Go Tell It on the Mountain (Deluxe Edition): A Novel

by James Baldwin, Roxane Gay (Introduction)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

This modern classic is a story of the Great Migration, fathers and sons, hopes and dreams, faith and coming-of-age.

A deluxe edition of James Baldwin's haunting coming-of-age story, with a new introduction by Roxane Gay and special cover art designed by Baldwin's friend and contemporary Beauford Delaney

Originally published in 1953, Go Tell It on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. 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 Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle toward self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understood themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593688977
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/18/2024
Series:	Vintage International
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

JAMES BALDWIN (1924-1987) was a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews, and his essay collections Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time were bestsellers that made him an influential figure in the growing civil rights movement. Baldwin spent much of his life in France, where he moved to escape the racism and homophobia of the United States. He died in France in 1987, a year after being made a Commander of the French Legion of Honor.

Date of Birth:

August 2, 1924

Date of Death:

December 1, 1987

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

St. Paul de Vence, France

Education:

DeWitt Clinton High School, New York City

Editorial Reviews

The introduction to James Baldwin's American classic, which takes place in 1930s Harlem, is narrated in a steady, warm voice by Roxane Gay. The story involves a series of flashbacks that explain one special day in the life of 14-year-old John. As is often the case in Baldwin's early writing, the evangelical Christian church plays a part. Narrator Joe Morton begins the novel in a commanding voice. He sets the tone for each character and forcefully hits the consonants of words, re-emphasizing the hardness of life. The various characters are revealed by his slightly changing intonation--although the story unfolds with more narrative than dialogue. Morton superbly delivers Baldwin's first novel. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2024 - AudioFile