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Go Tell It on the Mountain
Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.
256 pages, Paperback
First published May 18, 1953
About the author
James Baldwin
283 books12.7k followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Works of American writer James Arthur Baldwin, outspoken critic of racism, include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a novel, and Notes of a Native Son (1955), a collection of essays.
James Arthur Baldwin authored plays and poems in society.
He came as the eldest of nine children; his stepfather served as a minister. At 14 years of age in 1938, Baldwin preached at the small fireside Pentecostal church in Harlem. From religion in the early 1940s, he transferred his faith to literature with the still evident impassioned cadences of black churches. From 1948, Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France but often returned to the United States of America to lecture or to teach.
In his Giovanni's Room, a white American expatriate must come to terms with his homosexuality. In 1957, he began spending half of each year in city of New York.
James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s.
He first partially autobiographically accounted his youth. His influential Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time informed a large white audience. Another Country talks about gay sexual tensions among intellectuals of New York. The black community savaged his gay themes. Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers stated the Baldwin displayed an "agonizing, total hatred of blacks." People produced Blues for Mister Charlie, play of Baldwin, in 1964.
Going to Meet the Man and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone provided powerful descriptions. He as an openly gay man increasingly in condemned discrimination against lesbian persons.
From stomach cancer, Baldwin died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. People buried his body at the Ferncliff cemetery in Hartsdale near city of New York.
Works of American writer James Arthur Baldwin, outspoken critic of racism, include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a novel, and Notes of a Native Son (1955), a collection of essays.
James Arthur Baldwin authored plays and poems in society.
He came as the eldest of nine children; his stepfather served as a minister. At 14 years of age in 1938, Baldwin preached at the small fireside Pentecostal church in Harlem. From religion in the early 1940s, he transferred his faith to literature with the still evident impassioned cadences of black churches. From 1948, Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France but often returned to the United States of America to lecture or to teach.
In his Giovanni's Room, a white American expatriate must come to terms with his homosexuality. In 1957, he began spending half of each year in city of New York.
James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s.
He first partially autobiographically accounted his youth. His influential Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time informed a large white audience. Another Country talks about gay sexual tensions among intellectuals of New York. The black community savaged his gay themes. Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers stated the Baldwin displayed an "agonizing, total hatred of blacks." People produced Blues for Mister Charlie, play of Baldwin, in 1964.
Going to Meet the Man and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone provided powerful descriptions. He as an openly gay man increasingly in condemned discrimination against lesbian persons.
From stomach cancer, Baldwin died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. People buried his body at the Ferncliff cemetery in Hartsdale near city of New York.
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June 23, 2016
When I was vacationing in Chicago recently, I went to a used bookstore and saw some James Baldwin books. I've heard many good things about him, so I decided to get this book... an old paperback edition (not the white one pictured above) for $5.
The next morning, flipping through my stack of newly purchased books, I noticed to my amazement that this book was signed! And signed "For Jimmy". Unbelievable:
('For Jimmy or be that James: Peace, James Baldwin')
So I felt like it was fate that brought this book into my hands, this book which had as its subject matter: fate. So what could it mean? What is the universe trying to tell me? Am I looking at a double fucking rainbow? ;)
If you understand how complex things are in the real world, it is hard not to feel empathy for those who must live it. That is why the characters are also neither good nor bad. They are human, and thus, imperfect. Baldwin is a master at inhabiting their headspaces, filling out the history of each character so completely and humanely that it is hard not to feel empathy for each character, even the ones that have done awful things. In fact, the whole book is an exercise in empathy, and that is, in my opinion, the highest aim for any artist.
Of course, I haven't even touched on the attention and quality of the actual words that make up his sentences. Here is a sample excerpt. Note how the lyrical rhythm drives the narrative and vice versa. Also note how he tells more than shows, thus dismantling the "show don't tell" adage (which was never a good rule anyway, except for those aiming for mediocrity, which seems to be all we're willing to aim for these days):
SPOILER ALERT:
For those who criticize the end of the book for its convenience/believability: I think what Baldwin is getting at here is that the conversion is not a willful choice. Johnny does not choose to be converted. Of course, the conversion is hard to believe for skeptics of religion, but I think you have to go in with the attitude that Baldwin himself is skeptical of religion, but he is also a believer, at least on some level, i.e. he might not believe religion is always a force for good, but he damn well believes that it is a force. Whether you believe it is the holy spirit or the atmosphere or voodoo does not matter, things like this do happen, and the fact that Johnny's whole life has been steered in this direction doesn't help. It is almost like his own reluctance is no match for the fate of all the history that has brought him to this point in time.
It is also brilliant how the conversion is shown in this light… where it wavers between a joyous event and a thing that is inevitable, like a well-set trap… down a long dark road that has no good end. This ominousness goes along with the joy and tempers it, makes it such a great, ambiguous ending. You get a sense that this is just the beginning of a long hard journey for John.
The next morning, flipping through my stack of newly purchased books, I noticed to my amazement that this book was signed! And signed "For Jimmy". Unbelievable:
('For Jimmy or be that James: Peace, James Baldwin')
So I felt like it was fate that brought this book into my hands, this book which had as its subject matter: fate. So what could it mean? What is the universe trying to tell me? Am I looking at a double fucking rainbow? ;)
"The distant gramophone stuck now, suddenly, on a grinding, wailing, sardonic trumpet-note; this blind, ugly crying swelled the moment and filled the room. She looked down at John. A hand somewhere struck the gramophone arm and sent the silver needle on its way through the whirling, black grooves, like something bobbing, anchorless, in the middle of the sea." p. 219.What I love about this book, and what I feel a lot of people reviewing this book on Goodreads have misinterpreted about it, is that this book does not have an agenda on race, religion, class, violence, or sexuality. This book is about these things, but they are never in the driver's seat, because the characters are. The characters are the glue between the interconnectedness of race and religion and class and violence and sexuality, and they show how out of these things arises an insurmountable complexity, an ambiguous amorphous blob of feelings. It is precisely the ability to live within the complexity of these feelings instead of reducing it into the simplicity of judgement that great writers are great. By the end of this book, the reader feels just as ambiguous about God as the characters do. Is the (thing that happens at the end) a good or a bad thing? It is neither, rather it is a complicated mess of feelings that cannot be untied into good or bad.
If you understand how complex things are in the real world, it is hard not to feel empathy for those who must live it. That is why the characters are also neither good nor bad. They are human, and thus, imperfect. Baldwin is a master at inhabiting their headspaces, filling out the history of each character so completely and humanely that it is hard not to feel empathy for each character, even the ones that have done awful things. In fact, the whole book is an exercise in empathy, and that is, in my opinion, the highest aim for any artist.
Of course, I haven't even touched on the attention and quality of the actual words that make up his sentences. Here is a sample excerpt. Note how the lyrical rhythm drives the narrative and vice versa. Also note how he tells more than shows, thus dismantling the "show don't tell" adage (which was never a good rule anyway, except for those aiming for mediocrity, which seems to be all we're willing to aim for these days):
God was everywhere, terrible, the living God; and so high, the song said, you couldn't get over Him; so low you couldn't get under Him; so wide you couldn't get around Him; but must come in at the door.
And she, she knew today that door; a living, wrathful gate. She knew through what fires the soul must crawl, and with what weeping one passed over. Men spoke of how the heart broke up, but never spoke of how the soul hung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between the living and the dead; how, all garments rent and cast aside, the naked soul passed over the very mouth of Hell. Once there, there was no turning back; once there, the soul remembered, though the heart sometimes forgot. For the world called to the heart, which stammered to reply; life, and love, and revelry, and, most falsely, hope, called the forgetful, the human heart. Only the soul, obsessed with the journey it had made, and had still to make, pursued its mysterious and dreadful end; and carried heavy with weeping and bitterness, the heart along.
And therefore there was war in Heaven, and weeping before the throne: the heart chained to the soul, and the soul imprisoned within the flesh--a weeping, a confusion, and a weight unendurable filled all the earth. Only the love of God could establish order in this chaos; to Him the soul must turn to be delivered.
But what a turning! How could she fail to pray that He would have mercy on her son, and spare him the sin-born anguish of his father and his mother. And that his heart might know a little joy before the long bitterness descended.
SPOILER ALERT:
For those who criticize the end of the book for its convenience/believability: I think what Baldwin is getting at here is that the conversion is not a willful choice. Johnny does not choose to be converted. Of course, the conversion is hard to believe for skeptics of religion, but I think you have to go in with the attitude that Baldwin himself is skeptical of religion, but he is also a believer, at least on some level, i.e. he might not believe religion is always a force for good, but he damn well believes that it is a force. Whether you believe it is the holy spirit or the atmosphere or voodoo does not matter, things like this do happen, and the fact that Johnny's whole life has been steered in this direction doesn't help. It is almost like his own reluctance is no match for the fate of all the history that has brought him to this point in time.
It is also brilliant how the conversion is shown in this light… where it wavers between a joyous event and a thing that is inevitable, like a well-set trap… down a long dark road that has no good end. This ominousness goes along with the joy and tempers it, makes it such a great, ambiguous ending. You get a sense that this is just the beginning of a long hard journey for John.
January 31, 2016
“There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.”
― James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain
This was a slow read. In terms of pages and words it was a small book, but the river was deep and fierce. Baldwin is throwing out big themes on family, religion, race, sex. This isn't a beach read. It is a hard pew read in an unconditioned, hellfire and damnation church. I would read 40 pages and have to take a day to recover emotionally.
THIS book is why I read fiction. Look. I am white on white, again and again. Seriously, I took the 23andme.com DNA spit test and I am pretty deep into the white gene hole. How else, besides brilliant narrative fiction, am I going to understand anything about being black or being a black pentecostal WITHOUT reading Baldwin?
Baldwin's use of repetition was amazing. I haven't read recently (other than Moby-Dick) a novel that appears to be made, brick-by-brick, with more King James Bible pieces than Go Tell It on the Mountain. There are some novels where writer ties off every narrative thread. Baldwin wasn't satisfied with that. Each sad string in this novel seemed to end up threaded through some part of my heart and knotted around some raw edge of my soul.
― James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain
This was a slow read. In terms of pages and words it was a small book, but the river was deep and fierce. Baldwin is throwing out big themes on family, religion, race, sex. This isn't a beach read. It is a hard pew read in an unconditioned, hellfire and damnation church. I would read 40 pages and have to take a day to recover emotionally.
THIS book is why I read fiction. Look. I am white on white, again and again. Seriously, I took the 23andme.com DNA spit test and I am pretty deep into the white gene hole. How else, besides brilliant narrative fiction, am I going to understand anything about being black or being a black pentecostal WITHOUT reading Baldwin?
Baldwin's use of repetition was amazing. I haven't read recently (other than Moby-Dick) a novel that appears to be made, brick-by-brick, with more King James Bible pieces than Go Tell It on the Mountain. There are some novels where writer ties off every narrative thread. Baldwin wasn't satisfied with that. Each sad string in this novel seemed to end up threaded through some part of my heart and knotted around some raw edge of my soul.
February 1, 2024
‘Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live.’
I found myself stranded in Chicago over the weekend due to a blizzard and sub zero temperatures and kept busy doing what I love best: visiting art museums and bookstores. While browsing the basement of After-Words, I discovered a copy of Baldwin’s first published novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain stickered with Chicago’s One City, One Book initiative and figured no better time than to finally read this beloved classic by an author I’ve recently come to love. It was a perfect choice and companion as I read it traveling over the hills and everywhere for my harrowing journey home on various trains and buses that kept breaking down. To read the works of James Baldwin is to encounter prose that lingers like a prayer on your lips, prose that you’d suspect could be picked up on a seismograph for the way it shakes you deeply within, prose that could feasibly crack open the world. And to read Go Tell It On the Mountain is to bask in the bitter beauty of an undeniable classic of religious trauma, queer desires, and grappling with family legacy.
Published in 1953 and introducing the literary world to a writer who would go down in history as an essential author, Go Tell It On the Mountain is a semi-autobiographical work that truly comes out swinging. Baldwin confronts issues of racism, sexuality, sin and the hypocrisy of religion being harnessed to uphold oppressive patriarchy and other abuses while flooding his pages with gorgeous passages on desire and struggles for selfhood. Brilliantly condensing decades of lives struggling to survive society and themselves all within the span of a narrative set over 24 hours, Mountain also condenses a vast American experience into the corridors of Harlem and the blocks around the aptly named Temple of the Fire Baptized. Here we experience 14 year old John’s internal tribulations to either accept the endless struggle up the mountain of holiness—‘ It’s a hard way. It’s uphill all the way’—or a rejection of the church altogether. Yet the scope of the novel rests beyond the boundaries of John and, through flashbacks and visions, the novel becomes one about the legacy of John’s family and the struggles of Black Americans everywhere in the 20th century.
‘There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.’
