Go Tell It on the Mountain

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."

First sentence: EVERYONE HAD ALWAYS said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father.

Year

1993

Language

English

Publisher

Vintage International

Editions

24

Reader rating

3.6 / 5 (13)

Pages

226

ISBN

9780375701870

Data source: Wikidata