, dreams, hopes are revealed. Told in a language of complexity full of allegories, symbolism, Bible similies, it is no wonder it is taught in universities around the country. I am on a quest to read re-read Baldwin's books that I have read and read others that I have not. Nobody does it better.

The primary action of Baldwin's "Go Tell It on the Mountain" takes place in Harlem in 1935. John Grimes has just turned fourteen and his family expects him to become a preacher like his father Gabriel. However, John realizes that he has reservations about this profession, partially due to a mutual lack of respect and love for his father. After a turbulent scene in which his younger brother Roy (the name is significant, referring to a ghost in Gabriel's past) has been brutally injured in a knife fight, John and his family attend a Saturday night service at the storefront church where his father is a deacon.
The night's passionate prayers evoke flashbacks to the personal histories of the adults in John's family, depicting the events that brought them to Harlem from their respective towns in the South and the development of their attitudes towards religion and love. John's Aunt Florence, Gabriel's older sister, fled from her ailing mother and drunken, disorderly brother and came North to seek better opportunities, only to end up in an unhappy marriage with a man who turned out to be not much different from her brother. Gabriel cleaned up his life after his mother died, became a preacher, and married an older woman who was sympathetic and supportive to him during his troubled times, although he strayed in one fateful instance, for which Florence still harbors resentment towards him. John's mother Elizabeth originally came to Harlem with her boyfriend in a doomed affair, and later she and Gabriel got married after he became a widower.
Although John is the central character, the novel focuses more on the lives of Gabriel, Elizabeth, and Florence, and how their respective backgrounds shaped John's physical upbringing and spiritual development. Generally, it is a statement on religion as an important influence on the American black experience. And it is a brilliant example of style: The structure is unique and effective, the prose is beautifully eloquent in its symbolism and imagery, and the dialogue is sharply realistic and thoughtful.

There are many "mountains" that we all face in our lives. There are hidden parts of ourselves that are never revealed, even to those closest to us. Many of the characters in Baldwin's "Go tell it on the mountain" have similar secrets that are revealed only to the readers, as we gain insight into their innermost thoughts.

The setting is Harlem, New York. The story opens with John, a young boy of fourteen who is at that age of great confusion in his life. He has a wild brother Roy, who is always getting in trouble, and eventually ends up getting stabbed. He has an abusive, self righteous father, Gabriel, a kind mother, Elizabeth, a boisterous aunt, Florence, and a spiritual role model named Elisha.

John wanders the city in the first part of the novel, trying to come to grips with what he wants in life and who he wants to be. His family is very religious, and soon after his brother Roy is stabbed, they end up at their church one night. John, his mother, his father, Elisha, his aunt and two other sisters join together in prayer and worship. During this praising the book shifts focus first to Florence, who is deep in prayer and meditation, and we are carried back into her past. We learn of her failed marriage, her rocky relationship with her mother, and her inside hatred of her brother, which is John' father Gabriel. After we hear her thoughts and her story, the direction shifts focus to John's father, Gabriel. Gabriel ponders on his destructive life. In the early stages of his life Gabriel was deeply involved in sin until one day he is "born again" and becomes a preacher. We learn about how he marries a woman he does not love, commits adultery, and eventually remarries John's mother. All through this process of his flashbacks we learn the cruel hypocrite that he really is. The focus next shifts to John's mother, Elizabeth. We learn of her sorrow and heartbreak in dealing with the murder of John's real father. We learn of the struggle of her to live with her husband Gabriel, and his rejection of John. Gabriel gives John the title "bastard son", and cannot accept him.

The story ends with a climax just as it began, as we are inside the head of John. As the praying and singing is going on, he is overtaken with emotion. He battles his inclination towards evil, and good tries desperately to enter into his hard heart. The final sequence is a poetic, magical scene of words. John conquers the battle inside of him in a desperate attempt to become "born again."

I love this book; it is without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read. The language is beautiful, Baldwin has masterful storytelling prose; he has great influence and power as an American writer. I never read a book that can deal with so many issues like slaver, racism, and abuse without being heavy handed, or ever staying from the powerful theme of the novel.

I can't say enough about "Go tell it on the mountain." It does everything right, and it does everything well. It is a flawless novel in every single aspect. Emotional, poetic, breathtaking, heartbreaking, vivid use of metaphors and language. The most powerful element in this novel is the human element. We care about the characters struggles, their victories, and their character. It is about real life, and the time period is described perfectly. I was never bored, always moved, and constantly in awe during the entire reading experience. Colossal in its vision, yet simple and unflinching in it's message. Brutally honest and never contrived into doing anything that deviates from the central core of the novel. This is one of the few novels I have read that does not fall short in any aspect of storytelling. "Go tell it to the mountain" will remain with you long after other classics fade into oblivion.

Grade: A

Absolute genius epic sage of a black family 1900-1950 about how good & bad vie within each of us, secular & religious alike. Intelligent, compassionate, & bold. Writing is amazing. Audiobook narrator does it wonderful justice...

I am truly apalled at some of the reviews and interpretations of what Baldwin was trying to convey in this book. Honestly, and truthfully, this has to be one of the best books ever written by anyone of any race in any country. I've read Dostoevsky (whom I love), Tolstoy, Dickens, Hughes, Walker and many other writers of different nationalities and talents and Baldwin ranks among the most important writers of this century. One of the things that I think people fail to realize (it took some time for me, too), is the purpose of a book. In my opinion, books are not only meant to entertain (some are, but most important books are not), but to give the person reading the book a perspective of someone else's life and experience, and also to allow the reader the opportunity (the responsibility) to apply or interpret what they've read to some how apply to their own lives. We must be always introspective when we are reading something and think of our lives and society and how and people do the things that they do. Any good book will reflect that and ultimately make some things clearer to us and make us have to think that much more about other things that are not.
Baldwin gives an excellent (I cannot think of another superlative)insight into the lives of these people. Not just their lives, though, but how they think and why they think the things they do, how their thoughts give way to their actions and how their actions give way to the consequences that made (make) their lives what they were. I am inspired by that.
If you are a shallow thinker and only want to be entertained, and can only see that what is only in front of you, then I can imagine you would find Baldwin (or any other) great, thought-provoking writer boring (it almost hurt my hand to type that word in the same sentence as Baldwin). So, we must move ourselves outside our boxes, and see more than just what we know of ourselves.
I'm also sorry to say, O. Wilder, you have it all mixed up, you need to read this story again, to see what it's really saying. I'm not even going to address some of the other ridiculous reviews of this book.
I read this book a long time ago (I was 16) and thought it great, but without quite knowing why. I'm 27 now and I realize it for the great work that it is because of what it made me feel inside.