Taking its title from the popular spiritual tune, Baldwin immerses us in a family and community for whom the church encompasses the whole of their daily existence. In many ways this felt like a good companion read to Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in its depiction of an insular community that uses religious devotion and fervor to justify incredible amounts of abuse and castigate not only queer desires but any sexuality outside of marriage. At the heart of the story is John who is expected to walk in the footsteps of his father—or so he thinks Gabriel is his father—and become a preacher. Gabriel is the personification of Christianity in the novel with Baldwin representing his criticisms of the organized religion through his portrayal of Gabriel as hypocritical, misogynistic and abusive. He is also very imaged-based, with his coming to God informed by the opportunities of social positioning as is his first marriage to Deborah—once she is considered the holiest of the community—a calculated move to be seen as holy himself. Baldwin represents religiosity as a false front, one that uses piety to mask abuse.
‘salvation was finished, damnation was real’
Baldwin demonstrates how religion is used for purposes of control within the community, or for Gabriel over his family. The fear of sin is pervasive, such as the novel opening with John feeling he will ‘be bound in hell a thousand years’ for his act of masturbation, and used to control behavior. Especially of women or young people, as we see in the early pages when Elisha and Ellie May are publicly shamed for ‘walking disorderly’ as evidence they ‘were in danger of straying from the truth.’ Gabriel sees it as his duty to uphold moral standings in his congregation, though not in himself, and John worries it may already be too late to be saved so he feels the need for salvation all the more intensely. However, he recognizes Gabriel as a gatekeeper to salvation and that he cannot ‘bow before the throne of grace without first kneeling to his father,’ which is something he feels he cannot do having recognized Gabriel as a cruel abuser who beats his children and “fondles” his own daughter.
‘ The menfolk, they die, and it's over for them, but we women, we have to keep on living and try to forget what they done to us.’
Baldwin also represents how Christianity upholds patriarchy through the rather misogynistic double standards against women. Sexuality is a taboo and while sex outside marriage is considered unthinkable, Gabriel had a child out of wedlock, Royal, who he discards feeling he is unholy and not worth his life, and thinks of the mother, Esther, as a ‘harlot’ for having accepted sex outside marriage and entered into ‘a forbidden darkness.’ Similarly, Deborah was shamed after having been the victim of sexual assault by a group of men—like the story of Medusa, the victim is the one who bears the punishment—and was only acceptable to society if she devote her entire being to holiness ‘like a terrible example of humility, or like a holy fool.’ She comes to hate all men and sees ‘they live only to gratify on the bodies of women their brutal and humiliating needs.’ The men hide behind claims of religious superiority, chastizing women for the things they do themselves, and thus religion only becomes another pillar reinforcing patriarchal abuse.
For John there is the issue of ‘a sudden yearning tenderness for Elisha... desire, sharp and awful,’ a desire he has been taught is filthy and thus internalizes it to believe himself filthy and unworthy of salvation.
Baldwin probes at the long history of homophobia in religious communities, an issue that continues to this day and studies have shown a greater risk for internalized homophobia, rejection from family, mental health risks and suicide for LGBTQ+ youth in religious households. This theme of struggling to accept a gay sexuality as natural was explored in depth in Baldwin’s later novel, Giovanni's Room, where David’s internalized shame leads to self-destructive tendencies and outwards abuse to others.
‘The rebirth of the soul is perpetual; only rebirth every hour could stay the hand of Satan.’
Still further we see how religion is used to justify greater atrocities, such as John’s vision of the biblical story of Ham was used to justify slavery. The novel also explores how the legacy of slavery still casts a vile shadow over the country and racism runs rampant. There is the unjust treatment of Richard arrested for theft despite being innocent and simply a Black man at the wrong place and the wrong time (not unlike the Dylan song) which leads to his tragic end. There is even internalized racism, with Deborah seeing Gabriel’s dark skin as a sin which nudges the long, racist legacy of associating Blackness with evil. This is all tied in with Gabriel being born from a former slave, showing how the cruelties and abuses of slavery continue to manifest themselves for generations to come.
‘You in the Word or you ain’t - ain’t no halfway with God.’
These experiences are the ones John considers in opposition to his need for salvation. His rejection of the church becomes, ultimately, a rejection of society at large and all the racism, homophobia, misogyny and abuse. Yet it is hard to imagine beyond the bubble of the church, which thinks of itself as a safe haven from all the sinners and “undesirables” they pass on their way. He feels trapped and helpless, and his frustrations with the futility of cleaning the rug—a never ending task—is symbolic of the path up the “mountain” to holiness. This is also symbolized in his climb to the cliff in Central Park:
He comes to see life as an endless struggle beleaguered by sin, yet runs down the “mountain” anyways. ‘If it’s wrong, I can always climb back up,’ he thinks. Yet still he must go to the threshing-floor to be judged, and hopes he can be found righteous.
‘It was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding the other.’
This is a powerful novel, one that devastates in theme, exhausts you in its moral burdens, yet utterly enchants you in pitch perfect prose. Go Tell It On the Mountain is a marvelous microcosm of society at large in the day-long drama of a mass and generational struggles of a family that put Baldwin on the map. He would fulfill this early promise time and time again. Personally I felt rather outside the novel, not having much experience with being immersed in a religious community, but I know many who’s stories of their own upbringing rang in harmony with the book. This is a harrowing tale that takes dead aim at society, hypocrisy and abuse and delivers heavy blows.
4.5/5
‘Men spoke of how the heart broke up, but never spoke of how the soul hung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between the living and the dead; how, all garments rent and cast aside, the naked soul passed over the very mouth of Hell. Once there, there was no turning back; once there, the soul remembered, though the heart sometimes forgot. For the world called to the heart, which stammered to reply; life, and love, and revelry, and, most falsely, hope, called the forgetful, the human heart. Only the soul, obsessed with the journey it had made, and had still to make, pursued its mysterious and dreadful end; and carried heavy with weeping and bitterness, the heart along.
I found myself stranded in Chicago over the weekend due to a blizzard and sub zero temperatures and kept busy doing what I love best: visiting art museums and bookstores. While browsing the basement of After-Words, I discovered a copy of Baldwin’s first published novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain stickered with Chicago’s One City, One Book initiative and figured no better time than to finally read this beloved classic by an author I’ve recently come to love. It was a perfect choice and companion as I read it traveling over the hills and everywhere for my harrowing journey home on various trains and buses that kept breaking down. To read the works of James Baldwin is to encounter prose that lingers like a prayer on your lips, prose that you’d suspect could be picked up on a seismograph for the way it shakes you deeply within, prose that could feasibly crack open the world. And to read Go Tell It On the Mountain is to bask in the bitter beauty of an undeniable classic of religious trauma, queer desires, and grappling with family legacy.
Published in 1953 and introducing the literary world to a writer who would go down in history as an essential author, Go Tell It On the Mountain is a semi-autobiographical work that truly comes out swinging. Baldwin confronts issues of racism, sexuality, sin and the hypocrisy of religion being harnessed to uphold oppressive patriarchy and other abuses while flooding his pages with gorgeous passages on desire and struggles for selfhood. Brilliantly condensing decades of lives struggling to survive society and themselves all within the span of a narrative set over 24 hours, Mountain also condenses a vast American experience into the corridors of Harlem and the blocks around the aptly named Temple of the Fire Baptized. Here we experience 14 year old John’s internal tribulations to either accept the endless struggle up the mountain of holiness—‘ It’s a hard way. It’s uphill all the way’—or a rejection of the church altogether. Yet the scope of the novel rests beyond the boundaries of John and, through flashbacks and visions, the novel becomes one about the legacy of John’s family and the struggles of Black Americans everywhere in the 20th century.
‘There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.’
Taking its title from the popular spiritual tune, Baldwin immerses us in a family and community for whom the church encompasses the whole of their daily existence. In many ways this felt like a good companion read to Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in its depiction of an insular community that uses religious devotion and fervor to justify incredible amounts of abuse and castigate not only queer desires but any sexuality outside of marriage. At the heart of the story is John who is expected to walk in the footsteps of his father—or so he thinks Gabriel is his father—and become a preacher. Gabriel is the personification of Christianity in the novel with Baldwin representing his criticisms of the organized religion through his portrayal of Gabriel as hypocritical, misogynistic and abusive. He is also very imaged-based, with his coming to God informed by the opportunities of social positioning as is his first marriage to Deborah—once she is considered the holiest of the community—a calculated move to be seen as holy himself. Baldwin represents religiosity as a false front, one that uses piety to mask abuse.
‘salvation was finished, damnation was real’
Baldwin demonstrates how religion is used for purposes of control within the community, or for Gabriel over his family. The fear of sin is pervasive, such as the novel opening with John feeling he will ‘be bound in hell a thousand years’ for his act of masturbation, and used to control behavior. Especially of women or young people, as we see in the early pages when Elisha and Ellie May are publicly shamed for ‘walking disorderly’ as evidence they ‘were in danger of straying from the truth.’ Gabriel sees it as his duty to uphold moral standings in his congregation, though not in himself, and John worries it may already be too late to be saved so he feels the need for salvation all the more intensely. However, he recognizes Gabriel as a gatekeeper to salvation and that he cannot ‘bow before the throne of grace without first kneeling to his father,’ which is something he feels he cannot do having recognized Gabriel as a cruel abuser who beats his children and “fondles” his own daughter.
‘ The menfolk, they die, and it's over for them, but we women, we have to keep on living and try to forget what they done to us.’
Baldwin also represents how Christianity upholds patriarchy through the rather misogynistic double standards against women. Sexuality is a taboo and while sex outside marriage is considered unthinkable, Gabriel had a child out of wedlock, Royal, who he discards feeling he is unholy and not worth his life, and thinks of the mother, Esther, as a ‘harlot’ for having accepted sex outside marriage and entered into ‘a forbidden darkness.’ Similarly, Deborah was shamed after having been the victim of sexual assault by a group of men—like the story of Medusa, the victim is the one who bears the punishment—and was only acceptable to society if she devote her entire being to holiness ‘like a terrible example of humility, or like a holy fool.’ She comes to hate all men and sees ‘they live only to gratify on the bodies of women their brutal and humiliating needs.’ The men hide behind claims of religious superiority, chastizing women for the things they do themselves, and thus religion only becomes another pillar reinforcing patriarchal abuse.
For John there is the issue of ‘a sudden yearning tenderness for Elisha... desire, sharp and awful,’ a desire he has been taught is filthy and thus internalizes it to believe himself filthy and unworthy of salvation.
‘Dust was in his nostrils, sharp and terrible, and the feet of saints, shaking the floor beneath him, raised small clouds of dust that filmed his mouth. He heard their cries, so far, so high above him—he could never rise that far. He was like a rock, a dead man's body, a dying bird, fallen from an awful height; something that had no power of itself, any more, to turn.’
Baldwin probes at the long history of homophobia in religious communities, an issue that continues to this day and studies have shown a greater risk for internalized homophobia, rejection from family, mental health risks and suicide for LGBTQ+ youth in religious households. This theme of struggling to accept a gay sexuality as natural was explored in depth in Baldwin’s later novel, Giovanni's Room, where David’s internalized shame leads to self-destructive tendencies and outwards abuse to others.
‘The rebirth of the soul is perpetual; only rebirth every hour could stay the hand of Satan.’
Still further we see how religion is used to justify greater atrocities, such as John’s vision of the biblical story of Ham was used to justify slavery. The novel also explores how the legacy of slavery still casts a vile shadow over the country and racism runs rampant. There is the unjust treatment of Richard arrested for theft despite being innocent and simply a Black man at the wrong place and the wrong time (not unlike the Dylan song) which leads to his tragic end. There is even internalized racism, with Deborah seeing Gabriel’s dark skin as a sin which nudges the long, racist legacy of associating Blackness with evil. This is all tied in with Gabriel being born from a former slave, showing how the cruelties and abuses of slavery continue to manifest themselves for generations to come.
‘You in the Word or you ain’t - ain’t no halfway with God.’
These experiences are the ones John considers in opposition to his need for salvation. His rejection of the church becomes, ultimately, a rejection of society at large and all the racism, homophobia, misogyny and abuse. Yet it is hard to imagine beyond the bubble of the church, which thinks of itself as a safe haven from all the sinners and “undesirables” they pass on their way. He feels trapped and helpless, and his frustrations with the futility of cleaning the rug—a never ending task—is symbolic of the path up the “mountain” to holiness. This is also symbolized in his climb to the cliff in Central Park:
‘He did not know why, but there arose in him an exultation and a sense of power, and he ran up the hill like an engine, or a madman, willing to throw himself headlong into the city that glowed before him. But when he reached the summit he paused; he stood on the crest of the hill, hands clasped beneath his chin, looking down. Then he, John, felt like a giant who might crumble this city with his anger.’
