Go Tell It on the Mountain

by James Baldwin

since he was noticed by an eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individual existence.

he could not tell what he most passionately desired to know: whether his face was ugly or not.

he began to dust them with the exaggerated care of the profoundly preoccupied.

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.

Why did his mother weep? Why did his father frown? If God’s power was so great, why were their lives so troubled?

without the pride and bitterness she had so long carried in her heart against her aunt she could never have endured her life with her.

Not even tonight, in the heart’s nearly impenetrable secret place, where the truth is hidden and where only the truth can live, could she wish that she had not known him;

Perhaps she had lost her love because she had not, in the end, believed in it enough.

on looking back, she was able to see clearly what she then so incoherently felt: how much she needed another human being, somewhere, who knew the truth about her.

When one set of folks got tired of me they sent me down the line. Yes, down the line, through poverty, hunger, wandering, cruelty, fear, and trembling, to death.

“Yes,” said Florence, moving to the window, “the menfolk, they die, all right. And it’s us women who walk around, like the Bible says, and mourn. The menfolk, they die, and it’s over for them, but we women, we have to keep on living and try to forget what they done to us.

folks sure better not do in the dark what they’s scared to look at in the light.”