What a joy it was to have James Baldwin's first novel as my first taste of his literature. I already am looking for "Giovanni's Room". This story provides an in-depth look into the biblical Christianity of African-Americans. African-American Christianity can resonate with what St. Jerome said: "To be ignorant of the Scriptures is to be ignorant of Jesus". But it is also a story of Black history in America. From the dangerous South to the disheartening North, we trace the journey of the Grimes family. Most notable is Baldwin's delineation of conversion: how Gabriel seems to dodge it, and how his stepson, John, wrestles with it. The characters of the story are real! You may know people just like them! Baldwin is keen on the role of one's honesty, and gift of self in the process of coming to Christ. He delineates well the ethos of Black Christianity in this work, which I recommend highly.

James Baldwin created a masterful first novel in Go Tell It On The Mountain. I loved his smooth flow from character to character, era to era, place to place. We are given young John's story through his family, one person at a time, and it is through them that we understand the complexity of where he is. Physically, it's Harlem, as the son of Southern parents who have seen only hard times in both the South and the North. Emotionally, John is bouncing back and forth between a life of religious fanaticism and a life of unbound freedom.

Religion is a central force in the book, especially the disappointment and shame of sin. The hypocrite stepfather Gabriel is the darkest force, and the author's knack for showing the complexity of this character and the harm he exacts on so many other lives is perhaps the crowning achievement of the novel. Gabriel's may not be the ugliest or rarest of sins, but they completely devastate his life and the lives of those around him. Gabriel doesn't learn though and he might be regressing all the way back to the debauchery of his own youth. In hints throughout the story and at the end especially, we see John discovering the courage to escape the hypocracy and injustice of his upbringing, and to create for himself a new life of opportunity and promise. It isn't a long book, and I think it was meant to leave you wanting more. But in it's structure and incredible language, this is a very unique and powerful novel that deserves more recognition.

Jesus said, "A man's enemies will be the members of his own household" (Matthew 10:36), and "No prophet is accepted in his hometown" (Luke 4:24).
This idea certainly plays out in the Grimes family of James Baldwin's "Go Tell It on the Mountain" (1952). Except for John's mother Elizabeth, the adult Grimeses have no idea that love, familial love, is supposed to include favor (not favoritism like the father Gabriel's), the idea of blessing each other with good words, good will, and heartfelt affection. Unfortunately, the novel's Black Christians' idea of goodness and holiness is colored by the master's idea of a good slave: docile, acquiescent, submissive, silent in the face of abuse, always needing to prove your worth. "Blessed Assurance" isn't one of their songs.
"Go Tell" presents not only the story of John's 14th birthday, but the past stories of Elizabeth, Gabriel, and Aunt Florence. Whereas Gabriel's spiritual journey--if you can call it that--at about age 21 is born of desperation and remorse after much self-abuse and self-indulgence, John's spiritual journey on his 14th birthday is one of insight and refuge after much abuse and neglect. Gabriel indulges and denies his dark side, projecting his evil onto others. John wonders over his own evil thoughts, seeking to reconcile his light and dark sides.
John's family and people have been cursed by the white-oriented world, and by a false interpretation of the scripture, namely the curse of Noah upon Canaan. Believing this curse, Gabriel in turn, without meaning to, curses his children. Will any of the Grimes family truly experience being, like Israel, heirs to the promises of God, as well as heirs to the world's persecution and heartache?

John perceives that Gabriel, or some unacknowledged dark part of Gabriel, would rather see him damned than saved, would rather keep John as a bastard child, "son of the slave woman", as someone to look down upon--similar to the cutting attitude that Gabriel and his sister Florence have toward each other. However, John, born in New York City, a generation removed from Jim Crow, just might become the first person in his family to start to throw off the reproach of Egypt (see Joshua 5:9)--that is, of slavery. That is, if his anger and hatred don't overtake him first.
"Go Tell" is an excellent exploration of how the "Black church" has both upheld and held back African-Americans through slavery, Jim Crow, the Northern migration, and racism.

The great truth of the Christian faith is that you are accepted just as you are... flaws and all.
Many of the great narratives in the bible include flawed but teachable people. From: Adam to Abraham to Jacob to King David, God inspired the writing of these accounts to show us he uses people just as they are and he does the work not us.
This is just the case in James Baldwin's story, Go Tell it on the Mountain.
The main character is John, a young boy just turned 14 struggling to develop his identity and to get to know God.
During the course of the story we see his family history revealed and get to know the truth that his mother and step father are very imperfect people but redeemed nonetheless.
That is what John must come to terms with. Baldwin's rendering of this internal spiritual stuggle is masterful.
The way that Baldwin reveals the truth of the family little by little is extremely well done. This story is short and packed with punch. It is a moving and thought provoking book.

This book is definitely a classic, and ever so sad that we've made such little progress in race relations. I wasn't able to follow all of the biblical references which made it hard to follow at times.

The members of the family in James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain suffer because of their color, their poverty, and the conflicts and disappointments that are part of any life. Most of all they suffer because of the demands that their intense, dogmatic religion places on them. While they love and fear God, they have little appreciation for God's creation. For them, everyone and everything in this world is carnal and corrupt. They aspire to an otherworldly existence but their nature leads them to defy God and suffer terrible guilt. They think and speak in the language of fundamentalist Christian religion: "witness," "wandering," "wilderness," "wickedness." In James Baldwin's hands, this language is beautiful but it's disturbing, too, and this short novel will not be forgotten easily.

It's funny, the reviewer below me also first read this back in the 70's - as did I. I started out the unofficial beginning of this Fall by re-reading the "classics." Some are actual classics, and others are Lit i have left over from college and high school. Not sure where this one fits in.

I just finished this book, and feel it's one of the best books i ever read. It's not an "easy read." You do have to get ready to understand the jumping back and forth to different eras. But once you do, it's worth the effort to read - totally.

Just a wonderful book and story, and fantastically written. I'm in awe of it. I love finishing a book that really leaves you saying "wow."

1. Succintness-- Overall, the book was sufficiently succint. The descriptions of certain things rambled on, such as the dirt in the kitchen being in "delirious communion" with dirt someplace else. The author's attempt at being cerebral seemed a bit...... labored.