He comes to see life as an endless struggle beleaguered by sin, yet runs down the “mountain” anyways. ‘If it’s wrong, I can always climb back up,’ he thinks. Yet still he must go to the threshing-floor to be judged, and hopes he can be found righteous.
‘It was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding the other.’
This is a powerful novel, one that devastates in theme, exhausts you in its moral burdens, yet utterly enchants you in pitch perfect prose. Go Tell It On the Mountain is a marvelous microcosm of society at large in the day-long drama of a mass and generational struggles of a family that put Baldwin on the map. He would fulfill this early promise time and time again. Personally I felt rather outside the novel, not having much experience with being immersed in a religious community, but I know many who’s stories of their own upbringing rang in harmony with the book. This is a harrowing tale that takes dead aim at society, hypocrisy and abuse and delivers heavy blows.
4.5/5
‘Men spoke of how the heart broke up, but never spoke of how the soul hung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between the living and the dead; how, all garments rent and cast aside, the naked soul passed over the very mouth of Hell. Once there, there was no turning back; once there, the soul remembered, though the heart sometimes forgot. For the world called to the heart, which stammered to reply; life, and love, and revelry, and, most falsely, hope, called the forgetful, the human heart. Only the soul, obsessed with the journey it had made, and had still to make, pursued its mysterious and dreadful end; and carried heavy with weeping and bitterness, the heart along.
May 17, 2019
A coming-of-age tale about race, religion, and endurance, Go Tell It on the Mountain sketches a nuanced portrait of a single Black family struggling to survive in Harlem. John is the fourteen-year-old queer stepson of a self-righteous minister. Friendless and strange looking, the boy wants nothing more than to escape his neighborhood and attain prestige; adding to his troubles is the fact that his family’s forgotten his birthday, distracted by their daily toil. The first and last part of the novel follow John as he battles his growing awareness of his sexuality, as well as his resentment toward his life in New York. The second part takes place in a church, where John undergoes a fit of piety, and it explores the inner lives of the three adults closest to John—his stepfather, aunt, and mother. In labyrinthine prose, Baldwin gives voice to the longings and regrets of each main character, vividly portraying how they became adults in a nation hostile to their existence. Incredibly moving and worth revisiting regularly.
November 4, 2021
Jail or Church?
At age 14 I had a similar epiphany to that of James Baldwin. I too realised that my parents were only human beings, and that their fallibility left me vulnerable to the world. If I were to survive, it would have to be on terms that were yet to be determined. I recall it as a trauma. And I was neither gay nor black. But I was brought up as well in New York City to know that the world was sinful and dangerous. And “jails and churches” did bound the same spectrum of choice in my adolescent mind.
John Grimes is a Harlem Prometheus, pushing his life uphill, and endlessly having it roll back to the same point of virtual extermination. “I can always climb back up,” he thinks. Because he is young. But the unforgiving, violent gnosticism of his father is something more difficult to overcome than even the unforgiving racism and homophobia of his city. The city might give the occasional break to a talented, intelligent, ambitious black boy. But the ingrained suspicion and fear of divine judgement created by his father? Never. Hell seemed closer than one’s own family; and it had far more patience.
The only way to avoid Hell was to get ‘laid low’ by the Lord, to give up entirely - one’s ambition, one’s desires, one’s personality - in order to become saved. “You in the Word or you ain’t - ain’t no halfway with God.” For John’s father salvation comes only through pain, his first and then that of others, as much as he might impose in retribution against the violent racism, grinding humiliation and frustration he has experienced all his life. His hatred is sublimated into a desolate, suppressed existence. He can neither love nor relent in his self-persecution. A sort of racial bulimia: if the only revenge available is on oneself, that’s at least something.
When the family lived in the South, there was at least hope of escape from the legacy of their slave-parents. The North represented real freedom. But when they got there, things weren’t any different, except that hope had disappeared. There was nowhere to escape to. “The whole earth becomes a prison for the man who fled before the Lord.” This was life as it was going to be - forever. The men feel the despair most acutely, the women most deeply, the children most thoroughly. What alternative is there to a kind of religion that preaches ‘We don’t belong here; our home is elsewhere; degradation and dereliction is the only thing we can expect.’
In such a conditions, to lead is to preach, to evoke that other place of belonging, to create the community that anticipates, longs for and deserves that other place. But preaching doesn’t erase memory - in either the congregation or the preacher. One’s personal sins are compounded by the the inherent evil, one has been taught, of one’s blackness. This can’t be escaped even if it can be rationalized. Preaching becomes a sort of politics, a politics among victims, the result of which is indeed election to a life of guilt as well as oppression. This is the only politics allowed them. Their religion has not yet awoke to its potential for anything further.
John is indeed struck down, laid low, by the Lord. He becomes powerless with fear. But not to be saved: “... salvation was finished, damnation was real.” His head is filled with the sound of rage. Visions of death make him scream for help. Until he sees the Lord and is taken up into Him and protected. The rest - his father, mother, extended family, fellow congregants - didn’t know it, but he did: the Lord had freed him... of them. There were more possibilities than jails or churches.
At age 14 I had a similar epiphany to that of James Baldwin. I too realised that my parents were only human beings, and that their fallibility left me vulnerable to the world. If I were to survive, it would have to be on terms that were yet to be determined. I recall it as a trauma. And I was neither gay nor black. But I was brought up as well in New York City to know that the world was sinful and dangerous. And “jails and churches” did bound the same spectrum of choice in my adolescent mind.
John Grimes is a Harlem Prometheus, pushing his life uphill, and endlessly having it roll back to the same point of virtual extermination. “I can always climb back up,” he thinks. Because he is young. But the unforgiving, violent gnosticism of his father is something more difficult to overcome than even the unforgiving racism and homophobia of his city. The city might give the occasional break to a talented, intelligent, ambitious black boy. But the ingrained suspicion and fear of divine judgement created by his father? Never. Hell seemed closer than one’s own family; and it had far more patience.
The only way to avoid Hell was to get ‘laid low’ by the Lord, to give up entirely - one’s ambition, one’s desires, one’s personality - in order to become saved. “You in the Word or you ain’t - ain’t no halfway with God.” For John’s father salvation comes only through pain, his first and then that of others, as much as he might impose in retribution against the violent racism, grinding humiliation and frustration he has experienced all his life. His hatred is sublimated into a desolate, suppressed existence. He can neither love nor relent in his self-persecution. A sort of racial bulimia: if the only revenge available is on oneself, that’s at least something.
When the family lived in the South, there was at least hope of escape from the legacy of their slave-parents. The North represented real freedom. But when they got there, things weren’t any different, except that hope had disappeared. There was nowhere to escape to. “The whole earth becomes a prison for the man who fled before the Lord.” This was life as it was going to be - forever. The men feel the despair most acutely, the women most deeply, the children most thoroughly. What alternative is there to a kind of religion that preaches ‘We don’t belong here; our home is elsewhere; degradation and dereliction is the only thing we can expect.’
In such a conditions, to lead is to preach, to evoke that other place of belonging, to create the community that anticipates, longs for and deserves that other place. But preaching doesn’t erase memory - in either the congregation or the preacher. One’s personal sins are compounded by the the inherent evil, one has been taught, of one’s blackness. This can’t be escaped even if it can be rationalized. Preaching becomes a sort of politics, a politics among victims, the result of which is indeed election to a life of guilt as well as oppression. This is the only politics allowed them. Their religion has not yet awoke to its potential for anything further.
John is indeed struck down, laid low, by the Lord. He becomes powerless with fear. But not to be saved: “... salvation was finished, damnation was real.” His head is filled with the sound of rage. Visions of death make him scream for help. Until he sees the Lord and is taken up into Him and protected. The rest - his father, mother, extended family, fellow congregants - didn’t know it, but he did: the Lord had freed him... of them. There were more possibilities than jails or churches.
October 31, 2021
Go Tell It On The Mountain, James Baldwin
Go Tell It on the Mountain is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by James Baldwin. It tells the story of John Grimes, an intelligent teenager in 1930's Harlem, and his relationship to his family and his church.
The novel also reveals the back stories of John's mother, his biological father, and his violent, religious fanatic stepfather, Gabriel Grimes.
Go Tell It On The Mountain, is Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic.
With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935.
Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.
Go Tell It On The Mountain, James Baldwin. New York: a Signetbook, 1953 = 1332. 191 Pages.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و یکم ماه آوریل سال 1974میلادی
عنوان: برو در کوهستان بگو؛ نویسنده: جیمز بالدوین؛ موضوع: خود زندگینامه و زیستنامه از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
عنوان: با کوه در میان بگذار؛ نویسنده: جیمز بالدوین؛ مترجم محمدصادق رئیسی؛ تهران، نقش جهان، سال1398؛ در280ص؛ شابک9789646688704؛
جیمز بالدوین، در گتوی سیاهپوستان «هارلم نیویورک»، و در ناداری بزرگ شدند؛ ایشان، نه(9) خواهر و برادر کوچکتر از خود داشتند؛ از چهارده تا شانزده سالگی، در ساعات پس از مدرسه، به عنوان «کشیش»، در کلیسایی کوچک، به فعالیت میپرداختند؛ «بالدوین» بعدها در نخستین رمانش «برو آن را به کوه بگو»؛ که همین کتاب باشد، و سپس در نمایشنامه ای با عنوان «کنج استجابت»، درباره ی آن دوران نوشتند تا بماند یادگار؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 02/01/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 08/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Go Tell It on the Mountain is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by James Baldwin. It tells the story of John Grimes, an intelligent teenager in 1930's Harlem, and his relationship to his family and his church.
The novel also reveals the back stories of John's mother, his biological father, and his violent, religious fanatic stepfather, Gabriel Grimes.
Go Tell It On The Mountain, is Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic.
With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935.
Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.
Go Tell It On The Mountain, James Baldwin. New York: a Signetbook, 1953 = 1332. 191 Pages.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و یکم ماه آوریل سال 1974میلادی
عنوان: برو در کوهستان بگو؛ نویسنده: جیمز بالدوین؛ موضوع: خود زندگینامه و زیستنامه از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
عنوان: با کوه در میان بگذار؛ نویسنده: جیمز بالدوین؛ مترجم محمدصادق رئیسی؛ تهران، نقش جهان، سال1398؛ در280ص؛ شابک9789646688704؛
جیمز بالدوین، در گتوی سیاهپوستان «هارلم نیویورک»، و در ناداری بزرگ شدند؛ ایشان، نه(9) خواهر و برادر کوچکتر از خود داشتند؛ از چهارده تا شانزده سالگی، در ساعات پس از مدرسه، به عنوان «کشیش»، در کلیسایی کوچک، به فعالیت میپرداختند؛ «بالدوین» بعدها در نخستین رمانش «برو آن را به کوه بگو»؛ که همین کتاب باشد، و سپس در نمایشنامه ای با عنوان «کنج استجابت»، درباره ی آن دوران نوشتند تا بماند یادگار؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 02/01/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 08/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
June 5, 2018
Religion, Race, Gender, Sexuality! That is a powerful, strong cocktail mix of a story for sure, sung as a mourning prayer or a long orgasmic sensation.
In the character of Gabriel, all that is abusive, hypocritical and evil in Christianity is united in one patriarchal god-copy. He ranges with the worst priests in Dostoevsky's dark universe of punishment and suffering, he resembles the preacher in Elmer Gantry's style who scares his family and congregation with his vivid descriptions of sin leading to eternal burning in hell for everyone - except for himself, the worst sinner of all - who allows himself to find a sign from a conveniently lenient god that says he is saved despite all, while all the rest are lost, and most of all the women who suffer for his sake.
Angry he made me, Gabriel! Somewhat surprisingly so, as I thought I was beyond that kind of fury at the brutal injustice of men playing god's henchmen.
And yet the novel is beautiful. It is full of strong and honest people. Like Florence, who won't bow to the power of unjust, violent men. And there is Elizabeth, who is scared and alone but knows that she would choose her passionate love over the petty dominance of god any time.
And there is John, who looks for a supernatural father as a substitute for the real one that he can't reach.
Beyond my anger and rage, reading of everyday racism, violence, misogyny and abuse in the name of religion, I see clearly what makes Christianity such a powerful tool in the hands of those who know how to use it.
While despriving people of their natural pleasure in sexuality without guilt, the religious ecstacy offers an effective substitution. While depriving people of equality and fairness and freedom of choice in this life, the religious hope for an ever so undefined afterlife offers the sweet thought of future vengeance for those who suffer now. While depriving poor people of the power to claim their rights, religion offers an idea of a last judgment speaking for them after they have struggled through life without support or security.
Christianity takes away pleasure and dignity and holds them as carrots in front of the believers who keep running after them in the hope of catching them, until they collapse in exhaustion after a long run on a narrow path of suffering in silence.
I can't help hoping for something else, though, to set these characters free and to save them.
