Reading Order
Go Tell It on the Mountain Reading Order
James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) is a complete standalone novel and Baldwin's debut. It follows fourteen-year-old John Grimes in Harlem, New York, on a single day — his birthday, March 19, 1935 — as he undergoes a religious experience at his stepfather's storefront church. The novel is structured in three parts: John's day, 'The Prayers of the Saints' (long retrospective chapters from the perspectives of John's aunt and his father and stepfather, following each character back through their histories in the American South), and the night's religious climax. The novel is closely autobiographical.
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Go Tell It on the Mountain
Complete Go Tell It on the Mountain Book List
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Go Tell It on the Mountain
James Baldwin·1953·Standalone — John Grimes in Harlem on his fourteenth birthday, a day at the storefront church, and the long histories of the adults around him reaching back to the Jim Crow South; Baldwin's debut and his most formally intricate novel
Go Tell It on the Mountain — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Go Tell It on the Mountain a standalone?
Yes — Go Tell It on the Mountain is entirely self-contained. Baldwin's other novels — Giovanni's Room (1956), Another Country (1962), Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), Just Above My Head (1979) — are independent.
Is Go Tell It on the Mountain autobiographical?
Very closely. John Grimes's family closely parallels Baldwin's own: a preacher stepfather he feared and resented, a mother who mediated between them, younger siblings. The religious crisis at the novel's center parallels Baldwin's own conversion experience at age fourteen. Baldwin spent many years trying to write what became Go Tell It on the Mountain; when it was finally published at age twenty-nine, he said he felt he had finally written the book he needed to write to be free of it.
What is the structure of Go Tell It on the Mountain?
The novel is structured in three parts. 'The Seventh Day' follows John on the day of his conversion. 'The Prayers of the Saints' contains long retrospective sections from the perspectives of his aunt Florence, his stepfather Gabriel, and his mother Elizabeth — each tracing the character's history from the Jim Crow South to Harlem. 'The Threshing Floor' returns to the present and the night's religious climax. The retrospective sections, which contain the novel's most powerful writing, mean that the actual conversion takes only the first and last sections.
Is Go Tell It on the Mountain difficult to read?
Go Tell It on the Mountain is somewhat denser than Giovanni's Room or If Beale Street Could Talk — the prose is deeply influenced by the King James Bible, and the retrospective sections require holding multiple timelines in mind simultaneously. It is not technically difficult but rewards patience. Baldwin scholars often describe it as the novel that most fully shows his range: it is simultaneously a portrait of Harlem, a history of the Great Migration, a religious novel, and a study of a young gay man in an environment that cannot accommodate him.
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