2. Themes-- He doesn't spare any of his hostility toward the church, which has not been *all* bad in the black community.

3. This book is a great example of characterization. The reader is almost left with more questions going out that coming in. For example: What is evil? John was not certain of his holiness at the beginning of the book, but after his experience on the threshing-floor decided to join it. This is after we have found out about all the misdeeds of several of the members present at the service. So are we to conclude that John is just as disturbed as the others? Or are we to conclude that some characters were really better than we thought they were after all the details about the relationships come to light?

The author went a bit too far trying to find profound descriptions and metaphors. The book would have been much lighter and easier reading without them.

I hadn't picked up a fiction book in a number of years. This book reminds me why: It is so difficult to speculate as to the author's lines of reasoning when people describe abstractions. At least in a book about some real historical subject, less is left to the imagination.

I liked this book much more than anticipated. My initial expectation was a nicely written and overly poetic jumble about religion and identity crisis, probably a little too sentimental.
Half right--Go Tell It On the Mountain is a powerful study of boyhood and parental expectation as well as the glories and the horror of religious conviction. It's more of a song, really, with dense, rhythmic prose that sings its song in a ramble that comes across almost like preaching. The effect is intended I would imagine, and produces results that are frequently stirring.
This book transcends any mundane consideration of justice or political justification and breathes out a far more individualistically human story. A very quick read--

If you are a reader of fluff literature only, then GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN will not appeal to you at all. This book marks a journey, and not just a journey for its main character, 14-year-old John Grimes. It is also a journey for the author. Baldwin said before he could write anything else, he had to write GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN. The Odyssey that John Grimes embarks on towards manhood, towards his religious development, and yes, towards his own sexuality, is mirrored very succinctly within the life of Baldwin. Anyone who reads this as purely a religious conversion is missing the point. In my opinion, this novel is less about John's discovery of God, and more about his discovery of himself.

Baldwin uses his own unique style that I found to be very immersive. I could relate to each of the characters in my own way, nonetheless, Baldwin fills in the rest of the gaps with his writing. The reading itself I found to be average in terms of difficulty. Baldwin uses an African-American oriented dialect such as, "done passed on" (Baldwin p.105) and "That's the way the young folks is" (Baldwin p.83) that I feel really completes the story and creates the immersive effect.

The book uses many biblical illusions that I was not familiar with at all. This can put a person who may not know the bible quite as well to be at a disadvantage when it comes to interpreting the text and understanding the full meaning that Baldwin intended. I just felt that I could not fully connect with the characters, thus the three stars. However, with a good knowledge of the bible, I feel this book would be worthy of 4.5 to 5 stars.

What started out as an interesting history of black migration from the south to Harlem, turned into a fire and brimstone story of religious following through fear and intimidation. There was no love, forgiveness, kindness or understanding from each other or the god they worshiped. The last third of the book was so filled with the histrionics of a "salvation" that I was tempted to stop reading.

There is a treasure trove of excellent critical literature about Baldwin's masterpiece. Though time and distance have only improved my very high estimation of the book's value and importance, I can't see how brief comments in a short review could add much of use to the abundant solid corpus of critical commentary.

My review is thus a review of this edition. This is a fairly inexpensive decent quality hardback with a good, readable introduction. I am happy to be able to replace my old paperback volume with this one, and look forward to adding it to my pile of 'summer must read' (or re-read) books.

As an author with my debut novel in its initial release, I hope to one day write a book with the depth of James Baldwin's GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN. We all have dreams, and that dream is one of mine. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN is a multi-layered novel dealing with the African-American experience during and after the massive migration of African-Americans from the rural south to the urban north. He has fully fleshed-out characters, a sophisticated plot, and a narrative vocie perfectly suited to his subject matter. Seldom has a better book been written. If you haven't read this novel several times, get to work.

Reality can be a difficult thing to bear. Even those of us that can afford to sit in our plushy chairs and scratch our proverbial backs of creativity by means of writing reviews that ultimately wind up doing nothing more than contributing to this capitalist system and simultaneously stroking our puny egos can admit that there are some--and by some I mean countless--things in life that can bring us grief and send us spiraling down into the pits of depression and madness. Of course, this is all limited to our own specific systematic frameworks. Imagine how it must be for someone that doesn't have a warm home to live in or even a family to support them. Indeed, I've never heard of any third-world teenagers cut their wrists because their significant other of two and a half weeks decided to cut things off. Concepts of "problems" and strife are indeed very malleable according to what is or isn't available to us.

Baldwin, in what is widely considered his best work, presents us (and more specifically his audience of the time) with the problems of a people who in the time in which the novel takes place had a systematic framework of trouble that was far "below" the standards of the referential framework of concern of the average American at the time. And what's more, he presented the public with these images in a time when these people (these people being poor African-Americans) didn't have a distinctive voice to elucidate the tears and pain of their world. Indeed, Baldwin managed to take what many readers of this book would look at today as caricatures and carve them into catalysts of understanding and sometimes even tears.

This novel is split into three sections. The first section is told through the eyes of a child who has unfortunately fallen victim to fate and was born as a poor, gay black male in America. In addition, place him into the most dysfunctional family this side of the Mississippi (or so the reader would think; I'm sure many black families were the same way but only by necessity) and you have an amazingly sympathetic character. It doesn't take long for any reader with half of a heart want to take this poor boy into their arms and hold him tightly while showering him with tears. You also grow to despise the characters--most notably the father figure--that bring such anguish upon such an innocent soul.

However, we are then presented with the second section: The Prayer of the Saints. In this section, we get background information on three of the principal adult characters in the aforementioned section and we soon learn: these people were unfortunate victims of circumstance as well. Like our protagonist, these characters were born into less than ideal family circumstances. However, they share our protagonist's racial and social burden that he has yet to confront personally. All three of these characters face these things and have their ups and downs which ultimately wind up forging them into the figures that you meet in the first chapter. When these prayers have been completed, you are simply unable to look at the characters in the same manner again. See what wonders a little dialogue and honesty can bring to you? However, the average American instead opts to stay detached from these figures and forever shove them into the position of caricature, which ultimately winds up leading vulnerable figures like our protagonist down a road of anger and hatred.

The final section, however, shows some hope of salvation. Though, it is a very ambiguous conclusion. I won't tell you what happens but it spirals into a realm of mysticism and surrealism that this reviewer personally found surprising. However, this is where this strong novel becomes a little weaker. While I can see it working within the context of the story, this surrealism isn't as stimulating as what one could find in say, the stream-of-consciousness exhibited by Faulkner, Pound or any of their perspective contemporaries. However, it is not Baldwin's prerogative to challenge the traditional notions of art. Instead, he simply opts to present us with a world that few ever get to see and great job.

