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Go Tell It on the Mountain

James Baldwin

4.02 · Rating details · 59,052 ratings · 3,776 reviews

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 ...more

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Published 2001 by Penguin (first published May 18th 1953)

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Aug 23, 2010 Jimmy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: male, my-canon, novel, year-1950s, poc

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 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? ;)

"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. ...more

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Mar 06, 2011 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 100-modern-library, 2015, aere-perennius

“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

baldwin

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 emotiona ...more

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Mar 22, 2019 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019, recs

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 nov ...more

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Nov 17, 2015 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it

Shelves: african, biography, united-states, non-fiction, literature, 20th-century, classics, religion, novels

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 establi 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 ...more

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Jan 05, 2018 BlackOxford rated it really liked it

Shelves: american, biography-biographical, african-american, new-york-city, favourites

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 adol 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. ...more

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May 30, 2018 Lisa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die

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 leadi ...more

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Jan 09, 2017 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing

Shelves: african-american-lit, race-issues, fiction, united-states, spirituality-religion, historical-fiction, classics

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 ...more

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Mar 13, 2020 Matthew rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: completist-book-club, classic, library, 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. ...more

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Apr 15, 2015 Cheryl rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mesmerizing, fiction, the-psyche, fav-authors, afro-american

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 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?

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.
...more

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Aug 03, 2009 Fabian rated it really liked it

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 tha ...more

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Mar 09, 2020 Gabrielle rated it really liked it

Shelves: own-a-copy, american, historical, read-in-2020, reviewed, penguin-modern-classics

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 f 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... ...more

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Jan 16, 2017 Perry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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, on ...more

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Mar 07, 2017 Jr Bacdayan rated it really liked it

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 a 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. ...more

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Jun 02, 2014 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: new-york-city, racism, 1001-books, religion, spirituality, fiction, african-american, maryland

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 w 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.
...more

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Jun 05, 2019 Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ rated it really liked it

Shelves: classic-of-the-month, fiction, classics

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 ...more

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Oct 01, 2016 Paul rated it it was amazing

Shelves: african-american

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 compl 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!
...more

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Jan 08, 2017 Sidharth Vardhan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: list-redcliffe, list-guardian-1000, list-daily-telegraph, list-1001, list-modern-library, 8-usa

“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 Bal ...more

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Oct 05, 2018 da AL rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audio-books, modern-classic, modern-literary

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...

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Aug 02, 2020 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, american-20th-c, autobiography, novels, african-american-lit

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. ...more

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Feb 21, 2008 Matt rated it it was amazing

Shelves: modern-library-100, shattering, america-fuck-yeah, fictions-of-the-big-it

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 ...more

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May 16, 2018 Raul Bimenyimana rated it really liked it

Shelves: queer, african-african-diaspora

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 w ...more

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Feb 28, 2021 Léonie rated it it was amazing

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!!

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Nov 22, 2011 Rowena rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: afrocentric, american-lit, james-baldwin

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. ...more

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Apr 27, 2015 Duane rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: american-classics, historical-fiction, 2016-book-challenge, reviewed-books, 5-star-books, guardian-1000, rated-books

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 mak ...more

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Apr 07, 2017 Meike rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2018-read, usa

"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 "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. ...more

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Sep 27, 2007 Christy rated it really liked it

Shelves: readinglist1, african-american-lit-and-history

James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, an autobiographical novel first published in 1952, is a beautifully written exploration of religious experience in African American life, both North and South. The primary narrative covers less than 24 hours and is focused by the central character's 14th birthday and religious conversion experience. The book is divided into three sections: "The Seventh Day," which focuses on John Grimes, our 14-year-old protagonist, and his decision to turn away from h James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, an autobiographical novel first published in 1952, is a beautifully written exploration of religious experience in African American life, both North and South. The primary narrative covers less than 24 hours and is focused by the central character's 14th birthday and religious conversion experience. The book is divided into three sections: "The Seventh Day," which focuses on John Grimes, our 14-year-old protagonist, and his decision to turn away from his father's religion; "The Prayers of the Saints," which takes place during a revival style church service and includes the prayers, pasts, and current experiences of John's aunt Florence, his father Gabriel, and his mother Elizabeth; and "The Threshing-Floor," in which John is taken by the spirit and is saved.

