This is an angry book.
Told through a series of interconnected flashbacks at an overnight prayer service in post-WWI Harlem, “Go Tell it on the Mountain” peels back the veneer of righteousness of a deacon in a black holiness church, and reveals instead of a life of godliness a life of anger, hatred, adultery, and sin that has poisoned the lives of everyone around him, the most egregious ruination coming in the years after the preacher (Gabriel) ostensibly left his dissolute life of sin and became a respected man of the cloth.
The book deals with race, but in a despairing voice, as black characters revile one another — the character John admires his mother, but considers her powerless against his father’s brutality, and that appears to be the warmest he feels toward anyone — and hope for the future is cut off by these destructive dynamics, curtailed by white society, or severely limited by a God whose love is talked about but never seen.
Baldwin is one of several black authors I’ve been reading this year. I’ll be reading more of him.
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