I felt such a connection in reading this book. All the sayings and the scripture quotings reminded me so much of my childhood and growing up in church and of my elder family members. I felt at one with John's experience. I could totally relate. I am in awe of Baldwin's writing. The metaphores and symbolisms were well placed. Some of the scene transitions could have been a little more seamless. I found myself a couple of times back tracking to understand if I was in the past or present. Character development was to a T. This was a great read!

I was required to read this book for an English class and I thought that this book was great but the transitions from past to present were not handled well and I would often have to go and re-read the text again to help comprehend the situation. Go Tell it on the Mountain is a wonderful book about self-discovery and familial & religious duty. The characters in this novel are wonderfully full: imperfect, but hopeful. I do disagree with anyone who feels that an extensive knowledge of the Bible is required to appreciate or enjoy this book.

I stumbled upon this book a few years ago and was amazed at how great it was. While Richard Wright's "Native Son" and Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" appear to receive most of the attention as the best novels by black authors during the mid-twentieth century, I still think Baldwin's achievement in "Go Tell It On the Mountain" was a lot more important and long-lasting. I think this is chiefly because his aims appeared to be different, focusing more on the less dramatic ways that blacks have attempted to cope with the frustrations arising out of American Racism as well as the limitations it placed on their prospects for a fulfilling life. It is far more difficult it seems to me, to convey how the vast majority of blacks in those days sublimated their rage and pain through a more acceptable venue like the Black church, rather than illustrate how that very same rage and pain explodes in acts of violence (Native Son) or political agitation (Invisible Man). Perhaps Baldwin's novel receives less acclaim than these other two because it's more of a challenge to read, more difficult to connect with on a visceral level, because it aims at bottom not so much to entertain as to enlighten. I thought it was an absolutely first-rate piece of fiction, and it's method of flowing back and forth in time between one generation and another give it a certain unconventional, experimental quality that was rare for it's era.

James Baldwin, Go Tell It On The Mountain. 1952. Dell Publishing.
ISBN: 0-440-33007-6

James Baldwin's, Go Tell It On The Mountain, tells the story of two generations of an African-American family who began their migration from the south to the northern city of Harlem beginning in 1900. John, the 14-year old stepson of Gabriel Grimes, begins our journey as an up and coming preacher on his 14th birthday, March of 1935. Walking that night with his family to the storefront church in Harlem, the story jogs backward to the previous generation's struggles migrating north to escape the oppressions both outside and inside the family--finding its way back to the storefront church to witness John's cathartic awakening. Each family member has his or her own riveting story of the past, yet each is interdependent and leads back to young John's awakening. John, a young black man in 1930's Harlem must deal with a religious zealot of a step-father, a community of poverty and violence; yet he finds hope in this insular black community in America which preached the self-worth and intelligence of the black for the first time. Baldwin speaks through a style of veiled biblical references dotted with nuggets of prose that transcend any race and time. This recommended read will challenge and grab you at the same time.

"Go Tell It On The Mountain", probably titled after the Negro Spiritual, was James Baldwin's first novel. Published in 1953, it tells the story of a fourteen year old boy, John Grimes. Part One, "The Seventh Day", makes it known how John fights to bring into existence his self-identity while facing many obstacles. Keeping with societal times, one of the obstacles that Baldwin has John face is that of racism. It is the racism that John feels is keeping him from gaining all that society has to offer. In addition to facing obstacles outside of his home, he also is faced with familial problems. John is the son of Elizabeth and stepson of Gabriel. His biological father, Richard, committed suicide due to ridicule by white policemen. After Richard's death, Elizabeth slowly fell in love with Gabriel, a superficial, religious man, and the two of them parented three children. As an outsider of the "family", John must try harder to fight the isolation he's feeling to become a part of the family. Because of Gabriel's beliefs, he felt that John was doomed or cursed and would not accept John for who he was.
"The Prayer of The Saints", Part Two of the novel, tells the stories of Florence, Gabriel, and Elizabeth; people all significant in John's life. Interspersed with stories of their pasts, each of these three are vital to John's development as they pray for his salvation. Florence's prayer centers around the anger she feels being a woman in a family dominated by men as well as the anger associated with racism. Although Florence became a very religious women deep in prayer, initially, she could not find any comfort in religion. Gabriel, a man anointed by God to preach first married Deborah, a young woman who was barren, was overtaken by the flesh while talking to a co-worker, Esther. Although he felt guilty and tried to repent for his sin, the conceived child died. After becoming a widower, Gabriel married Elizabeth and promised to provide a good family atmosphere for her and John. As time went by, Gabriel fell short of his promise, and although he and John attempted to work through their differences, they were both overcome by feelings of unworthiness. Although, long Part Two is well written and creative in the sense that the other saints are mentioned in someone else's prayer.
Part Three, "The Threshing Room Floor" tells us how John receives the Holy Ghost, something he has been searching for, and is found in the middle of the "threshing" floor surrounded by saints. The reader is left wonder if, now saved, will John be accepted by Gabriel. Also, Baldwin used an excellent play on words by naming the church "Temple of Fire Baptized" because it is water or the blood of the lamb that baptizes and saves people from sin, not the fires often seen in hell.
Although the book well-written, it was at times difficult to focus. This book is recommended to an avid reader, but not to one who is looking for "a first novel to read". However, I believe that "Go Tell It On The Mountain" is a good book for someone to read if they are fighting with salvation and looking for acceptance in church.

It definitly helps to do some bible pre-reading before reading this book. I was assigned to it for class and never would have read it otherwise. However, the ending made the rest of the book worthwhile. The main character, John, finds God. I did some research on James Baldwin and found that this book is largely autobiographical. I think the author may have actually experienced a "calling to God" as John did, because it was wrote so incredibly well that you could imagine and feel John's feelings as if you were feeling them yourself. Many parts were religious tangents that didn't grab my attention, but for the most part, the book gave me an incredible inspirational feeling.