Baldwin's use of religion in this novel reveals the ways in which religious experience and ideology can make a life in this oppressive world even worse. The adults we meet in the novel have all sinned and fallen short, sometimes as a direct result of their social position and inability to carry on a fully human life in the face of racial prejudice and oppression, but there is no acknowledgment of these racial and class difficulties in their religious beliefs or practices. Their God holds them to the same high standard that middle-class or upper-class whites are held to. How much harder to obey strictures against theft when you cannot get and hold a job, when you cannot go into any store you like, when you cannot buy what you need? How much harder to obey strictures that insist that sex is only for marriage when marriages collapse because of these financial strains--or cannot even begin because of them? Religion thus serves to make hard lives even harder by providing internal oppression to complement the external oppression they face, even while it provides an emotional and social outlet in the services, music, and transcendent experiences.

Baldwin does not make one explicit argument about religion or about the African American experience. He is not writing a political novel in the way that Richard Wright's Native Son is a political novel (Baldwin in fact was quite critical of Wright's Native Son, arguing that it lacked realistic characterization and was too broad and heavy-handed); instead, Baldwin provides an examination of the black experience through religion and shows the different ways that religion fits into a larger sense of what it meant to be black in this America by focusing on a few individuals and their experiences, showing, further, how it feels to live these lives.

In the end, John's religious experience is not the end of the story, but the beginning. Baldwin leaves the reader with an ambiguous vision of John's future. Will he be able to use this religious experience to help raise himself up, become a better person, escape the oppression of racism? Or will he fall into sin, as humans do? But it is even more complex than that: Will he use religion to become a better person or will he merely, as others have done before him, use religion to bolster his ego? When John's conversion follows the hypocrisy and flaws of his father, a preacher, even religion isn't enough to guarantee John's future. ...more

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Oct 30, 2014 Barry Pierce rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, read-in-2014

I feel this one just wasn't for me. I didn't engage with this novel at all. I must say that it is written very well (obviously, it's Baldwin) but the overall story and characters didn't do much for me. I'm kinda disappointed tbh, this is Baldwin's most popular novel according to Goodreads but I personally think that Giovanni's Room blows this one out of the water. ...more

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Sep 15, 2019 Hugh rated it it was amazing

Shelves: modern-lit, read-2019, modern-classics, five-leaves-bookclub

This book will be the subject of a face to face book club discussion at my local independent bookshop Five Leaves later this month, and I am looking forward to the discussion.

I had never read any Baldwin before, and for most of the first part, in which the main characters are introduced, I was wondering what I had let myself in for, partly because I have never been a believer in any form of religion, and I have never faced any family pressure to change that, nor have I lived anywhere like the p ...more

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Jun 02, 2020 Usha rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literary-fiction

Short book, only 250 pages or so but with brilliant, thick and heavy prose. It's a powerful and a despairful delivery on race, faith and sexuality. Where is the solace, end to subjection when you are ensconced in oppression and pray to an indifferent God? There is no salvation, other than prescribed by the church, you are left wearing a chrisom of melancholy and an impassable pathway to the mountain top. ...more

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May 13, 2017 Faith rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, overdrive

I don't know why I hadn't read James Baldwin before, but this year I am trying to rectify that lapse. This is a brilliant, character-driven book, with beautiful use of language. A large part of the book is the coming of age of 14 year old John, who is a surrogate for the author. Although I am not at all religious, I was pulled in by how the family members depicted in this book relied upon and wrestled with their faith in the light of painful experiences, including racism, death, hypocrisy, aband ...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Guardian Newspape...: Go Tell It on the Mountain - January 2022	9	17	Feb 08, 2022 12:35AM
Reading 1001: Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin	5	19	Jan 19, 2022 12:32AM
The Pedro Pascal ...: General Thoughts	11	11	May 08, 2021 11:26PM
The Pedro Pascal ...: Part One: The Seventh Day	4	4	Apr 27, 2021 10:10PM
The Pedro Pascal ...: Part Two: The Prayers of the Saints	4	5	Apr 23, 2021 11:23PM
The Pedro Pascal ...: Part Three: The Threshing-Floor	1	4	Apr 18, 2021 04:20AM

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About James Baldwin

James Baldwin

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Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.

James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and '60s. He was the eldest of nine children; his stepfather was a minister. At age ...more

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“There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.” — 85 likes

“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.” — 50 likes

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