James Baldwin Early Novels & Stories Go

Here in a Library of America volume edited by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison is the fiction that established James Baldwin's reputation as a writer who fused unblinking realism and rare verbal eloquence. His first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) tells the story rooted in Baldwin's own experience of a preacher's son coming of age in 1930's Harlem. Ten years in the writing its exploration of religious sexual and generational conflicts was described by Baldwin as an attempt to exorcise something to find out what happened to my father what happened to all of us. Giovanni's Room (1956) is a searching and in its day controversial treatment of the tragic self-delusions of a young American expatriate at war with his own homosexuality. Another Country (1962) a wide-ranging exploration of America's racial and sexual boundaries depicts the suicide of a gifted jazz musician and its ripple effect on those who knew him. Complex in structure and turbulent in mood it is in many ways Baldwin's most ambitious novel. Going to Meet the Man (1965) collects Baldwin's short fiction including the masterful Sonny's Blues the unforgettable portrait of a jazz musician struggling with drug addiction in which Baldwin came closest to defining his goal as a writer: For while the tale of how we suffer and how we are delighted and how we may triumph is never new it must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing and keeping permanently in print America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date authoritative editions that average 1000 pages in length feature cloth covers sewn bindings and ribbon markers and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.