I was first turned on to James Baldwin when I read the book "Black Girl In Paris." Afterwards, I began reading other works from Jame Bladwin.
This book was so well written and so realistic in nature. The story line was simple to follow without any dull moments. It's a story of a young man's plight into manhood which made me wish I had read this book when I was a teenager.
This and many of James Baldwin's works are an excellent addition to any literary collection.

this book opened up my eyes to many things. life for a black person in harlem in the 30's, life for a black person in the 50 years after slavery ended, but most of all, it opened my eyes to the astounding effects that religion can have on peoples lives. it proves karl marx's famous quote, religion is the opiate for the masses. the book is well written and very intense, although sometimes confusing.

its not the best book you will ever read, but it is certaintly worth reading just for the experience and insight it gives, while at the same time being a solid piece of literature.

When first reading "Go Tell it on the Mountain", the names places and time element where somewhat perplexing, but once the characters were identified the book was hard to put down. Baldwin brings Harlem to life and with it facing his own demons, the tone and the almost misogynist atmosphere made having a pleasant life difficult.
All in all, I will continue to read as much of Baldwin, his words made a profound effect on this reader.

Go Tell It on the Mountain is James Baldwin at his best: fiery, passionate, tender and all-seeing. The novel is written so that three of the main characters get a chance to tell their own stories, which heightens the impact of the story of the boy John. There are many reasons why Baldwin is considered one of the greatest twentieth century American writers, and this is one of them.

Have you ever read a book you know would be great, if the sentences weren't so long and drawn-out? And you try to read it, but it is just too descriptive? Go Tell It On the Mountain, by James Baldwin, is exactly that book for me.
The story is about a young boy, John, and his family growing up in Harlem. Or at least that is supposed to be the plot. But in reality, not even half of the book takes place in Harlem. Each person in Go Tell It On the Mountain had their own mini-plot. Usually, mini-plots are a useful tool for writing a book. But to be useful, the plots must first, all fit together.
When reading this book I was continually confused by the way the author jumped in and out of flashbacks. Characters during these flashbacks are not explained the way they should be. Baldwin takes a little too much time using big words, and not enough time introducing new characters.
If you are interested in reading this book, I would suggest to do so. While reading this novel, you may learn how not to use flashbacks, how to make sentences as long as a paragraph, and how to over-use large words. I warn you, have your dictionary ready.

I recently had to read this book for my college African-American lit. class. I didn't think at first that I would be able to relate to the work (being a white boy from the rural South), but I found a wonderful truth in this novel. The overall message about religion and hypocricy was universal. Baldwin is a wonderful author and now I can't wait to read some of his other works.

Autobiographical tale of a black teen coming of age in '30's Harlem underneath his suffocatingly religious and unloving father who's plagued by his own past transgression. Penetratingly crafted, hauntingly sad yet sprinkled with optimism and youthful endeavor.

I came to Baldwin through his essays, which are vivid, incisive, and full of raw emotion. By contrast, most of his novels are mediocre. Nonetheless, this novel is very good, a glimpse at a life that is utterly alien and beautifully, indeed brilliantely, captured.

It is the story of a struggling boy - very bright, caught in a culture and society that excludes him as a black. If you read this, you will understand how he feels and what he struggles for. That is what a good novel does, and this is very good.

Recommended with warmth.

"Go Tell It On The Mountain" starts with John, a 14 year old narrating his family story, living in Harlem. His parents had migrated North to New York as young adults and he is the first generation to grow up in the "liberal" North rather than in the "segregated" South.

John's father dislikes him, but the secret to his dislike is hidden from John. John has deep scars from his father's dislike though which emerge when he enters a trance-like religious state in church:
"Then his father was upon him; at his touch there was singing, and fire. John lay on his back in the narrow street, looking up at his father, that burning face beneath the burning towers.
'I'm going to beat it out of you. I'm going to beat it out.' His father raised his hand. The knife came down. John rolled away, down the white, descending street, screaming: 'Father! Father!'"
The father seems to symbolize both John's father and God who is invoked by each character as an overpowering presence who must by appeased, despite uncertainty as to what his wishes are. John's vision seems to be a way of reaching an understanding of his father and his relationship with him.
[...]

First of all, after reading the other reviews I was surprised to find a touch of ignorance in namely peter32574 from Nevada and Drofwarc Mail from Washington. It seems that ole Peter likes to use big words, mainly to seem 'intelligent', implying that Baldwin's writing is not. While Mail likes to assume that the book was terrible. I doubt that Mr. Mail has ever read anything of importance, and if you think that Baldwin is hard to read, pick up some Nietzche and then we'll talk. To the point, Baldwin uses his choice of words in this book ever so effectively. He brings about his own spiritual experience in an interesting light, fusing the racial problem of the time, to the spiritual problem in his soul. It is Baldwins poetical writing that seems to warrant my interest though. His unnforced skill is a testament to his genius, and many seem to agree. All in all, the book is a good one to read for a poets view of a racial and spiritual quest to rise above the transitory stage so often dealt by Wright and Hughes. A great book, and even greater writer.

James Baldwin shows how dysfunctionism can come about in forms that most people wouldn't think possible. Here John is being raised, in a extremely religious environment, by a step-father who does care a whole lot about him, and puts added pressure on John by deciding that John become a "God-fearing, hell-fire" preacher like himself. His mother doesn't approve, but doesn't come to her son's rescue either. The step-father's own son is allowed to do as he pleases and nothing is said or done about it. This book leaves you with a lot of soul searching and self evaluation.

Go Tell It On The Mountain, the autobiography of James Baldwin, is an excellent rendition of life in New York City during the 1950's as an African American. The rough lifestyle, domestic drama, and racial clash of his childhood unfold over the course of this book. The autobiography is written in the third person, so as to interpolate black history rather than his life facts. The book is not so much about his life but rather the essence of his lifetime. His story is told through dialogue and the stories of others. He places the reader in his shoes as a witness. This is an incredibly interesting choice of the writer. Religion is also a both negative and positive influence in his family life. He faces much domestic pressure in an unaccommodating country. This is a worthwhile read and is significant to life. His view is intriguing. Life is like a mountain.

I was really looking forward to reading this book since I knew it had religious overtones. However, the book tried to tie religious feelings with characters that only on the surface appear to be faithful. At least Baldwin created an interesting struggle with faith and temptation. But the whole idea that repetitive sinners contain the Spirit is hypocrisy! These people just go through the motions of a faithful life and therefore, the character descriptions are incorrect.

James Baldwin is the author of Go Tell It On The Mountain. This book was to show or display life in Harlem and to make sure that the new generation understands what it was like back in that time.

