Go Tell It on the Mountain

James Baldwin's stunning first novel is now an American classic. With startling realism that brings Harlem and the black experience vividly to life, this is a work that touches the heart with emotion while it stimulates the mind with its narrative style, symbolism, and excoriating vision of racism in America. Moving through time from the rural South to the northern ghetto, starkly contrasting the attitudes of two generations of an embattles family,Go Tell It On The Mountain is an unsurpassed portrayal of human beings caught up in a dramatic struggle and of a society confronting inevitable change. "The most important novel written about the American Negro," saysCommentary. "It is written with poetic intensity and great narrative skill," writesHarper's. Saturday Reviewpraises it as "masterful," and theSan Francisco Chronicle declares that this important American novel is "brutal, objective and compassionate."

James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, and educated in New York. His first novel, <i>Go Tell It on the Mountain</i>, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews and immediately was recognized as establishing a profound and permanent new voice in American letters. "Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else," he remarked. Baldwin's play <i>The Amen Corner</i> was first performed at Howard University in 1955 (it was staged commercially in the 1960s), and his acclaimed collection of essays Notes of a Native Son, was published the same year. A second collection of essays, <i>Nobody Knows My Name</i>, was published in 1961 between his novels <i>Giovanni's Room</i> (1956) and <i>Another Country</i> (1961). <br><br>The appearance of <i>The Fire Next Time