by James Baldwin
But I don’t care how many times you change your ways, what’s in you is in you, and it’s got to come outI know why this book sat on my shelf for so long. I read Giovanni’s Room several years ago, and while I loved James Baldwin’s writing, I really did not care for the story, particularly the way it e...
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, f...
“Mountain,” Baldwin said, “is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else.” Go Tell It on the Mountain, originally published in 1953, is Baldwin’s first major work, a novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, re...
So as I said initially this book was a little bit weird for me. I think it's because we follow several characters and I thought the latter half of the book just was not that great because of all of the jumping around that takes place.The main part of the story takes place in Harlem in the 1930s. The...
No doubt, James Baldwin had a mastery of the English language. There is a lilt to his words that echoes the classics of literature. With its religious theme, Go Tell It on the Mountain nearly comes across seamlessly as another testament of the Bible. I believe this was Baldwin's intention, but if no...
When I first read this book I was quite mystified by it, because I'm a very convergent thinker. It's only in maturity that I've begun, little by little & with much help from literature, to understand that people think differently from each other, contradict themselves and change their minds, and wri...
oh, james baldwin. this book is wonderfully, beautifully written. the more i read him, the more i like him. this was his first published novel and it is superb. i write that even knowing that i missed a lot of it because i don't have the religious (specifically christian) knowledge that is the f...
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 ...