Go Tell It On The Mountain

“It was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding the other.”

This is one of the best written books I’ve ever read. I am not a fast reader, but I devoured this book pretty quickly (for me anyways). It could be because the last book I read was far from my favorite, however the poetic and poignant writing speaks for itself. The motif of an ocean is beautifully crafted throughout the book and leads to the best ending to a chapter I have ever read (specifically the 10-15 pages toward the end of “Gabriel’s Prayer”).  If you need an entry point to James Baldwin’s creative works, I would suggest you start here.

What Had Happened Was…

The novel follows our main character, John, on his 14th birthday with several flashbacks from important family members. John wakes up on his 14th birthday thinking about his relationship with his distant and often abusive father. His being upset is magnified by the feeling that everyone has forgotten his birthday. Eventually, his mother gives John some money to buy himself something for his birthday. John decides to go see a movie, an action against his very religious family teaching. Upon returning from the movie John finds out that his rambunctious little brother has been stabbed by a white boy. The injury, while not life threatening, causes the already dysfunctional family to fall into chaos with John’s father striking John’s mother and blaming John’s aunt. These actions by their father causes Roy, still bleeding from the attack, to speak up on behalf of his mother which is responded to with a beating by their father.

John leaves in order to get the church ready for service. There he meets Elisha a slightly older boy in the church who is greatly gifted. This scene is filled with a mixture of masculinity, religion and thinly veiled homoeroticism. John’s father, mother and aunt eventually arrive and the novel switches to their respective viewpoints.

John’s aunt, Florence, reminisces on her childhood and her frustrations/fears with God and her life. Florence was raised by a formerly enslaved mother and became best friends with a woman made a pariah in the community because of a rape by a group of white men. Florence is largely alone and frustrated by the patriarchy of a society which states that she must take second chair to her little brother. Her brother Gabriel is willfully wanton and Florence is expected to remain stalwart  despite his lack of assistance. She eventually decides to move north leaving behind Gabriel and their dying mother. She marries a man who is an alcoholic and eventually leaves Florence. She finds out about his death from his side woman.

John’s father, Gabriel, reminisces on his childhood and the actions/sins which he hopes he has been forgiven from. After Florence leaves John cleans up his act and becomes a preacher. He is taken care of by Florence’s pariah friend, eventually deciding to make the older woman his first wife. However, during this marriage and his early preaching career John has an affair with a young woman at his job. The young woman has his child, John reacts by sending the mother North where she dies alone and unclaimed by John. His son, Royal, returns to their small town in the south to be raised by his grandparents, but remains unclaimed by John as well. Royal eventually dies a violent death in a knife fight. John finds out about his unclaimed son’s death from his then wife who confronts him about the child’s parentage.  

John’s mother, Elizabeth reminisces on the pain she has had to endure specifically regarding the men in her life. After her mother died, she was stripped from her father whom she loved, in order to live with an aunt she never felt close to. She would eventually flee this aunt to the north after meeting a man. While not perfect they are in love and she gets pregnant. Unfortunately, the man that she loves is wrongfully accused of a robbery and jailed. While he is eventually vindicated, he is unable to shake the feelings of jail and commits suicide. Never finding out about Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Elizabeth eventually meets Gabriel through Florence, who commits to marrying Florence and treating John as his own.

After Elizabeth’s viewpoint, we return to John who has caught the holy ghost. John goes through visions while wrapped in the spirit and becomes saved. His father, while a preacher, remains unresponsive (it is discussed that he wished his biological son would be saved). Florence notices this and confronts Gabriel. Disclosing that she has held a letter she received from his deceased first wife discussing this secret child. However, John and Elisha are renewed by their religious experience and bond over it. John demands that no matter what happens, Elisha remembers that John was here and that he was saved.

Aiight so boom…

There is so much to talk about in this book, Baldwin’s use of time, the feeling of being directly spoken to, and interesting theological questions. However, I find most interesting my initial disappointment in the ending. One has to first have the context of Baldwin’s scathing critiques of Native Son by Richard Wright. I took away from these critiques that what is more interesting rather than the rage/hatred that Bigger feels is how Black people choose to continue on without exhibiting these inner feelings. Well on a re-read of Everybody’s Protest Novel and Many Thousands Gone, that was about 20% of the critique. The critique of the former is more about the use of a Protest Novel and how it strips the humanity out of a character. Instead of a character given the fullness of humanity, they are reduced to a rhetorical technique. In the latter critique, Baldwin discusses that Bigger is the imagined fear of the violent Black man causing pain due to the pain caused to him. The reality of this fury is true, but instead of allowing Bigger to be a myth like that which he represents, Wright begins to humanize him to a white audience via a white savior (my words). My initial disappointment, was the exact point of his critiques. I wanted a how to guide on how to get the hatred to subside. In the novel the hatred subsides through the gift of the Holy Spirit experienced by John. This wasn’t enough for me knowing that Baldwin later became an agnostic making me feel as though he took the easy way out of dealing with the fury that sits in the middle of most Black folks chest (which at first glance contradicts his critique of one of the most popular Black novels of all time). However, this is the humanity that is written into John. It is a brief moment where the hatred subsides knowing that whatever happens after, his hatred had subsided that day. John shows a human reality, to quote Baldwin “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious it to be in rage almost all the time.” Rather than a mere rhetorical tool, John exhibits something much deeper/richer, the reality of Black life. In the end, this is not a self-help book on how to deal with anger, it is the story of a boys 14th birthday.