Book Thoughts: Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

28 Nov, 2025

The flight to Japan from California is like 14 hours. I downloaded like 4 nonfiction books to my phone to try to read through, but then my sister was like, we could have our own little book club. All right, then. What to read? I said that I really needed to read James Baldwin because every quote I've seen from this guy has been incredibly insightful. And the YouTube video my therapist recommended me about Tragic Optimism made me go, "Wow, so true!"

It's like that parasocial thing where you read quotes from Ursula K. Le Guin, go, "That's so true, I bet she writes really good stories," and then you read something of hers (in my case, The Dispossessed) and it's just okay.

Note: This is foreshadowing.

I opened up a quick list of his top fiction works and read through some synopses. Of those, I selected Go Tell It on the Mountain because I fuck with intergenerational trauma, and it was semi-autobiographical. The few quotes I've seen from Baldwin about his life have been super interesting, so I thought this work had the highest chance of speaking to me.

Well, it's also his first novel. And it kind of reads like it. As my sister would later say as we were walking back from a cafe in Japan, sometimes with these first books it feels like writers throw everything at the wall because they don't know when they're going to get their next chance. Which is absolutely fair. On the other hand, I think this book would've been massively improved with some restraint and leaving a lot on the cutting room floor.

Of course, it's entirely possible that I am simply not the audience, being someone with little connection to Christianity other than my mom's phase in my younger years, in which I always hated going to church and didn't believe in any of it. My dad's a staunch atheist, and when presented the choice between a (literally clinically) delusional mother and a rational father (with incredibly self-centered selective memory), let's just say I never saw the appeal in taking my mother's side on any of this. And c'mon, even if the adult services were in Taiwanese and I think the POJ writing system developed by missionaries is super cool, it's not like I could understand any of it.

Rather, my memories of Taiwanese church were of sitting in the pews, not understanding a word, opening the Bible (in English) and trying to read from the beginning, only to get so fucking bored. I'd just straight up give up and stare at the ceiling instead of doing the normal thing, which would be to at least try another passage in the book until I found one that might be marginally more interesting. I guess my insistence on having to do everything right and from the beginning or not doing it at all showed up as early as then.¹ And then there would be lunch, with the big catering trays, and I liked the transparent noodles with mushrooms. But truly, I hated going to church and I always tried to convince my parents to leave as early as possible (which my dad was at least on my side about).

My memories of later churches, when my mom was floating around, trying to find a place to belong, are stuff like, oh there was a Korean church in Massachusetts where my mom tried to gain favor with the pastor by asking if I could cook for him (← I hate cooking and never really did it anyway??), and then later she admitted to me that he had sexually assaulted her and some of the other women at the church. But she continued showing up anyway. What do I say to that. I just thought she was really stupid to keep going, which is victim blaming but to my teen self it was yet more proof that my mom was an idiot who was easy to take advantage of, and I resented her for placing me in this parentifying position while also holding power over me.

Anyway, given my history, this book was either going to be a hit or miss with me. And I think that would ultimately hinge on whether or not the book agreed that organized Christianity sucks and you should live your truth without being threatened by the idea of shame and Hell all the time.

Spoilers:
The book does not do this. In fact, after all of the stuff the characters go through, the main character, John, actually still chooses to start the path of becoming a preacher — even going so far as to say goodbye to his first gay crush.

This fact actually surprised the heck out of me, given that Baldwin was notably gay. In fact, the book reads like one big ironic tragedy and giving into Cope in order not to lose your community, but the weirdest thing is that I fully believe that an actual Christian who is in the kool-aid of organized religion would be like, so true! The struggle is so real! He chose right!

This dissonance is actually what I think is the most interesting part of the book, and only makes me more curious about Baldwin's journey in spirituality across his life. Notably, Baldwin didn't actually become a preacher, though it seems like he considered it at one point. Honestly, the cope reminded me most of one of my cousins, who admitted that he tried to delve really deep into Christianity in college to try to combat the fact that he was gay, but he ultimately left and embraced his gay identity.

But onto the actual structure of the book. The book is separated into parts following different family members. It begins with John, a teenager who doesn't know why his preacher father hates him so much and prefers his brother who always acts out. Later, it covers the perspectives of his aunt, his father, and his mother.

This book excels in three things:

1. Representing the feelings of hatred held by the children of abusive/neglectful parents.
   
   I have never read anything that so closely mirrored the emotions I felt looking at my own mother in my teen years. The fact that it's not just John who hates his dad (while craving actual connection at the same time; the duality is too real), but his dad and his aunt who both hate their mom, and his mom who hated her own aunt.
   
   I don't know the last time I've seen a piece of media where fantasizing about the death of your caregivers is something that is even remotely present or even justified to feel. I feel like when this happens it typically is because the caregiver is some kind ultimate irredeemable abuser — a deadbeat drunk father who hits your mother, kind of thing. Instead, to feel it for someone who is obviously providing for your family, but who is so damn unfair, whose every emotional whims have to be catered to and can never be predicted, from whom you also want the recognition and care of — for you, as a person — even though you'll never get it in your life... woof. Woof.