A thought experiment: what would happen to Christianity if we took away the sin from any consensual sex between grown-ups?
Gabriel wouldn't have had to fall back on preaching and beating his way through life to prove he is "saved". He wouldn't have been lost in the first place. Provided he treated his fellow human beings with the respect they are entitled to, he might actually have felt good about himself every once in a while. He might not have pushed a young pregnant woman to leave and die in pain. He might have felt responsible for his first son. He might have embraced John and made John's mother happy. All kinds of things might have happened if he hadn't been driven simultaneously by a natural desire and a taught fear of sinning.
But taking away sin from sex would make preachers less powerful. Making sex a mutual agreement between two grown-ups would make it less of a tool in the giant patriarchal powerhouse and it would put some pressure on men to be kind and caring to women. So I can see why it is worthwhile to keep preaching. Even if it makes the preacher fear and suffer occasionally as well.
Go Tell It On The Mountain, That Humanity Is Born.
This novel is like an earthquake! Read it and feel shaken!
In the character of Gabriel, all that is abusive, hypocritical and evil in Christianity is united in one patriarchal god-copy. He ranges with the worst priests in Dostoevsky's dark universe of punishment and suffering, he resembles the preacher in Elmer Gantry's style who scares his family and congregation with his vivid descriptions of sin leading to eternal burning in hell for everyone - except for himself, the worst sinner of all - who allows himself to find a sign from a conveniently lenient god that says he is saved despite all, while all the rest are lost, and most of all the women who suffer for his sake.
Angry he made me, Gabriel! Somewhat surprisingly so, as I thought I was beyond that kind of fury at the brutal injustice of men playing god's henchmen.
And yet the novel is beautiful. It is full of strong and honest people. Like Florence, who won't bow to the power of unjust, violent men. And there is Elizabeth, who is scared and alone but knows that she would choose her passionate love over the petty dominance of god any time.
And there is John, who looks for a supernatural father as a substitute for the real one that he can't reach.
Beyond my anger and rage, reading of everyday racism, violence, misogyny and abuse in the name of religion, I see clearly what makes Christianity such a powerful tool in the hands of those who know how to use it.
While despriving people of their natural pleasure in sexuality without guilt, the religious ecstacy offers an effective substitution. While depriving people of equality and fairness and freedom of choice in this life, the religious hope for an ever so undefined afterlife offers the sweet thought of future vengeance for those who suffer now. While depriving poor people of the power to claim their rights, religion offers an idea of a last judgment speaking for them after they have struggled through life without support or security.
Christianity takes away pleasure and dignity and holds them as carrots in front of the believers who keep running after them in the hope of catching them, until they collapse in exhaustion after a long run on a narrow path of suffering in silence.
I can't help hoping for something else, though, to set these characters free and to save them.
A thought experiment: what would happen to Christianity if we took away the sin from any consensual sex between grown-ups?
Gabriel wouldn't have had to fall back on preaching and beating his way through life to prove he is "saved". He wouldn't have been lost in the first place. Provided he treated his fellow human beings with the respect they are entitled to, he might actually have felt good about himself every once in a while. He might not have pushed a young pregnant woman to leave and die in pain. He might have felt responsible for his first son. He might have embraced John and made John's mother happy. All kinds of things might have happened if he hadn't been driven simultaneously by a natural desire and a taught fear of sinning.
But taking away sin from sex would make preachers less powerful. Making sex a mutual agreement between two grown-ups would make it less of a tool in the giant patriarchal powerhouse and it would put some pressure on men to be kind and caring to women. So I can see why it is worthwhile to keep preaching. Even if it makes the preacher fear and suffer occasionally as well.
Go Tell It On The Mountain, That Humanity Is Born.
This novel is like an earthquake! Read it and feel shaken!
March 13, 2020
3 to 3.5
Go Tell It on the Mountain is a very powerful book and I can tell why it is on many must read lists. Overall the way it was written was easy to get into and the journey into each specific character was interesting. The focus of the plot is religion and the hypocrisies around it that the author had experienced in his life. So, know that fact going in if you prefer to avoid mixing religious commentary into your reading.
With the paragraph above you may wonder why I didn’t rate this higher. And, you know what, I am kind of wondering to. But, as I reflect on it, as much as I did enjoy it, it just doesn’t feel like more than a 3.5 star book. I was not excited to get back into it each time I picked it up. Every time I finished a section, I felt like I needed a break from the book for a few days. It was a short book that felt like a long book that I was slogging through the whole time. I finished this book a few days ago and haven’t felt inspired to put my thoughts down in a review until now. What it comes down to is I liked all the parts, symbolism, meaning, story, characters, but I guess the way it was all put together just felt too clunky to me.
With that being said, I think this book is worth a try for the historical context and its place on many must read lists. I see many 5-star reviews out there, so that may be your experience. But, be prepared in case you find it clunky like I did!
Note on this review: I have had a very hard time focusing on reading this past week in my free time due to the Coronavirus outbreak. The uncertainties of everything make it difficult to enjoy the reading experience. Was my opinion of this book affected? Possibly – I am not sure. But, I feel like it is important for me to put the time frame this book was read and reviewed in context so when I come back to look at it in the future, or if someone stumbles upon this several years from now, it is a part of the “historical record”.
Go Tell It on the Mountain is a very powerful book and I can tell why it is on many must read lists. Overall the way it was written was easy to get into and the journey into each specific character was interesting. The focus of the plot is religion and the hypocrisies around it that the author had experienced in his life. So, know that fact going in if you prefer to avoid mixing religious commentary into your reading.
With the paragraph above you may wonder why I didn’t rate this higher. And, you know what, I am kind of wondering to. But, as I reflect on it, as much as I did enjoy it, it just doesn’t feel like more than a 3.5 star book. I was not excited to get back into it each time I picked it up. Every time I finished a section, I felt like I needed a break from the book for a few days. It was a short book that felt like a long book that I was slogging through the whole time. I finished this book a few days ago and haven’t felt inspired to put my thoughts down in a review until now. What it comes down to is I liked all the parts, symbolism, meaning, story, characters, but I guess the way it was all put together just felt too clunky to me.
With that being said, I think this book is worth a try for the historical context and its place on many must read lists. I see many 5-star reviews out there, so that may be your experience. But, be prepared in case you find it clunky like I did!
Note on this review: I have had a very hard time focusing on reading this past week in my free time due to the Coronavirus outbreak. The uncertainties of everything make it difficult to enjoy the reading experience. Was my opinion of this book affected? Possibly – I am not sure. But, I feel like it is important for me to put the time frame this book was read and reviewed in context so when I come back to look at it in the future, or if someone stumbles upon this several years from now, it is a part of the “historical record”.
January 9, 2017
It's John's 14th birthday....his family would forget without his mentioning it. It's a
Sunday. Every Sunday the Grimes family walks to church where his father is deacon. It's not the biggest or largest church, but John was brought up to believe it was the holiest and best.
"Everyone had always said John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father"......[the abusive preacher 'stepfather' we soon learn].
It's New York during the depression for this African American family. We see how religion plays a positive and negative role in the lives of everyone in John's family.
This semi-autobiographical novel is so powerful - that it's after reading it - twice - plus recently having finished Givianni's Room - I can see clearly where James Baldwin's life principles came from - his ideology ....to indoctrinate as a civil rights activist... rejecting labels of race and gender... and then to become a brilliant writer to boot....
I just want to salute this man!!!!!
Sunday. Every Sunday the Grimes family walks to church where his father is deacon. It's not the biggest or largest church, but John was brought up to believe it was the holiest and best.
"Everyone had always said John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father"......[the abusive preacher 'stepfather' we soon learn].
It's New York during the depression for this African American family. We see how religion plays a positive and negative role in the lives of everyone in John's family.
This semi-autobiographical novel is so powerful - that it's after reading it - twice - plus recently having finished Givianni's Room - I can see clearly where James Baldwin's life principles came from - his ideology ....to indoctrinate as a civil rights activist... rejecting labels of race and gender... and then to become a brilliant writer to boot....
I just want to salute this man!!!!!
April 26, 2015
He gives me music in words, and I fall for each note. When Baldwin juxtaposes hope and despair, he makes me fall in step with his professionally-performed melancholic waltz. Genius he is, with words and emotions and sound and sensibility. With this pocket-sized-book, I read as I walked around a lecture room administering exams, as I waited in my office between appointments, and while I paced a Center, collecting a state-mandatory writing proficiency test. Bind me with Baldwin and watch me smile through tears as I reach for the serenity hidden beneath the hectic.
He encapsulated physical and psychological struggle in Giovanni's Room, and this is what he also does well in this novel. Go tell it on the mountain …if you're familiar with the old spiritual, you know how this phrase ends; it is faith in a capsule, this phrase. The mountain as symbolism is sprinkled throughout the novel, signifying the downtrodden's struggle to reach the mountaintop, and the hope that he or she will someday reach it (consider the title of Dr. King's famous Mountaintop speech). The mountain is the "high" of life, the physical, mental, and spiritual goal; yet how does one reach the mountain when there are so many valleys of economic, racial, mental, and social despairs to cross?
Using the church as a painter's brush, Baldwin paints a picture of the collectiveness of suffering and injustice and highlights why the appeal to stop injustice is usually a collective one. Through songs, he traces the Underground Railroad's movement through the black church, ending in Harlem, on Lenox Avenue, the home of The Temple of the Fire Baptized, ending, in some instances, in your church and mine, where hypocrisy (judge not that ye be not judged) and an insane strive to imperfection sometimes abounds; where race issues are usually lines drawn across pews and denominations. And if you're familiar with the Bible, you'll sense that the last part of this novel (when John will have his revelation) resembles the prophetic visions of The Book of Revelations.
I listened and groaned with each character, although John Grimes and Elizabeth stole my heart and I had disdain for Gabriel. A few perspectives are covered here and I enjoyed visiting the diverse inner psyches of these characters: John, the "bastard" son, struggled to gain the love of an unworthy father; Elizabeth, the wife and mother who thought that marriage would be her penance for running off with the love of her life who never married her; Florence, the sister of the hypocritical preacher who fought to win her mother's love (which was always reserved for her brother); and Gabriel, the drunk-turned-preacher who clouds the life of all he comes into contact with, because of his insane notions of sainthood. Initially, the problem John had was less with his faith and more with the conformed and uninformed thinking of the people of his faith.
Baldwin makes you consider perspective, that simulacrum of life, because if life is really about design, then our individually created spaces are really what we call life, making the concepts of love, faith, hope, and education simply tools for each existing space. This means that at some point, we will all consider life, our portraits, as the characters do in this book, and when we do, we will most likely wonder whether we've made the most use of our faith, education, love, and more. One can only wonder what we'll uncover...
He encapsulated physical and psychological struggle in Giovanni's Room, and this is what he also does well in this novel. Go tell it on the mountain …if you're familiar with the old spiritual, you know how this phrase ends; it is faith in a capsule, this phrase. The mountain as symbolism is sprinkled throughout the novel, signifying the downtrodden's struggle to reach the mountaintop, and the hope that he or she will someday reach it (consider the title of Dr. King's famous Mountaintop speech). The mountain is the "high" of life, the physical, mental, and spiritual goal; yet how does one reach the mountain when there are so many valleys of economic, racial, mental, and social despairs to cross?
They were the despised and rejected, the wretched and the spat upon, the earth's offscouring; and he was in their company, and they would swallow up his soul. The stripes they had endured will scar his back, their punishment would be his, their portion his, his their humiliation, anguish, chains, their dungeon his, their death his.
Using the church as a painter's brush, Baldwin paints a picture of the collectiveness of suffering and injustice and highlights why the appeal to stop injustice is usually a collective one. Through songs, he traces the Underground Railroad's movement through the black church, ending in Harlem, on Lenox Avenue, the home of The Temple of the Fire Baptized, ending, in some instances, in your church and mine, where hypocrisy (judge not that ye be not judged) and an insane strive to imperfection sometimes abounds; where race issues are usually lines drawn across pews and denominations. And if you're familiar with the Bible, you'll sense that the last part of this novel (when John will have his revelation) resembles the prophetic visions of The Book of Revelations.
I listened and groaned with each character, although John Grimes and Elizabeth stole my heart and I had disdain for Gabriel. A few perspectives are covered here and I enjoyed visiting the diverse inner psyches of these characters: John, the "bastard" son, struggled to gain the love of an unworthy father; Elizabeth, the wife and mother who thought that marriage would be her penance for running off with the love of her life who never married her; Florence, the sister of the hypocritical preacher who fought to win her mother's love (which was always reserved for her brother); and Gabriel, the drunk-turned-preacher who clouds the life of all he comes into contact with, because of his insane notions of sainthood. Initially, the problem John had was less with his faith and more with the conformed and uninformed thinking of the people of his faith.
