Go Tell It on the Mountain (Deluxe Edition) - Paperback

by James Baldwin (Author), Roxane Gay (Introduction by)

A gorgeous deluxe edition of James Baldwin's bestselling first novel--a coming-of-age story that depicts incredible resilience in pursuit of self-invention, now hailed as an American classic

"A novel of extraordinary sensitivity and poetry."--Chicago Tribune

Includes a new introduction by New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay and special cover art featuring a portrait of James Baldwin by his friend and contemporary Beauford Delaney

Originally published in 1953, Go Tell It on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage born of compassion, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem. Baldwin's rendering of a young person's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understood themselves.

Author Biography

JAMES BALDWIN (1924-1987) was a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews, and his essay collections Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time were bestsellers that made him an influential figure in the growing civil rights movement. Baldwin spent much of his life in France, where he moved to escape the racism and homophobia of the United States. He died in France in 1987, a year after being made a Commander of the French Legion of Honor.