James Baldwin: Beyond Jails & Churches

“You think that's all that's in the world is jails and churches?”
—Roy Grimes to his mother, in Go Tell It On the Mountain

“Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty—necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.”
— James Baldwin, "Letter from a Region in My Mind" (New Yorker, 17 Nov. 1962; reprinted in The Fire Next Time, 1963).

In this essay I explain my long-standing impulse to read Baldwin's first novel Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953):

James Baldwin Revisited (1): Prolegomena

And here is my review:

James Baldwin Revisited (2): Go Tell It on the Mountain