Go Tell It on the Mountain James Baldwin This is 1 of 12 vintage paperback classics that comprise our current giveaw@y

The Carnivorous Lamb / Go Tell It on the Mountain / Sula / Mathilda / The Gospel Singer / Lolita

Books starting after it's too late

That's when I saw the photograph.

Facing us, on every newspaper kiosk

on that wide, tree-shaded boulevard in Paris

were photographs of fifteen-year-old Dorothy Counts

being reviled and spat upon by the mob

as she was making her way to school

in Charlotte, North Carolina.

James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro.

James Baldwin, from Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

I be walking around minding my own business and then randomly remember "Love has never been a popular movement and no one's ever wanted really to be free" and just collapse

"I just don't want him beating on me all the time," he said at last. "I ain't no dog." She sighed, and turned slightly away, looking out of the window. "Your daddy beats you," she said, "because he loves you." Roy laughed. "That ain't the kind of love l understand, old lady. What you reckon he'd do if he didn't love me?"

- Go Tell It On the Mountain, James Baldwin

At the time this picture was taken, Aunt Florence said, he was already a preacher, and had a wife who was now in Heaven. That he had been a preacher at that time was not astonishing, for it was impossible to imagine that he had ever been anything else; but that he had had a wife in the so distant past who was now dead filled John with a wonder by no means pleasant. If she had lived, John thought, then he would never have been born; his father would never have come North and met his mother. And this shadowy woman, dead so many years whose name he knew had been Deborah, held in the fastness of her tomb, it seemed to John, the key to all those mysteries he so longed to unlock. It was she who had known his father in a life where John was not, and in a country John had never seen. When he was nothing, nowhere, dust, cloud, air and sun, and falling rain, not even thought of, said his mother, in Heaven with the angels, said his aunt, she had known his father, and shared his father's house. She had loved his father. She had known his father when lightning flashed and thunder rolled through Heaven, and his father said: "Listen. God is talking." She had known him in the mornings of that far-off country when his father turned on his bed and opened his eyes, and she had looked into those eyes, seeing what they held, and she had not been afraid. She had seen him baptized, kicking like a mule and howling, and she had seen him weep when his mother died; he was a right young man then, Florence said. Because she had looked into those eyes before they had looked on John, she knew what John would never know—the purity of his father's eyes when John was not reflected in their depths. She could have told him—had he but been able from his hiding-place to ask!—how to make his father love him. But now it was too late.

Go Tell It On The Mountain, James Baldwin, 1953

White rejects light/ while blackness drinks it in/ becoming many colors

James Baldwin, “Song (for Skip)”

He left Fifth Avenue and walked west towards the movie houses. Here on 42nd Street it was less elegant but no less strange. He loved this street, not for the people or the shops but for the stone lions that guarded the great main building of the Public Library, a building filled with books and unimaginably vast, and which he had never yet dared to enter. He might, he knew, for he was a member of the branch in Harlem and was entitled to take books from any library in the city. But he had never gone in because the building was so big that it must be full of corridors and marble steps, in the maze of which he would be lost and never find the book he wanted. And then everyone, all the white people inside would know that he was not used to great buildings, or to many books, and they would look at him with pity. He would enter on another day, when he had read all the books uptown, an achievement that would, he felt, lend him the poise to enter any building in the world.

     —James Baldwin, Go Tell It On the Mountain, 1953

Photo: Susan Candelario via Fine Art America

Εκδοτικό γεγονός των ημερών θεωρώ την έκδοση του πρώτου μυθιστορήματος του Τζέιμς Μπόλντουιν Ανέβα στο βουνό να το φωνάξεις (Go tell it on the mountain), που κυκλοφορεί σε μετάφραση του συγγραφέα Χρήστου Οικονόμου (εκδόσεις Πόλις). Το μυθιστόρημα αυτό, που έχει πίσω του περισσότερο από εβδομήντα χρόνια ζωής, καθώς εκδόθηκε το 1953, ολοκληρώθηκε στο Παρίσι, όπου ο Μπόλντουιν είχε εγκατασταθεί από το 1948. Γεννημένος το 1924, βρήκε στο Παρίσι συνθήκες ελευθερίας ή, τουλάχιστον, λιγότερο ρατσισμό σε σχέση με αυτό που βίωνε στη Νέα Υόρκη. Δεν ήταν ο μόνος.

Ο Τζον Γκράιμς, ένας ευαίσθητος και χαρισματικός έφηβος, μεγαλώνει στο Χάρλεμ. Η οικογένειά του τον προετοιμάζει για να γίνει ιεροκήρυκας.

Τη νύχτα των γενεθλίων του όμως, όταν κλείνει τα δεκατέσσερα, θα βιώσει μια πρωτοφανούς έντασης ηθική και πνευματική κρίση. Θέλει να ορίζει ο ίδιος τον εαυτό του. Αλλά ένας νέος που προέρχεται από ένα τόσο βαθιά θρησκευόμενο περιβάλλον έχει δικαίωμα επιλογής; Και, ακόμα περισσότερο, πόσο ελεύθερος μπορεί να είναι ένας νεαρός μαύρος Αμερικανός, τη δεκαετία του ’30;

Σε αυτό το πρώτο του μυθιστόρημα -ένα από τα κλασικά κείμενα, όχι μόνο της αμερικανικής, αλλά και της παγκόσμιας λογοτεχνίας, βιβλίο που επηρέασε αποφασιστικά συγγραφείς όπως η Toni Morrison και η Maya Angelou- ο Τζέιμς Μπόλντουιν μεταπλάθει προσωπικές του εμπειρίες από τα νεανικά του χρόνια στη Νέα Υόρκη της Μεγάλης Ύφεσης και αφηγείται, με σπαρακτική ειλικρίνεια, μια πολυεπίπεδη ιστορία βίαιης αλλά και λυτρωτικής ενηλικίωσης, που συνυφαίνεται αριστοτεχνικά με τη συλλογική οδύσσεια των μαύρων της Αμερικής, τη βαθιά και περίπλοκη σχέση τους με τη θρησκεία και τον αδιάκοπο αγώνα τους ενάντια στην αδικία, τη μισαλλοδοξία και τον ρατσισμό.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

today’s little book haul! i got these two super cute bookmarks for free too

Christmas Songs 2023 Day Four

Merry Christmas!

@jrob64 @snowbellewells @kmomof4 @whimsicallyenchantedrose

⭐️ A lovely Christmas angel ✨⭐️

"And with every step I took it became more impossible for me to turn back. And my mind was empty—or it was as though my mind had become one enormous, anaesthetized wound. I thought only, One day I’ll weep for this. One of these days I’ll start to cry."

-Giovanni's room, James Baldwin

Go Tell It On The Mountain!