Go Tell It on the MountainGo Tell It on the Mountain

"With a potent combination of lyrical compassion and resonant rage, he portrays a fourteen-year-old boy questioning the terms of his identity. John Grimes is the stepson of a fire-breathing and abusive Pentecostal preacher in Harlem during the Depression. The action of this short novel spans a single day in Johns life, and yet manages to encompass on an epic scale his familys troubled past and his own inchoate longings for the future, set against a shining vision of a city where he both does and does not belong. Baldwins story illuminates the racism his characters face as well as the double-edged role religion plays in their lives, both oppressive and inspirational."--