2. Representing shame. Everything about this, for all characters, is steeped in shame. The danger of others' eyes, and yet needing their care to survive. This is only heightened, of course, by the fact that it's written by a Black man, but I'm sure other people have commented on that far more insightfully than I could ever.

3. Unexpectedly, this book also does an incredible job at giving its female characters interiority and exploring their own messy emotions and their own trapped situations. Florence (John's aunt)'s whole section was riveting, and the descriptions of how she tried so hard to find a man she could "control," only to end up with a guy that would waste all of their money and then bring home a whole turkey that she'd have to clean, who she'd blow up at and cry in despair over their material situation only to give into him again when he was sweet to her in bed — augh. Augh. I had to put the book down at this part, it just hit so fucking hard.
   
   This book does so well at showing enmeshed relationships like this, where you literally need someone for your material safety, even as they continue to hurt you over and over. The cycles that people get themselves into, also.

Something that gives me pause, though — and I think this speaks to the whole veneer of resolution that has tragedy and injustice lurking behind it — is the fact that the female characters seem to have gotten the worse end of the stick in terms of their "sins." Gabriel (John's father, and more precisely in the plot twist, step-) basically ruined Esther and all of his Roys, and didn't ever give Deborah a reward for being so virtuous, but this is collateral to his actions and his sin in a way that centers him.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth (John's mother) is doomed for having a baby out of wedlock because her boyfriend killed himself after experiencing violent systemic racism, but this isn't actually her fault at all. Her "sin" has doomed her to a physically and emotionally abusive husband and to watching her kids grow up to continue the same cycle, but this is all stuff she has to bear in hopes that they will basically save her in the eyes of God.

And where even is justice for Deborah, who did everything right, but whose initial "sin" according to the community that she spent her life making up for and therefore becoming the paragon of holiness — was being raped? She did everything right and even married a pastor, but Gabriel still did her wrong, and she died like that. Ultimately, this just makes her another figure for his sin. Gabriel is the central figure to which all characters are tied, and he is the most insufferable. And one can only assume, a mirror of Baldwin's stepfather.

The main problem for me with religions like Christianity is that it basically excuses injustice with promise that it'll be better in the afterlife and that people will get what's coming to them by God. But anyone who is invested in justice for people in the here in now, who aren't Christian or believers in other hell-related religions, will look at this and go, hey, this is massively unfair. And this is the answer you want? The women are suffering like this, and that's the only thing they can hope for? Again, this book is interesting and confounding in how it seems to bare all of these contradictions that to people like me only emphasize how the only way through is simply to "Get out," but then conclude that you have to stay. This book is a tragedy to me, but who else would agree?

The book spends a ton of time on Christian reasoning and beliefs, and I had to straight up take multiple breaks during Gabriel's section because it was honestly straight up annoying. The number of mental hoops this guy was jumping through, and dragging me along for this warped ride — I say this jokingly: I was being exposed to cringe Christianity (Cringianity, if you will) without my consent.

The whole final part of the book also goes into John having a spiritual trip (as fits Pentecostalism), which I (from my limited fictional media intake) can only compare to End of Evangelion. He literally experiences haunting passages of people washing their feet of blood in a river, but they can never get clean; being plunged into the depths and being told he has to climb an entire mountain to be saved by God, and that he has to keep going and keep going and keep going even beyond his limits because this is the only way to be protected; and other horrors. And all of this is while spiritually confronting his dad:

And his father looked on him. His father's eyes looked down on him, and John began to scream. His father's eyes stripped him naked, and hated what they saw. And as he turned, screaming, in the dust again, trying to escape his father's eyes, those eyes, that face, and all their faces, and the far-off yellow light, all departed from his vision as though he had gone blind. He was going down again. There is, his soul cried out again, no bottom to the darkness!

Honestly, while I admire this section technically and for the chills it gives, it also went on too long for me and lost me a few times. And ultimately, the choice to give into all of these horrors... Well, to me it just feels like giving into an abuser. Even Florence, who tried to get out, was dragged back to church. Sucks to be Christian but apparently, sometimes that's your only choice if you want a community.

There is a feeling of unshakeable premonition of pending tragedy, even in the ending, though. Elizabeth looked at John with incredible sadness when he indicated that he was going to become a preacher, knowing that he would have his own "sin" that he would likely struggle with all of his life. He just doesn't know it yet. For John, that is obviously his gay feelings, and if his (straight) dad's failed relationships is a template, it's only entirely possible that John will "slip up" in the future. Maybe not with Elisha, but with another man that comes into his life in the future. And then he will have to spend his whole life fighting and bargaining with God and asking for forgiveness and deliverance and climbing that mountain again and again in a Sisyphean attempt.

He just doesn't know it yet. Haunting.

All in all, I don't regret reading this book, but it wasn't quite for me. There are elements of this that really spoke to me that I marvel at, but sitting through the whole thing again would be kind of hard.

Curious about Baldwin's other works, but granted the style of this one, I feel mostly disillusioned of my inflated expectations that his writing will be everything that I was ever looking for.

#books #fiction