Go tell it on the mountain :James Baldwin

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James Baldwin

James Baldwin was born in Harlem, New York City, as the son of a local worker. Growing up with the aspiration to be a great writer. Even though James was brought up in severe poverty he did not let this hold him back from becoming one of the greatest writers. As a young child he did not have a male figure in his life until he was three, when his mother married a factory worker, who also was a storefront preacher. Baldwin adopted his name from his stepfather, who died from complications in 1943. As a child Baldwin loved to read, anything he could get his hands on he would read. When he was about twelve years old his first publication appeared in a church newspaper. After graduation from high school, he worked in several low paying jobs and started his literary work.

When he first began his literary works publishers rejected them.

Baldwin's book reviews and essays in The New Leader, The Nation, Commentary and Partisan Review, together with the help of Richard Wright, won him a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1948. Baldwin's did not have the best relationship with his father, mostly because they opposing views on certain subject matters. The disagreements were mostly over sexual identity. But in 1948 the unbearable racism and the suicide of a close friend drove him to leave the country and flee to Paris London. While Baldwin was living in Paris he finished the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain. He stayed over seas for approximately 10 years.

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Then Baldwin came back to the U.S. in order to become involved in the Southern struggle against school desegregation.

His novel Go Tell It on the Mountain was based on his experiences as a teenage preacher in a small...