A fierce portrait of adolescence in 1930s Harlem, a profound reflection on racism and the double-edged role of religion
On a Saturday in March 1935, the day he turns fourteen, John Grimes wanders the streets of New York while brooding over some overwhelming issues: his difficult relationship with his father, an authoritarian Pentecostal preacher in Harlem, the poverty his family lives in, the racism that surrounds them. John longs for a different destiny than the one his family has planned for him: to follow in his father’s footsteps. But he knows that giving up would condemn him to an even deeper and more painful segregation: it would isolate him from his community and those he loves. Later, in church, surrounded by the fervor and songs of the faithful, John will be shaken by an epiphany that confronts him with rebellion and submission, lust and innocence, hatred and compassion, revealing the ambivalence in his soul. “If there was ever a book I had to write, it was this one,” said James Baldwin about Go Tell It on the Mountain, the novel that in 1953 revealed the genius and fury of the African American author to the world, and which a few years later was already considered a classic of American literature. With its dark and prophetic symbolism, this unique coming-of-age novel draws on the author’s adolescence to compose a feverish story in which the struggle for individuality is woven together with the history of a people marked by racism and the repressive power of religion.
“His prose struck me, its intensity left me almost breathless. I had never read a novel that described loneliness and desire with such eloquence.”
Douglas Field, The Guardian
“Go Tell It on the Mountain captures an essential aspect of life in the United States, its contradictions and temptations, that bittersweet mix of love and hate that so many feel toward the country.”
Azar Nafisi, The Independent
