Go Tell it on the Mountain

Go Tell It On The Mountain first published in 1953 is Baldwin's first major work a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision psychological directness resonating symbolic power and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual sexual and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.