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A review by teresatumminello
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
4.0
I'm very impressed with how self-assured and commanding Baldwin's first novel is, especially in its structure, and its gritty and poetic prose.
The author's empathy for his characters, even an extremely hypocritical one, is strong too. The difficulty of the adult characters' pasts was most compelling to me, as they can't help but look backward even as they try to forget. The bitterness of the main character's mother, on a day when she might be happy, is subtle and understandable after you know her back story. The reader knows the future will be hard for all of them.
Though the characters live in Harlem, their past lives in the South are what is revelatory, making it easy for me to understand why authors Dorothy Allison and Susan Straight say this book was a major inspiration for them.
The author's empathy for his characters, even an extremely hypocritical one, is strong too. The difficulty of the adult characters' pasts was most compelling to me, as they can't help but look backward even as they try to forget. The bitterness of the main character's mother, on a day when she might be happy, is subtle and understandable after you know her back story. The reader knows the future will be hard for all of them.
Though the characters live in Harlem, their past lives in the South are what is revelatory, making it easy for me to understand why authors Dorothy Allison and Susan Straight say this book was a major inspiration for them.