Go Tell It on the Mountain

by James Baldwin

Looking at his face, it sometimes came to her that all women had been cursed from the cradle; all, in one fashion or another, being given the same cruel destiny, born to suffer the weight of men.

And through all this his mother’s eyes were on him; her hand, like fiery tongs, gripped the lukewarm ember of his heart; and caused him to feel, at the thought of death, another, colder terror.

Hauntingly beautiful prose.