The masterpiece was about this little boy who was learning how hard it is to become a man and a servant for GOD. It was like he was studying for his spiritual man hood not his physical man hood. His Family was very religious. For example, to them there are some things you can do and some cannot.

It was like trouble is always in his way because growing up he was

around a dangerous community. People are dinking, hookers, junkies or people that had problems with their emotions. To see their face it was like the way a flower was crumbled to the ground.

The church was a way out of trouble. His church also had problems, but not as bad as the society around him. Young men and women were acting like grown adults with the attitude and sexual behavior. That's why the congregation of love and hope to guide the young people with a better life.

Drawn-out, overly descriptive, and at times hard to follow. Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin tells the story of the deep spiritual struggle of a fourteen year old black boy growing up in a Harlem community in the 1930's. At times, the book sounds almost poetic until an abrupt, and occasionally disturbing, flash back jumps at you from out of nowhere. Eventually, the story turns into somewhat of a bad soap opera with adultery, gangs, attempted murder, child abuse, suicide, and rape. Baldwin has shown through this book his mastery of fitting someone's life story into a single sentence as he attempted to do several times, losing the reader mid sentence. Baldwin also went on for pages describing dust in a house and adulterous moments-a euphemism of course. I can
certainly agree with New York Times' review, " with vivid imagery and lavish attention to details." But I never imagined it to be this bad. Where details lacked in some areas, they
grew like weeds in others. Attention to details many people do not want to hear about proliferated, distracting from the supposed focus of the book, the spiritual struggles of teenage boy.
In five words or less: sick, twisted and way to long. So, if you are looking for a soap opera-like book which could have easily been 200 pages shorter go to your nearest
bookstore and purchase Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin.

Ok, I'll quickly comment on some previous reviewer's comments in order to frame my view of this book. First of all, I agree with some of the others that if you have little faith, then this book may not be for you. However, if you have read Malcolm X's autobiography or any other african-american novels than you will absolutely love this one. Being fond of poetry will also help. So much of this book could be considered great poetry even outside of it's story-context. This is the "door" to Baldwin for me, and I have read "Blues For Mister Charlie" and will be reading the rest of his books soon, I have already purchased a few of them. If I had to make a "level-comparison" of how high I would rate him I would say he is similar to Jack Kerouac in how he makes you truly "FEEL" the character's emotions and really draws you into the story. Try not to mis-read this review. I am not saying that Jack and James write similar novels...I am just saying that I rank them both at the top. As far as having to know the St. James Bible, I would say that you really don't need to know much about it to appreciate or understand this book as long as you're well-educated.

James Baldwin's "Go Tell It On The Mountain" depicts the story of a young preacher's son who struggles with religious meaning in his life. Discerning between his own beliefs and what everyone around him expects becomes an internal battle for him. Interpreted through a rather slower plot-with several series of abrupt flashbacks and drawn-out paragraphs-you often find the story hard to follow. For example, in the period of time the book covers, which elapses in a single day, you get in-depth looks into the complete life-stories of three individual characters. Moreover, Baldwin's descriptive writing tends to inform you of more details than you want or need to know. However, in the midst of such confusion you are able to hear Baldwin's voice protrude. He clearly understands the people he portrays, and I'll give him that. So, if you are searching for a book with a confusing plot, little action or dialogue, and abrupt scene changes, you've got it. But to the rest of the readers in this world, I wouldn't recommend this book.

I enjoyed this book. Being a Christian, I could relate to John's journey as he turned to Christ. The style of the book was a little confussing. It was hard to know if Baldwin, as the narrator was simply narrating so we as an audience could know what the characters had been through, or if he was telling the character's thoughts. The characters, each with their own struggles, add variety. I liked how everything in the end doesn't just work out wonderful, and that we don't know if John changes his ways. Only knowing his heart has changed, we can imagine anything, good or bad for the rest of his life's journey.

As I have said in previous reviews of James Baldwin's works this yet another masterpiece. All I can say is read all the books written by James Baldwin. You will fall in love with him as I have. Few writers are his equal, and none are his superior.

Go Tell it on the Mountain

If you would like a book to read that really, hit the topics on family relationships, deals with prejudices and leadership. The book Got Tell it on the Mountain can be the book for you. This book hits these matters perfect. Lexon, the main character, is an African American that is very strong with his family, by stepping in and taking care of his younger siblings and watching over his parents. With the racism going on in the book, it seems like most people in this situation that Lexon was in will just take the misbehaving actions, but he stepped up and took a stand. This surprised me being the reader because Lexon seemed like he was a shy person in the beginning of the text. By him taking a stand, change his whole outlook of the character that I though was before as I was reading.

Go Tell it on the Mountain , if truth be told is a excellent paperback because I bet everyone at one point in there life had deal with a least one of theses issues in there life at one moment at another as there journey of growing up as a child to a teen. The great thing about this book is that it is not a black only or white only book; this book has no gender or race with it, just because it the topics of going against African Americans. I enjoyed the book because I noticed this about on how open it was and emotional.

This text touched me in a special way because I was going through similar responsibilities as Lexon. I recommend this paperback to my peers who are feeling what I am saying about the book in general, just go to your nearest library, and check out the book Go Tell it on the Mountain. It might just turnout to be your favorite book and you may recommend it to another peer yourself.

Hadn't read any of his work since high school, and I was pleased with this. His writing is honest and relevant for today. The black experience in America has never been as honestly represented as this.

Many students might or might not enjoy this text. I personally did not enjoy reading this book as much as I would have had wanted to. Go Tell It on a Mountain is a book that allows us to know how a person grew up spiritually with the Christian God. If as a reader, you enjoy reading about coming of age in a Christian home this may be an appropriate book for you. This book allows you to be exposed to God in a Christian manner and the people who praise him. Having the opportunity to read this novel will be fun and exciting for you. Therefore, your experience while reading this book will be exciting and interesting. The main foundation of this book is spirituality, "... lay his life in the altar and rise up, praising God," is one of the many examples of God being mentioned. In this societies' point of view God is real and he is the higher law. What we see is on of the members of this society not sharing the same opinion. Many people like my self might not enjoy religion for religion to be part of their educational enrichment in school. If you as an individual become distracted, dull, or simply uninterested in literature with the religion topic addressed please do not consider this book as part of your summer reading choices. You will end up hurting yourself because on e of the goals for summer reading is to enjoy yourself with educated reading. I for the most part did not feel excited while reading and writing responses for this book. In addition, if you have problems with reading elevated books Go Tell It on a Mountain may be suitable for you. It is not a difficult book to read, because the vocabulary is not elevated. As a reader, I prefer books with a high vocabulary. When I was reading I was not challenged and that added to my discontent with this novel. One thing that might help with reading if having problems with understanding the text is to write notes to the side or on post it notes. I myself wrote notes when it came to a point that I had to create reading responses. Writing notes helped me, because when I needed to write the reading responses I could simply refer to my notes and not be confused about how I concluded or were I obtained some observations or information. If reading this book I recommend discussing it with a friend of someone else to make stronger connections to the text. Go Tell It on a Mountain is an interesting book in its own way. There`s a picture in the cover that shows an event in the book. I is nice to have a picture to look back at when trying to imagine one of the scenes described in the book It may be even of great help to read the critics reviews on the back to have an idea of what kind of book it is and how it may be to your help or interest.

