Go Tell it on the Mountain.

Hardcover, 23 pages

English language

Published Nov. 7, 1997 by Random Ho.,U.S., Bailey Distrib..

ISBN:
978-0-679-60154-8
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OCLC Number:
33262717

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(2 reviews)

In one of the greatest American classics, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.

With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin tells the story of the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Originally published in 1953, Baldwin said of his first novel, "Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else."

23 editions

Review of Go Tell it on the Mountain

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Like the protagonist, John, I grew up in an ultra-religious Christian household. If you don’t have that background, this novel might not speak as directly and intimately to you as it does to me. I call John the protagonist, but there are multiple viewpoints, including John’s preacher stepfather, his reprobate aunt, and his mother. The story branches off from a church service into their various sins and sufferings, past and present. There are no easy answers here, only understanding. I cried more than once, sometimes while also laughing in recognition.

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Subjects

  • Literary studies: from c 1900 -
  • Modern fiction
  • Baldwin, James, 1924-1987
  • Literature - Classics / Criticism
  • American English
  • English
  • Literature: Classics
  • Classics
  • Sagas
  • Fiction / General