The darkness of his sin was in the hardheartedness with which he resisted God's power; in the scorn that was often his while he listened to the crying, breaking voices, and watched the black skin glisten while they lifted up their arms and fell on their faces before the Lord. For he had made his decision. He would not be like his father, or his father's fathers. He would have another life.
Baldwin makes you consider perspective, that simulacrum of life, because if life is really about design, then our individually created spaces are really what we call life, making the concepts of love, faith, hope, and education simply tools for each existing space. This means that at some point, we will all consider life, our portraits, as the characters do in this book, and when we do, we will most likely wonder whether we've made the most use of our faith, education, love, and more. One can only wonder what we'll uncover...
But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective, to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place.
March 10, 2020
I think one of the things that makes me the angriest about a lot of organized religions is the systematic shaming and regulating of sexuality. Few things strike me as more abhorrent than controlling people by threatening and terrorizing them with divine punishment. Given the primal function sex serves in humans, being able to control it with the threat of damnation if one doesn’t respect the arbitrarily imposed limits, this is a tremendous power that religious leaders have hoarded sadistically for as long as organized religion has been a thing.
And this is the core of “Go Tell It On The Mountain”: what if sex wasn’t a sin? What if homosexuality wasn’t a sin? Would John feel the way he does about himself, about his life? Would Gabriel have half the power he uses and abuses? Knowing how autobiographical James Baldwin’s first novel is makes this story even more brutal, and goes a long way to inform the reader on why Mr. Baldwin thought and wrote the way he did.
Stuck between his stepfather Gabriel’s rigid and unforgiving dogmatism and a racist and homophobic society, John Grimes lives between a rock and a hard place, and this novel takes us through a couple of days of his young life (the novel opens on the morning of his 14th birthday), with long flashbacks to show us how he got there.
I love Baldwin’s prose: it strikes an amazing balance of muscular and poetic, conjures amazingly vivid images in my mind and astonishes me with how carefully (and lovingly) each word is chosen. There is a raw passion behind each sentence, and just as with “Giovanni’s Room” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), it is impossible not to be affected by a story told so powerfully.
The screaming hypocrisy of Gabriel’s brand of evangelism made me absolutely furious, but I also felt very moved by his story. And I loved Florence and Elizabeth's stories; their lives were hard and bitter, and the strength and sacrifice they needed to make to survive was impressive and heartbreaking. We tend not to think much of parents before they were parents, and I am always fascinated with the exploration of their own lives and sufferings, and how all that stuff inexorably trickles down: Baldwin may have never forgiven his father, but in this book, he gives Gabriel the grace of having his pain and guilt acknowledged.
This novel is magnificent, and it gets 4 instead of 5 stars because I got to the end wanting to know what happened to John after this very strange birthday. Where did he go? Did he ever shake off his father's shadow? Considering the quote by Baldwin on my copy, that mentions that he wrote this book to deal with what had hurt him the most, namely his father, I can only guess that much trauma lingered...
And this is the core of “Go Tell It On The Mountain”: what if sex wasn’t a sin? What if homosexuality wasn’t a sin? Would John feel the way he does about himself, about his life? Would Gabriel have half the power he uses and abuses? Knowing how autobiographical James Baldwin’s first novel is makes this story even more brutal, and goes a long way to inform the reader on why Mr. Baldwin thought and wrote the way he did.
Stuck between his stepfather Gabriel’s rigid and unforgiving dogmatism and a racist and homophobic society, John Grimes lives between a rock and a hard place, and this novel takes us through a couple of days of his young life (the novel opens on the morning of his 14th birthday), with long flashbacks to show us how he got there.
I love Baldwin’s prose: it strikes an amazing balance of muscular and poetic, conjures amazingly vivid images in my mind and astonishes me with how carefully (and lovingly) each word is chosen. There is a raw passion behind each sentence, and just as with “Giovanni’s Room” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), it is impossible not to be affected by a story told so powerfully.
The screaming hypocrisy of Gabriel’s brand of evangelism made me absolutely furious, but I also felt very moved by his story. And I loved Florence and Elizabeth's stories; their lives were hard and bitter, and the strength and sacrifice they needed to make to survive was impressive and heartbreaking. We tend not to think much of parents before they were parents, and I am always fascinated with the exploration of their own lives and sufferings, and how all that stuff inexorably trickles down: Baldwin may have never forgiven his father, but in this book, he gives Gabriel the grace of having his pain and guilt acknowledged.
This novel is magnificent, and it gets 4 instead of 5 stars because I got to the end wanting to know what happened to John after this very strange birthday. Where did he go? Did he ever shake off his father's shadow? Considering the quote by Baldwin on my copy, that mentions that he wrote this book to deal with what had hurt him the most, namely his father, I can only guess that much trauma lingered...
March 24, 2024
I think James Baldwin is one of the most meticulous fiction writers I've ever read. When I read Giovanni's Room last year—a book I think could quite possibly be one of the most perfectly written novels ever—I couldn't help but feel every word was chosen without error. The true is same here, though the story, for me, meandered and wandered a bit in ways that detracted a bit from my overall enjoyment. Nonetheless, this is a book you could (and maybe should) study. Thematically, technically, and emotionally this book is complex and layered. One reading might not be enough to grasp the genius of Baldwin in this book (and it's his debut!?). Some day I will return, and knowing what I know of it now, maybe uncovering even more to appreciate and perhaps love in this heavily autobiographical tale.
May 31, 2017
More mystical & readable than the other biggie of Harlem literature, "Invisible Man", the tale told here is like a prism that breaks up into different lights, different lives filled to the brim with hardship. The Grimes family is led by the patriarch who is a fanatic. Members of the family struggle to find their own religion by their own means. The father is the bad guy because he's so blinded by his devotion that nothing else even comes second.
There are brief glimpses into the racial issues that have marked African-Americans for ages, all prejudices still alive. Baldwin knows how to TERRIFY by bombarding his prose with religious motifs--- this writer is serious, these characters are serious, & so is religion.
There are brief glimpses into the racial issues that have marked African-Americans for ages, all prejudices still alive. Baldwin knows how to TERRIFY by bombarding his prose with religious motifs--- this writer is serious, these characters are serious, & so is religion.
August 10, 2019
كيف يمكن لروايةٍ أولى أن تكون بهذا الكمال؟
March 11, 2017
There will come a point in a young person’s life when he will have to come face to face with the reality that his faith and his fascination with the world are clashing against each other and vying for the soul he so cherishes. The faith, the church, the temple, the mosque, the synagogue, they deny the world and wash themselves of anything in it that might stain the purity of their holy robes. The world, in turn, enchants and invalidates the faith till the faith is extinguished and the world is all that is left. A youth is faced with the choice: will he devote his life to faith and turn his back on the world or will his world expand and his faith erode.
Go tell it on the Mountain encapsulates the journey that every young person born in the faith will have to take and the road he will tread whether that may be leading to spiritual maturity or secular awakening. It tells the story of a black Christian family set in the tumultuous community of Harlem in the 30s. John and Roy are young boys filled with hatred for their father, a reverend, and his moralistic and authoritarian way of raising them. Reverend Gabriel prohibits his children from playing with other ‘sinful’ kids, watching movies, listening to music, because everything of the world is evil and will lead them to hellfire. He abuses them physically, verbally, all in the noble pursuit of their salvation. But instead of teaching them to love his God, he fills them with hatred for his church, and his teachings. The novel chronicles their struggle with acceptance of the faith and acceptance of each other as a family.
Gabriel is a representation of the Pharisee-like brand of Christianity that is about righteousness and judgment. An outdated, ineffective, hypocritical way of living that is about accountability and feigned sinlessness. It is a practice that only pushes young people, like John and Roy, away from the church. Today Christianity is rapidly losing its young people, especially in Western societies. A study in 2007 pioneered by several concerned Protestant sects determined that about 70% of the Christian church’s young people in America will leave their faith by the time they reach university or after they graduate high school. A big part of this, of course, can be attributed to maturity and increased intelligence, but an often ignored yet significant aspect of the youth’s disillusionment towards the Christian church is caused by this Gabriel-like attitude that elder Christians display towards the younger generation. They who only see faults instead of merits, who only rebuke instead of encourage. It is no wonder that the Christian youth is a disappearing species with most of its church a sanctum of criticism and restrictions instead of a haven of acceptance and support.
“It was his identity, and part, therefore, of that wickedness for which his father beat him and to which he clung in order to withstand his father. His father’s arm, rising and falling, might make him cry, and that voice might cause him to tremble; yet his father could never be entirely the victor, for John cherished something that his father could not reach. It was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding the other. He lived for the days when his father would be dying and he, John, would curse him on his deathbed. And this was why, though he had been born in the faith and had been surrounded all his life by the saints and by their prayers and their rejoicing, and though the tabernacle in which they worshipped was more completely real to him than the several precarious homes in which he and his family had lived, John’s heart was hardened against the Lord. His father was God’s minister, the ambassador of the King of Heaven, and John could not bow before the throne of grace without first kneeling to his father. On his refusal to do so this had his life depended, and John’s secret heart had flourished in its wickedness until the day his sin first overtook him.”
A decent Christian is one who acknowledges both the light and darkness inside him. He knows that he is sinful; she knows that she is suffering. He wants to endure when he has no strength, she wants to resist and tries to but she knows she cannot. Humility is the doorway to faith, while pride is the mask of the pitchfork Christians who only ever humiliate their associations with their God. Baldwin contrasts the different attitudes of the father and son and like a possessed minister delivers a scathing and moving sermon to his congregation.
Written in a deep evangelistic voice that preaches fire and brimstone, oddly reminiscent of the poetic Old English language of the original King James Bible, this is not just a spiritual coming of age story. Layered in between is a sociocultural deconstruction of the black individual in a time when she is still searching for her identity and the reflection he saw of himself through the mirror of the Christian religion is the image he dreamed to become. It is not only a thoroughly enriching study but at its best a moving and utterly relatable parable.
“No matter what happens to me, where I go, what folks say about me, no matter what anybody says, you remember-please remember-I was saved. I was there.”
Go tell it on the Mountain is not about the end goal, the choice, or the conversion. It’s about the struggle that we all face, our attitude, our relationships with people, with our families, and having a deeper understanding of our chosen belief-system instead of striving for some unreachable state of perpetual holiness to maintain, more for the peripheral than the personal. Of course people want to be virtuous, to be righteous, but they know that there will come a time when their shortcomings will catch up to them, that they will sin. We will commit sins against the law, against our religion if we have one, against our principles. But our redemption lies in knowing that at some point, at the beginning of our roads, we endeavored to take the proper path, and make the right decisions, that we decided to walk up the mountain and scream with our own voice regardless of what becomes of us, defiant, courageous, and hopeful-lest we forget.
Go tell it on the Mountain encapsulates the journey that every young person born in the faith will have to take and the road he will tread whether that may be leading to spiritual maturity or secular awakening. It tells the story of a black Christian family set in the tumultuous community of Harlem in the 30s. John and Roy are young boys filled with hatred for their father, a reverend, and his moralistic and authoritarian way of raising them. Reverend Gabriel prohibits his children from playing with other ‘sinful’ kids, watching movies, listening to music, because everything of the world is evil and will lead them to hellfire. He abuses them physically, verbally, all in the noble pursuit of their salvation. But instead of teaching them to love his God, he fills them with hatred for his church, and his teachings. The novel chronicles their struggle with acceptance of the faith and acceptance of each other as a family.
Gabriel is a representation of the Pharisee-like brand of Christianity that is about righteousness and judgment. An outdated, ineffective, hypocritical way of living that is about accountability and feigned sinlessness. It is a practice that only pushes young people, like John and Roy, away from the church. Today Christianity is rapidly losing its young people, especially in Western societies. A study in 2007 pioneered by several concerned Protestant sects determined that about 70% of the Christian church’s young people in America will leave their faith by the time they reach university or after they graduate high school. A big part of this, of course, can be attributed to maturity and increased intelligence, but an often ignored yet significant aspect of the youth’s disillusionment towards the Christian church is caused by this Gabriel-like attitude that elder Christians display towards the younger generation. They who only see faults instead of merits, who only rebuke instead of encourage. It is no wonder that the Christian youth is a disappearing species with most of its church a sanctum of criticism and restrictions instead of a haven of acceptance and support.
“It was his identity, and part, therefore, of that wickedness for which his father beat him and to which he clung in order to withstand his father. His father’s arm, rising and falling, might make him cry, and that voice might cause him to tremble; yet his father could never be entirely the victor, for John cherished something that his father could not reach. It was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding the other. He lived for the days when his father would be dying and he, John, would curse him on his deathbed. And this was why, though he had been born in the faith and had been surrounded all his life by the saints and by their prayers and their rejoicing, and though the tabernacle in which they worshipped was more completely real to him than the several precarious homes in which he and his family had lived, John’s heart was hardened against the Lord. His father was God’s minister, the ambassador of the King of Heaven, and John could not bow before the throne of grace without first kneeling to his father. On his refusal to do so this had his life depended, and John’s secret heart had flourished in its wickedness until the day his sin first overtook him.”