Looking over the reviews, I was surprised at how often reviewers said this books was tedious to them. I found it one of the strongest and most powerful books I have read it a long time, with language that was exalted, and often hymn-like in its quality.
Concerning the book, then, I would like to suggest a couple of things to readers and to those who suggest books for others to read:
1)Don't read this book unless you know your Bible well, particularly the King James version. Without this as your base, I would guess that you'd find the language incredibly dense, and most of Baldwin's allusive power will blow past you.
2)Don't read this book unless you have some experience in life. Again, I would think that the way Baldwin is able to put deep inner struggles and the feelings that rise from hard experience into words will remain lost to you unless you've had some hard experience of your own.
3) If you're not African American, a little pre-reading into the Black experience in America might be helpful first, looking into particularly the Great Migration, the Azusa street revival, and the rise of the storefront church.
4) Practice reading the book out loud!! Many passages were written in an almost oral form, the kind one hears in preaching, with rolling sentences that seem to go on forever. Don't let the long sentences intimidate. Rather let them sweep you along, phrase for phrase, as they're meant to.

The power of God, the power of Satan, the power of love (or lack of it) and, almost above all, the power of language. This is a breathtaking thing. Read and remember who wrote it - then remind people about one of the most underrated masters of American life.

Go Tell It On The Mountain is a very bold book. In an era when "Ebonics" had not been coined yet, when being black was not every white kids style, James Baldwin stayed so true to the African-American colloquialism. James Baldwin has written with complete truthfulness and self-questioning this parable of finding yourself, finding your belief, finding your God. Are these even different things, or is it one? It is this honesty which keeps you engrossed. Whether you'll end up loving this book or not probably depends on your personal equation with the Supreme Being, but what you will definitely admire and carry forward is his honesty, honesty about the lives of African-Americans, honesty which is also echoed in the language.

Go Tell It On the Mountain is a biblical story of a youth dealing with his personal demons with regards to religion at an age where sin has not manifested itself in any form whatsoever in him. John finds himself in the difficult position of questioning his faith. John's mental turmoil in separating the men of god from god itself and paving a religious path for himself is very touching. This mirroring of thoughts which are timeless in nature, pulls you into the story. You find yourself questioning along with John, praying along with his mother Elizabeth and feeling betrayed by his father Gabriel.

James Baldwin delves into each characters personal quest to achieve a place next to God. He frankly describes the African-American homes, the depth to which they are influenced by Christianity. So much so that at times you find it disconcerting. The two-facedness, the fake righteousness of the sanctified men makes you cringe with discomfort, followed by skepticism. Which is why, when John ends up being saved, I felt deceived. What brings about John's confirmation to the faith? Is it the hope to be freed from suffering that is passed on to him from generations? Is it to assuage the curiously skirted guilt of homosexuality? Could it have to do with the evangelist nature of African-American church services, where the charged up atmosphere, the childhood influences, the trance-like energy which may make one forget all inhibitions, insecurities and embrace that which is core to one and all, an eagerness to believe.

That this is a story of a different era is not to be forgotten. The depth to which James Baldwin writes about the African-American psyche, their hope in being freed from their suffering, their expectant belief in their faith, gives you reason to half-heartedly agree to the biblical end to the story.

This book, makes me curious of the role that guilt, fear and a hope for change, plays in bringing people closer to their god. Yes, signs of a true skeptic, but maybe in one of my trance-like states caused by certain unmentionable substances that might change and make me a believer.

[...].

I wanted to dislike this book. James Baldwin is anathema to me--but this book--as a work of art, as an example of human effort--is outstanding.

Not at first, though. The exordium is tedious and boring, and I was flipping pages with alacrity, saying to myself: "AHA! Overrated! And I know why." But once the narrative sea-legs get set with the history of Gabriel Grimes, the novel becomes special. You can tell Baldwin read almost every book in his local library, and that he had uncommon talent at organizing words, piecing sentences together, and constructing something greater than the sum of its parts.

The heavy emphasis on religion would normally be an impediment to my enjoyment of any work, but here, though it did get old, it did not vitiate the flow. God played an important role in young Baldwin's life, and the book reflects those years.

The MLA has decreed to the unwashed masses that Go Tell It On The Mountain is the thirty-ninth best novel of the 20th century. That places it ahead of superior works such as Pale Fire, Of Human Bondage, and Lord of the Flies (to name only three), but also behind inferior works such as To The Lighthouse and the Studs Lonigan Trilogy.

No matter the placement, this is a significant book that deserves to be read on its own merits.

This book was a rare find on how people really follow through on their religion. I would recommend this book to any one who believes their is a God and anyone who is skeptical about God. This book takes place in the early 1900's. The books main focus is on the protagonist character, who is a 14 year old, bastard child who's step-father is a minister who hates him. This book really shows the irony in how when people try to live right, there always will be that person to throw all the wrong you ever done in your face. Read this intriging page turning book to really understand what I'm talking about.

Like others have mentioned, this book was over-written and the prose was too lyrical. Some of the descriptive passages and religious mumbo-jumbo were very tiring to get through, and it stalled the little action the novel did have. And in the end, there was a lot Baldwin set up in terms of plot that was left wide open. Especially The Letter (when you read this you'll know what I mean). Why did Baldwin dedicate so much character dialogue to the letter, leading readers to believe the revelation of it would resolve the story, then end things before it was revealed??? WAS it even revealed?This could've easily been a novella, and a good one, if he had revised the manuscript better.

