James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain

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Sydney Erb Ms. Sonnenberg English 2 (H), Period 6 14 March 2024 Style James Baldwin's writing style is powerful and emotional. He captures the rawness of human emotions and experiences in his books. Baldwin uses expansive vocabulary with vivid imagery and poetic language which draws readers into his stories. His writing explores themes of identity, race, and social injustice, shedding light on the struggles of the African American community. Baldwin's words provoked thought, challenged societal norms, and inspired change. In Go Tell it on the Mountain, his first published novel, the story was told from a fourteen-year-old boy’s perspective, John. Baldwin used John’s age to show how civil rights affected the innocent and young as much as the …show more content…

She says that John ponders over his violent preacher stepfather, his church, and the racist society into which he had the misfortune to be born into. In her review, Nafisi describes this novel as relatable and touching. She says that the point of art is to celebrate differences and to also discover shared humanity. The next review I read was written by Donald Barr in the New York Times. Barr says that the novel is about religion and the “negro lifestyle”. He summarizes the story as a fourteen-year-old boy's first religious experience as the believed son of a preacher. Barr explains that he finds Baldwin respects religion and doesn’t find it comical or unserious in his novel. In the final lines of this review, Barr explains that most men would “explain the Negro religion away” but Baldwin does not reduce the story he has to tell, resulting in a beautiful …show more content…

This book is a beautifully written story that includes themes of race, identity, and religion. Baldwin tells his own story through the perspective of fourteen-year-old John Grimes. Many people can relate to Baldwins words in this piece and those who cannot, it gives a better understanding of different situations that minorities may struggle in. Baldwins writing is raw and real, he tells it as it is to inform what millions of people in America deal with. “Go Tell It on the Mountain” has united people, this book proved relevance through the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement and continues to prove its relevance

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