A decent Christian is one who acknowledges both the light and darkness inside him. He knows that he is sinful; she knows that she is suffering. He wants to endure when he has no strength, she wants to resist and tries to but she knows she cannot. Humility is the doorway to faith, while pride is the mask of the pitchfork Christians who only ever humiliate their associations with their God. Baldwin contrasts the different attitudes of the father and son and like a possessed minister delivers a scathing and moving sermon to his congregation.
Written in a deep evangelistic voice that preaches fire and brimstone, oddly reminiscent of the poetic Old English language of the original King James Bible, this is not just a spiritual coming of age story. Layered in between is a sociocultural deconstruction of the black individual in a time when she is still searching for her identity and the reflection he saw of himself through the mirror of the Christian religion is the image he dreamed to become. It is not only a thoroughly enriching study but at its best a moving and utterly relatable parable.
“No matter what happens to me, where I go, what folks say about me, no matter what anybody says, you remember-please remember-I was saved. I was there.”
Go tell it on the Mountain is not about the end goal, the choice, or the conversion. It’s about the struggle that we all face, our attitude, our relationships with people, with our families, and having a deeper understanding of our chosen belief-system instead of striving for some unreachable state of perpetual holiness to maintain, more for the peripheral than the personal. Of course people want to be virtuous, to be righteous, but they know that there will come a time when their shortcomings will catch up to them, that they will sin. We will commit sins against the law, against our religion if we have one, against our principles. But our redemption lies in knowing that at some point, at the beginning of our roads, we endeavored to take the proper path, and make the right decisions, that we decided to walk up the mountain and scream with our own voice regardless of what becomes of us, defiant, courageous, and hopeful-lest we forget.
February 7, 2017
O'er Tympany and Trumpets
Published in 1953, James Baldwin's first major work was this scorching autobiographical novel of his salvific struggles as a teen in 1930s Harlem. He said this "is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else." The novel centers on a 14-year-old John and Gabriel, his evangelical step-father, whose reserved demeanor as a storefront preacher belies his domineering and physically abusive ways. John fights against this pietistic tyrant and his world, one in which a confused 14-year-old cannot view anything without his eyes colored by the church and his religion and in which he commits sins by his very nature of being.
In prose that I can almost see flaming over tympany and trumpets, at times lyrical, at others Biblically poetic in painting John's internal struggles and Gabriel's inner demons, and even casting literary spells with verses from African-American hymns and spiritual songs, such as the eponymous song, and epideictic language of the evangelical church.
The novel moved me to recall myself as a 14-, 15-, 16-year old who went to what would now be called an "evangelical" church, and being haunted by the constant, rutilant fears, spurred by ministrations, of an eternal damnation that to me seemed unavoidable by the very nature of growing into manhood: my burning yearnings for girls, the Pavlovian prurience that persisted no matter my prayers, and my chronic corneous condition owing to my carnally cluttered consciousness.*
Écouter de la musique belle et montagneuse d'un maestro.
*As an aside, perhaps I've been redeemed.
Published in 1953, James Baldwin's first major work was this scorching autobiographical novel of his salvific struggles as a teen in 1930s Harlem. He said this "is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else." The novel centers on a 14-year-old John and Gabriel, his evangelical step-father, whose reserved demeanor as a storefront preacher belies his domineering and physically abusive ways. John fights against this pietistic tyrant and his world, one in which a confused 14-year-old cannot view anything without his eyes colored by the church and his religion and in which he commits sins by his very nature of being.
In prose that I can almost see flaming over tympany and trumpets, at times lyrical, at others Biblically poetic in painting John's internal struggles and Gabriel's inner demons, and even casting literary spells with verses from African-American hymns and spiritual songs, such as the eponymous song, and epideictic language of the evangelical church.
The novel moved me to recall myself as a 14-, 15-, 16-year old who went to what would now be called an "evangelical" church, and being haunted by the constant, rutilant fears, spurred by ministrations, of an eternal damnation that to me seemed unavoidable by the very nature of growing into manhood: my burning yearnings for girls, the Pavlovian prurience that persisted no matter my prayers, and my chronic corneous condition owing to my carnally cluttered consciousness.*
Écouter de la musique belle et montagneuse d'un maestro.
“His mind was like the sea itself: troubled, and too deep for the bravest man's descent, throwing up now and again, for the naked eye to wonder at, treasure and debris long forgotten on the bottom—bones and jewels, fantastic shells, jelly that had once been flesh, pearls that had once been eyes. And he was at the mercy of this sea, hanging there with darkness all around him.”
*As an aside, perhaps I've been redeemed.
October 1, 2016
This novel is partially autobiographical and tells the story of a day in the life of 14 year old John Grimes and his preacher stepfather (Gabriel), his mother and his aunt with plenty of flashbacks to build the scene. It is centred on the life of the Pentecostal Church and its role in the African-American community. Baldwin was also the son of a preacher and this is written with great passion and eloquence. The backdrop is late 1930s Harlem; but we are taken back to the South for Gabriel’s complex history.
Although Baldwin was sceptical about religion, he really does capture the sheer physicality of worship and the atmosphere of a gospel meeting. The book is the build up to John’s first religious experience and about the real tensions between him and his holy and rather violent stepfather. There are vivid descriptions of hellfire and damnation sermons which emphasize human sin, the need for repentance and the danger of hell. They are exactly the sort of thing I recall from my childhood. This isn’t Baldwin’s critique of religion (that comes in later work); here he really inhabits the character and tells it straight. Even though he does that Baldwin does give clues about the future.
Baldwin evokes 1930s New York and the sights and feel of the city and John’s relationship to it; this is John in Central Park;
“He did not know why, but there arose in him an exultation and a sense of power, and he ran up the hill like an engine, or a madman, willing to throw himself headlong into the city that glowed before him. But when he reached the summit he paused; he stood on the crest of the hill, hands clasped beneath his chin, looking down. Then he, John, felt like a giant who might crumble this city with his anger.”
Baldwin is very clear about the issue of race and John’s anger is related to his exclusion because of his colour. There are also clues to what would come later in relation to sexuality with John’s relationship with another young leader in the Church, Elisha. Even when John is undergoing his conversion experience and “the Holy Ghost was speaking” John feels “a tightening in his loin strings” and “a sudden yearning tenderness for Elisha... desire, sharp and awful".
As many others have said the novel is drenched in the King James Bible and the Blues. The character of Gabriel Grimes is mesmerizing in a horrific sort of way. His treatment of the women in his life contrasted with his religious life is stark. There is a strong sense of the importance of women in the community and in reality holding things together. John’s struggle can be linked to a Biblical reference; akin to Joseph in the Book of Genesis, trying to come to terms with the nightmare of his family. In terms of literature I have seen John Grimes compared to Stephen Dedalus and the narrator in Proust. That leads me to one of my few niggles; I wanted it to be longer!
Although Baldwin was sceptical about religion, he really does capture the sheer physicality of worship and the atmosphere of a gospel meeting. The book is the build up to John’s first religious experience and about the real tensions between him and his holy and rather violent stepfather. There are vivid descriptions of hellfire and damnation sermons which emphasize human sin, the need for repentance and the danger of hell. They are exactly the sort of thing I recall from my childhood. This isn’t Baldwin’s critique of religion (that comes in later work); here he really inhabits the character and tells it straight. Even though he does that Baldwin does give clues about the future.
Baldwin evokes 1930s New York and the sights and feel of the city and John’s relationship to it; this is John in Central Park;
“He did not know why, but there arose in him an exultation and a sense of power, and he ran up the hill like an engine, or a madman, willing to throw himself headlong into the city that glowed before him. But when he reached the summit he paused; he stood on the crest of the hill, hands clasped beneath his chin, looking down. Then he, John, felt like a giant who might crumble this city with his anger.”
Baldwin is very clear about the issue of race and John’s anger is related to his exclusion because of his colour. There are also clues to what would come later in relation to sexuality with John’s relationship with another young leader in the Church, Elisha. Even when John is undergoing his conversion experience and “the Holy Ghost was speaking” John feels “a tightening in his loin strings” and “a sudden yearning tenderness for Elisha... desire, sharp and awful".
As many others have said the novel is drenched in the King James Bible and the Blues. The character of Gabriel Grimes is mesmerizing in a horrific sort of way. His treatment of the women in his life contrasted with his religious life is stark. There is a strong sense of the importance of women in the community and in reality holding things together. John’s struggle can be linked to a Biblical reference; akin to Joseph in the Book of Genesis, trying to come to terms with the nightmare of his family. In terms of literature I have seen John Grimes compared to Stephen Dedalus and the narrator in Proust. That leads me to one of my few niggles; I wanted it to be longer!
August 6, 2016
Wow, what a read! Where each word feels like brick in the construction of a cathedral, yet still able to ignite your emotions and transport you into the spiritual ether. With rhythms and lyricism like a new Gospel and images and themes of the Old Testament. I was surprised. I knew Baldwin was quite a voice for racist and homophobic oppression, but I didn’t know he was such a bard for the power of Protestant religion in the lives of the downtrodden. I didn’t know until after I read this that he was in a similar position as 14-year old John in this tale set in depression era New York City, a true believer who sought to become a preacher like his stepfather. Perhaps he too faced the same challenge as the boy here:
John’s heart was hardened against the Lord. His father was God’s minister, the ambassador of the King of Heaven, and John could not bow before the throne of grace without first kneeling to his father.
John grapples with a hatred of this father, a man can be grotesque in his self-righteousness and who often seeks to beat the sin out of him. A man who favors his younger brother for being his biological son, despite his delinquent ways that are far from being God-fearing. A man who hates all whites, which he justifies from the horrors he experienced growing up in the South. John wants to be holier than his father, tough to admit as that carries the sin of pride.
His hatred is beginning to sneak up on him in more visceral ways. He sees his father’s “hideous nakedness” in the bath and longs for the “power to cut him down.” Despite his youth, he is able to make a Biblical connection to Ham, the son of Noah who father naked and “mocked and cursed him in his heart”, leading to God’s punishment of his line being “cursed down to the present groaning generation: ‘A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.’ The origin of the myth used to justify slavery and lesser forms oppression of blacks in history.
By this point, you might be getting the idea that this book is a ponderous morality tale. Or some boring effort to trot out the hypocrisies of religious fanatics, some return to “Elmer Gantry” perhaps. It’s the real deal about John and other compelling secondary characters trying to get right with God, and I found it fascinating even though I am an atheist. Most of the secondary characters have had a hard life but find much hope and succor in the community of the storefront evangelical church John’s father ministers to. His mother Elizabeth who is still recovering from the tragic outcome of her first love's being falsely arrested and beaten by racist police, a set of do-gooder women who are considered saints, and a teenaged boy, Elisha, whose progress on the path toward becoming a minister is envied by John. But John is the star of this show. There is so much life in his ambivalence. As his father makes a ruckus over some trouble his brother gets in, his mother okays him to go away, and he begins his own mild version of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”:
In Central Park the snow had not yet melted on his favorite hill. … Before him, then, the slope stretched upward, and above it, cloudy, and far away, he saw the skyline of New York. He did not know why, but there arose within him an exultation and sense of power, and he ran up the hill like an engine, or a madman, willing to throw himself headlong into the city that glowed before him.
...It was the roar of the damned that filled Broadway, where motor cars and buses and the hurrying people disputed every inch with death. Broadway: the way that lead to death was broad, and many could be found thereon; but narrow was the way that led to life eternal, and few there were who found it. But he did not long for the narrow way, where all his people walked; where the houses did not rise, piercing, as it seemed, the unchanging clouds, but huddled, flat, ignoble, close to the filthy ground, where the streets and the hallways and the rooms were dark, and where the unconquerable odor was of dust, and sweat, and urine, and homemade gin. …
He stood for a moment on the melting snow, distracted, and then began to run down the hill, feeling himself fly as the descent became more rapid, and thinking: “I can climb back up. If it’s wrong, I can always climb back up.”
Later, at an evening church service, his friend Elisha inspires him to make a leap of faith. If you are already planning to read the book, the following incandescent excerpt might be considered a spoiler; if you are on the fence, it might be the final encouragement needed. How can fiction of fantasy and magical realism compete with such realistic transformative experience as this:
And John tried to see through the morning wall, to stare past the bitter houses, to tear the thousand gray veils of the sky away, and look into the astounded universe, commanding the stars to flee away before the sun’s red sandal, bidding the moon to wax and wane, and disappear, and come again: with a silver net holding back the sea, and, out of mysteries abysmal, recreating each day, the earth. That heart that breath, without which was not anything made which was made. Tears came into his eyes again, making the avenue shiver, causing the houses to shake—his heart swelled, lifted up, faltered, and was dumb. Out of joy strength came, strength that was fashioned to bear sorrow: sorrow brought forth joy. Forever? This was Ezekiel’s wheel, in the middle of the burning air forever—and the little wheel ran by faith, and the big wheel by the grace of God.
