Search - Go Tell It on the Mountain

As a teacher, I read this book for one of our reading lists to make an objective test, the novel itself would never be taught. I had anticipated that it would be a boring book that simply retold the story of Invisible Mas or The Interesting Narrative of Oloudah Equiano, stories about the suffering of African Americans. Though I find that topic interesting, I think that no author has done done it justice like James Baldwin has done. As an English major, when reading African American narratives, I awlays get the main point but feel as though I've read the same novel again and again. This particular book has given me a new perspective. It makes me wonder if there is something different in a "black" spirit than in a "white" spirit. I have always considered black people the same as white people, but Bladwin's story makes me wonder if there isn't something different. The children of the characters in the novel are strong willed, more so than in any novel about whites I have read. Their spirit seems unconquerable, which would make sense given that they survived slavery. Each character in this is strong and derives their strength from their color, perhaps in spite of it. As someone who views and treats black people as equals, this is the first novel that made me consider that there is, in fact, something different between the races because of race. Not necessarily a bad thing, but something inside us from waking up and looking in the mirror everyday and having to live as a different color.

My favorite Baldwin book. It takes us through time from the rural South to the northern ghetto as it contrasts the attitudes of two generations of an African-American family,

Reading this book has increased my understanding of Harlem life for the little black kid John. Baldwin's minutely detailed descriptions of a black family are now marked on my memory forever. I think about that family and the portion that each member brought to the book's table.
As so well explained by Baldwin, the spirit of God is felt in widely differing ways. The culture that Baldwin's Harlem family is steeped in has formed John's view so vividly that I can SEE his dilemma: ..."John could not bow before the throne of grace without first kneeling to his father. On his refusal to do this had his life depended, and John's secret heart had flourished in its wickedness until the day his sin first overtook him."