But even in these written works, we ‘hear’ the printed word striving to imitate the power of the spoken word, just as Zora Neale Hurston’s fictions mimic secular vernacular forms and Langston Hughes’s and Sterling A. … Baldwin’s literary legacy, in fiction, reached its most sublime extension in Toni Morrison’s mythopoeic fictional universes. As Gates points out, “In the canonical works in the African American literary tradition, no text is more resonantly foundational, more unmistakable than the King James Bible … this tradition reaches its zenith in the prose of James Baldwin. A companion to the PBS series of the same name, Gates’ book starts by recalling the inextricable ways that language and music are woven into the hope and resilience that are inherent in the Black church and that the church provides for the community. reminds us of one of the most enduring contributions of the Black church: music. In his eloquent new book, The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song (Penguin), Henry Louis Gates Jr. His drifting soul was anchored in the love of God.” Baldwin brilliantly captures not only the struggle between light and dark embedded in the language and belief in many Black churches, but he vividly evokes the sing-song language of the Black church, as well as the soul-shaking power of singing and music. Fear was upon him, a more deadly fear than he had ever known, as he turned and turned in the darkness, as he moaned, and stumbled, and crawled through darkness, finding no hand, no voice, finding no door.” As he is led into the light by the congregation and baptized, he hears the sound of singing, and “the singing was for him. (There’s a reason, after all, that “Grimes” is the protagonist’s last name.) Lying there on the floor, John struggles through a descent into darkness, seeing in his trance-like state the loneliness and wretchedness of hell he yearns to “flee - out of this darkness, out of this company - into the land of the living, so high, so far away. The scene is at once violent and soul-rending, for John’s father, the preacher of the church, towers over his son in anger over the young boy’s dirty and unwashed soul, for his son’s sinfulness. The young protagonist, John Grimes, writhes on the floor of his father’s church, surrounded by the congregation who are praying for his salvation. One of the most riveting scenes in American literature is the threshing floor episode in James Baldwin’s novel Go Tell It on the Mountain.
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