Go Tell It on the Mountain is a book written by James Baldwin. This book is divided into three parts instead of chapters. In the three sections, there are 221 pages. It has small font but it isn't too small to the point where you can't read it. It has a reasonable amount of words per page and a reasonable amount of pages per section. The book is about a fourteen-year-old boy who is trying to figure out what he wants to be when he becomes an adult. In general, it talks a lot about what teenagers think about and what goes on in some people's lives. I personally think that this is a good book. It has all the qualities of a masterpiece. There are some parts where it might get a little confusing because of the way they go back and forth. There are many flashbacks throughout the book. The flashbacks are the parts you really want to pay attention to. They might confuse you at first but sooner or later you start to understand what is going on as long as you pay attention. The only way you will understand is if you stay focused on the book. If you don't then you will be really confused and then will get frustrated along with the confusion you already have. This is why it is crucial for you to stay focused the whole time while reading. Overall, I think this book is a good book and I highly recommend for many to read it.

Go Tell it on the Mountain is a wonderful book about self-discovery and familial & religious duty. The characters in this novel are wonderfully full: flawed, but hopeful. I disagree with anyone who feels that an extensive knowledge of the Bible is required to appreciate or enjoy this book.

I was excited to read this book, however turned out disappointed. The book revolves around several different individual plots that are hard to follow. The characters are confusing, and there is no division between the present and the past. The whole time, I felt a negativity towards Christianity (even though I am a Christian). Also, I was shocked by the amount of sexual material in a book focused on Christianity in the African American Church. It is weird to be reading about breasts in the same book where a lot of the plot takes place in a church.
Hypocrisy is a major theme. John, the main character, sees this hypocrisy in the church and has a very negative view of the church. Suddenly, all his hesitancy towards the faith is wiped clean during his conversion. I have a hard time understanding how he could change, even though everyone around him is still the same (except his "father", who seems to get worse). What happened with "The Letter"?
The book is really confusing and just seemed really negative. Every character has a tragedy. I found that every time I put the book down, I was in a negative mood.

Now this is a book to read! Well written with rich characters with places to go. Compelling, emotional, moving. Baldwin captures a time in a timeless style. A thought-provoking read. This is what a book was meant to be. James Baldwin's best.

Is religion important to you? If so, this book I read over the summer called Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin will be good for you to read. I am in the middle so I rather know how both people feel about the autobiography. Meaning how a person could like it and why a person would not like it. I liked this autobiography but then again I do not so that id why I know how both kinds of people would feel. So, if you really like and support your religion then I would recommend this book. However, if you really do not care about it then I would not recommend this story to you.

This book is an autobiography of James Baldwin. He wrote of how his life was supposed to end up just like his fathers without question. His father was a pastor (father). He also never really paid attention to that because he was so use to hearing that he would become just like his father. He never mined about it until he turned 14 year old. Tough he was nothing like his younger brother. His younger brother knew so much more than he did about what was going on around them. I would really recommend this autobiography to those who want to know what his life was like and what happened to him.

Go Tell it on the Mountain was a powerful book, but it was extremely confusing with the different characters and setting. Its switching from past and future tense did not flow and the characters all got twisted together. There is no way to read the book only one time through and understand it all. New characters popped out of no where and left me completely confused about who was who. Maybe this book just was not right for me, but I really would not recommend this to anyone who has a cheerful personality. The reader has to enjoy thinking about and pondering ideas in a book and be okay with reading depressing books. Be prepared to read this book several times through to fully comprehend the true meaning and plot of this book. Overall, I was disappointed with this book because I had heard very good things about this book, but I found it too confusing to really enjoy.

I find it humorous to read all of these reviews and decided to add my tid bit of info. I find Baldwins work in Go Tell It on the Mountain totally directed toward the Christian. Unless you have a superior understanding of his literature, this book is frankly boring.

When this book was published I was early in my career as a Pentecostal preacher. Baldwin's desctiption of the religious fervor, the "tarrying" meetings was sensitive and clear. It took such a person to reveal so much about himself and the selt-deprecation (or self-flagellation). This was a significant part of the lives of those--both black and white--who were taught to despise self to gain the greater approval and glory of God.

This book, especially, was a major turning point in the attitude of those who did not know or care about the "holiness people," the pentecostal, the poor black, or even the acceptance of one whose gender choice was of the same sex.

I would recommend that everyone find a copy before they become out-of-date printings. We live in a much more accepting and tolerant society today but we can continue to improve.

James Baldwin's books are depressing but this is the worst of ALL of them. This book is filled with sexist psychotic religious crap. Religion is the root of all that is evil in the world. Because as described in this morbid book it has been used to brain-wash black people who in turn used it to terrorize their children! Religion is guaranteed job security for psychiatrists and psycologists!

Made a selection on shipping changed it and was charged for both and that was unfair by this time I was finished I could have gotten a hard cover of the book and had it shipped overnight from the author

Ok clearly I was missing something. I gave up on page 101 because I just could not be bothered reading on. It is not like me to give up on such a short novel but this was grating on my every nerve.

I hated the Southern American Negro vernacular that was used from the start. The grammatical errors of this speech just annoyed me. Ok,ok, I know that is probably how the characters talked in real life back then but I struggled to follow it. I also thought the writing style (other than the type of speech used) was rather self righteous and long winded. Even 101 pages in, the author had not really made a point, or at least not one that I noticed.

If this is the "most important novel written about the American Negro" then I really need someone to sit down and explain why. Surely, To Kill a Mockingbird would be more important or Gone with the wind, or many other such novels. Luckily, this is a book group choice and I will, partially, get the chance to find out why when we sit down and discuss it.

Sorry to all the diehard fans out there but I just did not get it.

I first read Go Tell It On The Mountain when I was in junior high and found myself bored, annoyed, and on the verge on giving it back to the library without finishing it (which I never do). I slogged through endless pages of "lordy lordy help me stand" "hallelujah" and othersuch near-maniacal religious zealot ramblings that had nothing to do with anything.

The story is about a boy who is growing up, and his family has problems. It's not a huge book, but without all the frenzied Jesus-babbling, it could have been edited into a decent short story. It literally got to the point where I could skim through entire pages of nonsense to find any actual action, which was usually just "he shut the door and sat down in a chair" and then back to the crazy.

I read it again in near the end of high school and hated it even more. Won't be picking this up ever again and wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

I was really looking forward to reading this. The deeper I got the more repugnant was the religiosity to me. I sent it back to the library and got another book. I was turned off by the fundamtalist's belief system. Which is the base for this and something that I find completely wrong headed and evil. Misses the whole point of Jesus' ministry.