John’s heart was hardened against the Lord. His father was God’s minister, the ambassador of the King of Heaven, and John could not bow before the throne of grace without first kneeling to his father.
John grapples with a hatred of this father, a man can be grotesque in his self-righteousness and who often seeks to beat the sin out of him. A man who favors his younger brother for being his biological son, despite his delinquent ways that are far from being God-fearing. A man who hates all whites, which he justifies from the horrors he experienced growing up in the South. John wants to be holier than his father, tough to admit as that carries the sin of pride.
His hatred is beginning to sneak up on him in more visceral ways. He sees his father’s “hideous nakedness” in the bath and longs for the “power to cut him down.” Despite his youth, he is able to make a Biblical connection to Ham, the son of Noah who father naked and “mocked and cursed him in his heart”, leading to God’s punishment of his line being “cursed down to the present groaning generation: ‘A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.’ The origin of the myth used to justify slavery and lesser forms oppression of blacks in history.
By this point, you might be getting the idea that this book is a ponderous morality tale. Or some boring effort to trot out the hypocrisies of religious fanatics, some return to “Elmer Gantry” perhaps. It’s the real deal about John and other compelling secondary characters trying to get right with God, and I found it fascinating even though I am an atheist. Most of the secondary characters have had a hard life but find much hope and succor in the community of the storefront evangelical church John’s father ministers to. His mother Elizabeth who is still recovering from the tragic outcome of her first love's being falsely arrested and beaten by racist police, a set of do-gooder women who are considered saints, and a teenaged boy, Elisha, whose progress on the path toward becoming a minister is envied by John. But John is the star of this show. There is so much life in his ambivalence. As his father makes a ruckus over some trouble his brother gets in, his mother okays him to go away, and he begins his own mild version of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”:
In Central Park the snow had not yet melted on his favorite hill. … Before him, then, the slope stretched upward, and above it, cloudy, and far away, he saw the skyline of New York. He did not know why, but there arose within him an exultation and sense of power, and he ran up the hill like an engine, or a madman, willing to throw himself headlong into the city that glowed before him.
...It was the roar of the damned that filled Broadway, where motor cars and buses and the hurrying people disputed every inch with death. Broadway: the way that lead to death was broad, and many could be found thereon; but narrow was the way that led to life eternal, and few there were who found it. But he did not long for the narrow way, where all his people walked; where the houses did not rise, piercing, as it seemed, the unchanging clouds, but huddled, flat, ignoble, close to the filthy ground, where the streets and the hallways and the rooms were dark, and where the unconquerable odor was of dust, and sweat, and urine, and homemade gin. …
He stood for a moment on the melting snow, distracted, and then began to run down the hill, feeling himself fly as the descent became more rapid, and thinking: “I can climb back up. If it’s wrong, I can always climb back up.”
Later, at an evening church service, his friend Elisha inspires him to make a leap of faith. If you are already planning to read the book, the following incandescent excerpt might be considered a spoiler; if you are on the fence, it might be the final encouragement needed. How can fiction of fantasy and magical realism compete with such realistic transformative experience as this:
And John tried to see through the morning wall, to stare past the bitter houses, to tear the thousand gray veils of the sky away, and look into the astounded universe, commanding the stars to flee away before the sun’s red sandal, bidding the moon to wax and wane, and disappear, and come again: with a silver net holding back the sea, and, out of mysteries abysmal, recreating each day, the earth. That heart that breath, without which was not anything made which was made. Tears came into his eyes again, making the avenue shiver, causing the houses to shake—his heart swelled, lifted up, faltered, and was dumb. Out of joy strength came, strength that was fashioned to bear sorrow: sorrow brought forth joy. Forever? This was Ezekiel’s wheel, in the middle of the burning air forever—and the little wheel ran by faith, and the big wheel by the grace of God.
August 5, 2023
I love my neighbors. They remind me how much I love to read, and how much we love so many great authors.
I had forgotten that I had read this book a while ago, until it was deposited recently as a donation at my Little Free Library Shed.
I remember when I first read this, I had also done some background on James Baldwin and discovered that he had written this novel after he had given up being a youth preacher and left the church to become a writer.
He said that it took him more than 10 years to write this, having spent time in Greenwich Village and Paris before moving to a small town in the Swiss Alps. He finally finished it in 1952.
In a 1961 interview with American broadcaster and oral historian Studs Terkel, Baldwin shared that he didn’t think he would ever finish the novel because of the shame he felt inside for the life he had in a Negro church. (Many see this novel as semi-autobiographical.)
He also felt “ashamed of my father, ashamed of the Blues, ashamed of Jazz, and of course, ashamed of watermelon: all of these stereotypes that the country inflicts on Negroes, that we all eat watermelon or we all do nothing but sing the Blues. Well, I was afraid of all that; and I ran from it.”
Eventually he stopped running.
The title of the book is actually a refrain of the African-American spiritual: “Go tell it on the mountain/over the hills and everywhere/go tell it on the mountain/that Jesus Christ is born.”
The story is centered around 24 hours in the life of John Grime’s – and it is his 14th birthday. His mother gives him money which he uses to explore the city for the day.
As readers we explore the city with him. We can feel his anger – because this is not his life. He is reflecting on the various demons ruling over his life: his violent preacher stepfather, his church, and the racist society into which he had the misfortune to be born. He does not get to experience the riches or splendors that he sees. Yet he dreams and hopes big for himself.
As readers we are feeling the essential aspect of life in America, its contradictions and seductions, that bittersweet mix of love and hate that so many feel towards our country when we see this racial divide.
And then…
He finds himself at the church. And we can sense what that holy feeling is that takes over John.
Is he transformed? Is he saved? Is he destroyed or renewed?
Baldwin’s novel is well thought out, and well-crafted. A lyrical work.
It can even be thought of as a protest chant.
It definitely is a brilliant portrait of a young man struggling with complex issues. A landmark classic novel.
June 5, 2019
I've been intending to read a James Baldwin novel for awhile and since June is Pride month, and Baldwin was gay, I thought a book by him was perfect for my classic of the month.
This man could WRITE! He was a genius when it came to metaphor and character development. His understanding of the human psyche was superb. There are so many layers of meaning to this novel that only a genius could have written it. It is the story of John, a 14 year old African American teen growing up in Harlem with his mom, step-father (the "step" part was unbeknownst to him), and step-brother (the "step" here too of course he wasn't aware of). John is tormented by his sexuality, his attraction to males, to his friend Elisha in particular. The book is a journey into the self, but on the surface is about him getting saved. I cannot determine if Baldwin meant this as a saving from his "unnatural" sexual desire or if it meant he was saved from his torment and came to accept his sexuality.
We also get to know John's mother, aunt, and step-father who all narrate parts of their pasts. Baldwin wrote with tremendous insight, showing how one's past experiences shape who they become. There is a lot of Biblical metaphor and so I think having knowledge of the Bible gives this book more depth than having a lack of knowledge of the particular passage and stories he references. This is a book that requires contemplation on the part of the reader and no doubt there are more layers of meaning than those which revealed themselves to me.
At times I found some of the religiosity tedious, but for the most part found this book to be captivating. I'm sure it will be one I ponder for awhile, at least until I pick up another book by Baldwin.
This man could WRITE! He was a genius when it came to metaphor and character development. His understanding of the human psyche was superb. There are so many layers of meaning to this novel that only a genius could have written it. It is the story of John, a 14 year old African American teen growing up in Harlem with his mom, step-father (the "step" part was unbeknownst to him), and step-brother (the "step" here too of course he wasn't aware of). John is tormented by his sexuality, his attraction to males, to his friend Elisha in particular. The book is a journey into the self, but on the surface is about him getting saved. I cannot determine if Baldwin meant this as a saving from his "unnatural" sexual desire or if it meant he was saved from his torment and came to accept his sexuality.
We also get to know John's mother, aunt, and step-father who all narrate parts of their pasts. Baldwin wrote with tremendous insight, showing how one's past experiences shape who they become. There is a lot of Biblical metaphor and so I think having knowledge of the Bible gives this book more depth than having a lack of knowledge of the particular passage and stories he references. This is a book that requires contemplation on the part of the reader and no doubt there are more layers of meaning than those which revealed themselves to me.
At times I found some of the religiosity tedious, but for the most part found this book to be captivating. I'm sure it will be one I ponder for awhile, at least until I pick up another book by Baldwin.
May 16, 2018
Like the previous Baldwin books I've read, this book is charged with a deep sense of longing and discovery. At the centre of the story is John, an awkward fourteen year old African American boy who grapples with the uncertainty of his place in the world.
Set in the first half of the 20th century, mostly in New York and with parts in America's South, Baldwin narrates with great eloquence of the struggle of life and the role of Faith in it.
I believe great books, like this one, disrobe us, in the way that Baldwin himself once said:
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
And with each book of Baldwin's I've read, these words still resonate.
Set in the first half of the 20th century, mostly in New York and with parts in America's South, Baldwin narrates with great eloquence of the struggle of life and the role of Faith in it.
I believe great books, like this one, disrobe us, in the way that Baldwin himself once said:
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
And with each book of Baldwin's I've read, these words still resonate.
October 6, 2018
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...
February 24, 2017
“Ah, that son of Noah’s had been cursed, down to the present groaning generation: A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
Then the ironic voice, terrified, it seemed, of no depth, no darkness, demanded of John, scornfully, if he believed that he was cursed. All niggers had been cursed, the ironic voice reminded him, all niggers had come from this most undutiful of Noah’s sons."
Chinua Achebe in his postscript to his collection of essays, ‘Hopes and Impediments’, says of James Baldwin, “how easy it was to make Jimmy smile; and how the world he was doomed to inhabit would remorselessly deny him that simple benediction.” The very fact of being a colored person in a racist time, the difficult relations with his abusive father, the breaking away from a faith (he was deeply religious to start with) which would have him feel guilty for his natural instincts and getting criticism from his own Black community when he touched themes of homosexuality ensured a sad life for him.
‘Go tell it on the mountains’ is highly auto-biographical – the protagonist James too is deeply religious, struggling with his homosexuality, has an adoptive father who was a priest and who abused him more than his natural sons.
I thought it would be a coming-to-age book of sorts focused fully on John but it is more like a group of interconnected stories showing the impact religion has on people. With John, it resulted in repression of and feeling guilt at his natural instincts.
Gabriel, his father, too felt guilt over his own sexual affairs but each time he does so he makes himself believe that God has forgiven him even though he happened to ruin a few lives on the way – the hypocrisy. But isn’t that what religious morality is based on? Guilt, denial, fear and hypocrisy.
“I guess it takes a holy man to make a girl a real whore.”
And the women, John’s mother and aunt. They both tried to take hold of their own lives to go after their dreams only to find themselves brought down the world … or God, whatever you like – like is often the fate of so many rebellious underdogs …. and now, religion is but the last solace for them.
“There was a stiffness in him that would be hard to break, but that, nevertheless, would one day surely be broken. As hers had been, and Richard’s—there was no escape for anyone. God was everywhere, terrible, the living God; and so high, the song said, you couldn’t get over Him; so low you couldn’t get under Him; so wide you couldn’t get around Him; but must come in at the door”
..... You know come to think of it, this is second book which I have reviewed in a row which is sad. And whenever I'm depressed I turn to religion ... I mean where else will you find so many things to laugh at? But not today.
Today we have something serious to talk about - And that is this illusion that religions are against homosexuality, nothing is far from truth. The problem is that people lay too much importance on the 'word' - as if the 'word' is everything, I mean are you really naive enough to believe that spoonfuls which Mary Popkins gave to the children were, in fact, of sugar? Same aplies to rellgion. Now you can't suppose that saints or religious folks could have told those ancient or medieval folks that homosexuality is good, or later would have simply killed them. No, you have to learn to read between the lines - just think about it, religions always ask women to keep their bodies covered, seperate the people of two sexes on pretext of morality, tradition and war, the very monasteries are full of men who have nothing except books to keep then busy and are against abortion, also people of opposite sex are often addressed as 'brothers' and 'sisters' - I mean what kind of sexuality does it promote?
I tell you, you know people by their action not by their words. It says so in scriptures too - "you shall know a tree by fruits it bears". I tell you relgion is all about repressed sexuality. And then so many religious heads had multiple wives; tell me, how come no one suggested that they have a better chance at sexual satisfaction if they had tried someone of opposite sex for a change?
