Service95 Recommends is the home of the books we love and reviews from our contributors. Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin is the first novel from one of America’s most famous writers. It follows Johnny Grimes as he traverses 1930s Harlem in this story of family life and religion.
What Ocean Says: “The novel that Baldwin claims he ‘had to write if [he were] ever to write anything else’ is a masterclass on how potent and vital an autobiographical text can be for a writer of colour. In a literary culture that often casts the debut as arriving out of serendipitous phenomenon, the autobiographical novel, as evidenced by Baldwin, serves as a map of one’s journey towards art...”
What They Say: “His prose hit me, almost winding me with its intensity. I’d never read a novel that described loneliness and desire with such burning eloquence” — The Guardian
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Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American writer, professor, photographer, and author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
