378 pages
English language
Published Nov. 15, 1998 by McDougal Littell.
The story of John Grimes, a young Black man living in Harlem in the 1930s and his relationship with his strict storefront preacher-father, Gabriel, who had moved from the South to escape his past. The story also follows the difficult passage of the son of a stoically courageous mother to manhood amid the family's past from the Deep South to Depression-era Harlem.
Surprisingly can't read 4 books at once ! I'll come back to this when I finish everything else I'm working through :))
Le premier roman de James Baldwin nous parle d’un adolescent afro-américain et de sa famille, dont son père pasteur. A travers les pensées de John et les souvenirs de son père, de sa mère, et de sa tante, nous suivons le destin des afro-américains dans la première moitié du XXe siècle, et le rôle essentiel que joue la religion dans leur vie.
Le récit est lent, certains diront qu’il ne s’y passe pas grand chose, mais c’est une plongée subtile et riche dans l’âme humaine, avec les contradictions qui nous animent sans doute tous. Un beau roman, assurément.
Go Tell It On The Mountain is about hypocrisy, loss, death, abuse, piety, pretense, denial, and self-delusion in a Pentecostal preacher’s household in 1930’s Harlem. The main story takes place in a day, with several vignettes reaching back.
John is navigating his sense of himself and his sexuality as a black teen in 1930’s Harlem. Because of when this was written there’s a lot that remains heavily implied, couched behind religious language and “holy” kisses. Some passages are shocking in their language, because the rest of the book is so carefully phrased, the few explicit sections have an impact that they might not have had otherwise.
John’s father (Gabriel) is a pastor whose religious devotion seems to have been unable to put a dent in his capacity to bring grief and pain to those around him. Indeed, the book seems to argue that it’s that very search for piety which …
