Go Tell It On the Mountain
(James Baldwin)

“Go tell it on the Mountain” receives its title from a religious spiritual and thus the novel is intensely religious in its tones and tales.  The novel follows John Grimes in Harlem in 1935 and his family over the course of John’s fourteenth birthday.  John struggles with his stepfather, Gabriel and feels neglected in favor of his younger brother, Roy.

John does not know whether he wants his father to love him, or whether he wants to continue hating him and everything he represents, including a truly religious life.  John is not aware, though the reader is that Gabriel is not his biological father, but his stepfather, and he comes from a devilishly difficult past that is shown through various flashbacks.

John goes through a religious transformation to please his father, but it does not make Gabriel love him more, because Gabriel has many demons in his life that have nothing to do with John.  There are five parts to the story, and each focuses mainly on the thoughts of a particular character; the first centers are John, the second his aunt, the third his father,  the fourth his mother and the fifth goes back to John.

This novel reflects on religious struggles, parent-child resentment, and race issues, which are seldom explored in Baldwin’s other novels, but more-so in his nonfiction.  He delves deeper into an understanding of race relations and the impact of racial injustice on those who are victim to it.