Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A really evocative and poetic telling of the lives of one black family in 1930s America. I particularly loved the resilience and independence running through so many of the characters, and the way the lens moves through each of them, telling each backstory in turn.

The only bit I didn’t fully gel with was the ‘threshing floor’, which I found confusing and didn’t ‘get’. I know that’s because religious conversion is an alien thing to me personally, but I felt that the rest of the book bridged that gap and made me understand it from the characters’ points of view, whereas this last bit just spiralled away from my understanding and empathy.

The rest of the book is amazing though, and I would definitely recommend it.



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