You don't believe me? Well, don't then. But talking about Christianity - and mind you, I have always liked Christ, because he is one of few religious figures who chose to let themselves die rather than kill or asking others to die or kill on their behalf. Moreover, for last couple of years, I have been a true Christian, I know it may not agree with some of other things I keep on saying but it is true, I have been instinctively following Christ's message - love thy neighbor. I mean, yes, she is not Christian enough to reciprocate ... I know, how infidel right! but hey there is no lacking of faith on my path.
And if you only get high on word, than remember ultimate dictum of morality across all religions 'Do not do unto others what you don't want done unto yourself'. It is impossible to follow this rule in heterosexuality due to simple physical reason of different sex organs. It is, in fact, a living adevtesiment of homosexual sex
Anyway, as I was saying, I read gospels and you know there is this particular part that I want to bring to your notice .... I'm not going to draw conclusions, all interpretations you might draw will be your own. I'm just going to state facts. So, it is the last supper time, Jesus has just announced, that it is his farewell party, to his apostles, all of whom coincidentally happen to be men, who drank from same cup (mind you, I'm not suggesting anything) and all heavily drunk and sad about Christ's departure and ....
.... And, and, and they have a whole night to themselves.
June 28, 2020
"There was not, after all, a great difference between the world of the North and that of the South which she had fled; there was only this difference: the North promised more. And this similarity: what it promised it did not give, and what it gave, at length and grudgingly with one hand, it took back with the other."
In this semi-autobiographical novel, Baldwin talks about the life of Black families in the US between ca. 1910-1935, with Jim Crow in the South and different means of oppression in the North. His protagonist, 14-year-old John, shares many characteristics of the author: Both grew up around the same time in Harlem, never met their fathers and had a strained relationship with their stepfathers (both Pentecostal preachers; Baldwin's grandfather was a slave), dreamed of fighting their way up through education and had a religious awakening at age 14. Also, both of them struggled with their homosexuality.
The novel takes place one Saturday in March 1935, and basically only depicts a family fight and a church visit, but it contains flashbacks to the past that reveal the wider context of the situation Baldwin portrays, thus opening up the story to a whole panorama of Black life in the US. One important theme is family, how families are build and destroyed and how outside factors like racism and religion shape the life of those families (including the lives those families will never have because of what they are facing).
By referring to those flashbacks as prayers, using biblical imagery and generally channeling the sound of the King James Bible, Baldwin underlines how deeply ingrained religion is in everyday life, how it filters the characters' perceptions - their faith has the power to equally uplift and trap them. The church is a haven for the community, and promises heavenly justice in the face earthly injustice. At the same time, facing racism and injustice, John's stepfather sees his role as a preacher as a means to gain some control and authority, including moral authority over his oppressors ("His father said that all white people were wicked, and that God was going to bring them low."). The hate he feels against himself, both prompted by the inability to live up to his religious standards and the helplessness he experiences due to the racism he is facing, is soon directed against others, turning him, as he himself realizes, into a bigot, which only adds to his rage.
John despises his stepfather for his violence and dreams of fleeing the situation through education (for those who already read the book: Compare John's ambition to that of his biological father and his destiny - it's terribly shocking). Although he is a brilliant student, his young mind has already absorbed societal standards: "It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in any case really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still." I was also struck by the description that John "(...) could not claim, as African savages might be able to claim, that no one had brought him the gospel." - here, Baldwin points out that John (and not only he) adheres to the standards of white missionaries and the Christian church, while looking down upon the customs of African peoples; it's the particularly perverse oppression of the mind.
Around this father-son-conflict, we also learn more about the lives of John's mother, his aunt, and the past of his stepfather - all of these stories are extremely well-written and make points far beyond those individual destinies. It is also remarkable how Baldwin draws connections between sexual and spiritual ecstasy.
Beyond that, it is interesting to compare this semi-fictional work with Baldwin's essay "Down At The Cross — Letter from a Region of My Mind", published in The Fire Next Time, in which he talks about his youth, takes a critical stance against the church and discusses the racial divide. And once you're at it, go on and read Between the World and Me - Coates' NBA-winning text was inspired by Baldwin. (Still, I want to slap those people who though it was a good idea to call the new German translation of Go Tell It on the Mountain "In dieser Welt" ("In This World") - how stupid is that?)
It's good that people start to read Baldwin again, and I hope this renaissance is far from over.
In this semi-autobiographical novel, Baldwin talks about the life of Black families in the US between ca. 1910-1935, with Jim Crow in the South and different means of oppression in the North. His protagonist, 14-year-old John, shares many characteristics of the author: Both grew up around the same time in Harlem, never met their fathers and had a strained relationship with their stepfathers (both Pentecostal preachers; Baldwin's grandfather was a slave), dreamed of fighting their way up through education and had a religious awakening at age 14. Also, both of them struggled with their homosexuality.
The novel takes place one Saturday in March 1935, and basically only depicts a family fight and a church visit, but it contains flashbacks to the past that reveal the wider context of the situation Baldwin portrays, thus opening up the story to a whole panorama of Black life in the US. One important theme is family, how families are build and destroyed and how outside factors like racism and religion shape the life of those families (including the lives those families will never have because of what they are facing).
By referring to those flashbacks as prayers, using biblical imagery and generally channeling the sound of the King James Bible, Baldwin underlines how deeply ingrained religion is in everyday life, how it filters the characters' perceptions - their faith has the power to equally uplift and trap them. The church is a haven for the community, and promises heavenly justice in the face earthly injustice. At the same time, facing racism and injustice, John's stepfather sees his role as a preacher as a means to gain some control and authority, including moral authority over his oppressors ("His father said that all white people were wicked, and that God was going to bring them low."). The hate he feels against himself, both prompted by the inability to live up to his religious standards and the helplessness he experiences due to the racism he is facing, is soon directed against others, turning him, as he himself realizes, into a bigot, which only adds to his rage.
John despises his stepfather for his violence and dreams of fleeing the situation through education (for those who already read the book: Compare John's ambition to that of his biological father and his destiny - it's terribly shocking). Although he is a brilliant student, his young mind has already absorbed societal standards: "It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in any case really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still." I was also struck by the description that John "(...) could not claim, as African savages might be able to claim, that no one had brought him the gospel." - here, Baldwin points out that John (and not only he) adheres to the standards of white missionaries and the Christian church, while looking down upon the customs of African peoples; it's the particularly perverse oppression of the mind.
Around this father-son-conflict, we also learn more about the lives of John's mother, his aunt, and the past of his stepfather - all of these stories are extremely well-written and make points far beyond those individual destinies. It is also remarkable how Baldwin draws connections between sexual and spiritual ecstasy.
Beyond that, it is interesting to compare this semi-fictional work with Baldwin's essay "Down At The Cross — Letter from a Region of My Mind", published in The Fire Next Time, in which he talks about his youth, takes a critical stance against the church and discusses the racial divide. And once you're at it, go on and read Between the World and Me - Coates' NBA-winning text was inspired by Baldwin. (Still, I want to slap those people who though it was a good idea to call the new German translation of Go Tell It on the Mountain "In dieser Welt" ("In This World") - how stupid is that?)
It's good that people start to read Baldwin again, and I hope this renaissance is far from over.
January 14, 2023
Nice evocation of growing up as a young black man in Harlem in an environment of fierce Baptists. The mutual relations within the family (son-father, son-mother, father-aunt, etc) are nicely portrayed, step by step, and with each chapter you get more information about the state of the actual relationships. The family has an incredible obsession with sin and becoming holy, that is rather suffocating but also leaves room for very nice, humane line-ups (e.g. John versus Elisha, mother Elizabeth versus her sister-in-law Florence). The opening chapter is extremely intense, after that the story becomes a triptych, to culminate in a tense last chapter with a 'possessed' John, and then followed by an unbelievably beautiful discharging final. Occasionally the biblical scenes and the symbolism became a bit tedious, but this is a great one! (rating actually 3.5 stars)
September 9, 2020
This is a beautiful, if painful, first novel from the very gifted James Baldwin about growing up black in a preacher's family. The language is poetic and captures the music and passion of the book's protagonists. Mostly autobiographical, this book put Baldwin on the US map in terms of hugely important writers. In it, you get a glimpse of how visceral and quotidienne that religion tended to be in the black experience before WWII. A must read.
February 21, 2008
Reading this, years ago, I was struck by something I didn't think I'd be struck with.
Recognition!
I was reaised religious, not in anything close to the kind of religiostity he describes- visceral, pummeling, hyperintense- but pretty far-reaching and existential in my own right, if I do say so myself.
Anyway, I was throttled by the sheer force and passion and earnestness of the writing here. I've been on that threshing floor, and even as I feel self-conscious about making that claim, I'm not going to not say it just because I don't want to sound rediculous.
I can't help it. It's the truth.
I haven't even considered trying to re-open the thing because I don't want to take another glimpse at those depths again. Though, now that I come to think of it, I really probably should....
This insight, or shock, opened up a whole slew of convictions...one of which, which I hope to defend until the day I die, is that literature is universal.
I am not black, harlem-raised, gay, pentcostal, or whatever. I share pretty much none of James Baldwin's social characteristics but I saw myself and my own inner life (at least my inner life at one time, recations, mediations, fear and trembling, etc) in this book.
If we are truly prisoners of context- social conditioning, capitalism, etc. I should have been glazed by this book. It should have been totally foreign to me, a relic or a historical curiosity or what-have-you.
But it wasn't. It was an epiphany, so to speak.
Therefore I must conclude the very boring and old fashioned and perhaps even logically wrong argument that all literature (at least, great literature) is universally human and humanly universal, if that makes any sense.
We interpret everything through our own cultural lens, no doubt, and we express everything through same but the bedrock foundation, or motivating core, or whatever is something apart but central....
I hope I'm making sense with this.
Anyway that's what books are for, right? finding (and in a sense taking back) that which is your own. Connecting through time with a complete stranger who will remain so, in a literal sense, no matter what you do.
I might have even misinterpreted it. Baldwin might have been going for or accomplished something utterly different than what I took away from it, but somehow I doubt it.
If I missed the boat, why would I still be here writing this about a book I read several years ago?
It's strange and wonderful to connect like this. It's something that you hunt for the rest of your reading days. I truly believe that LIFE has been served in this, in the sense of a candle being relit or given more oxygen. Vitality of imagination and memory and intellect and such promoted.
there is more, was more I should say, that came out of that experience than the pleasure of some interesting words coming out in an interesting way.
And I've moved on. And life (reading) has been the richer for it.
THAT'S what this thing of ours, fellow readers (and fellow writers too, naturally), that's what this thing of ours is all about.
And I say: More!
March 5, 2021
I was about to give it 5stars, and to be honest it entirely deserves 5 stars, especially the writing which is immaculate. I’m just not sure I fully grasped this last part (part three). I’m a bit confused and it might be because I don’t know a whole lot about the religion discussed here...? idk. but it’s for sure one of my fav book of the year.
cried reading elizabeth’s part.
every women in this book are amazing.
I can’t wait to read more by this author!!
cried reading elizabeth’s part.
every women in this book are amazing.
I can’t wait to read more by this author!!
July 16, 2012
A great coming-of-age depicting 14 year old John's journey to conversion. The book has a strong Christian setting, with quite a few good sermons and biblical language scattered throughout it. I detested Gabriel, John's father, a hypocritical, womanizing, abusive preacher with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
July 6, 2016
James Baldwin's body of writing and published work includes essays, plays, poetry, and six novels, of which Go Tell It on the Mountain was the first (1953). It is a semi-autobiographical look at life in 1930's Harlem, especially for African-Americans. It focuses on their struggles for equality -economically, socially, and culturally- in this great melting pot of a city where racial prejudice was as much a part of life as it was in the South. Baldwin uses the voice of one of his characters to make this point.
"There was not, after all, a great difference between the world of the North and that of the South. There was only this difference: the North promised more. And this similarity: what it promised it did not give, and what it gave, at length and grudgingly with one hand, it took back with the other".
The story is told through the voice of 14 year old John Grimes, with long back stories of his aunt Florence, his step-father Gabriel, and his mother Elizabeth. Religion is a major theme of the book, both the good and bad influences it had, as it did also with a young James Baldwin in Harlem.
The position of this novel as a classic in modern American literature is secure. Both Modern Library and Time Magazine list it in their "100 best novels of the 20th century". I concur. 5 stars
"There was not, after all, a great difference between the world of the North and that of the South. There was only this difference: the North promised more. And this similarity: what it promised it did not give, and what it gave, at length and grudgingly with one hand, it took back with the other".
The story is told through the voice of 14 year old John Grimes, with long back stories of his aunt Florence, his step-father Gabriel, and his mother Elizabeth. Religion is a major theme of the book, both the good and bad influences it had, as it did also with a young James Baldwin in Harlem.
The position of this novel as a classic in modern American literature is secure. Both Modern Library and Time Magazine list it in their "100 best novels of the 20th century". I concur. 5 stars
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