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Long before he or a loving guy could claim his body, Baldwin was taught to feel suspicious and bereaved about it. He was born in Harlem in 1924, the first son of a domestic worker named Emma Berdis Jones. Berdis married David Baldwin, a Harlem-based pastor, in 1927. Berdis had moved up to New York from Maryland, and David had come from New Orleans as part of the Great Migration. They eventually had eight more children together. Baldwin, as the eldest, was responsible for his younger siblings; he was also detested by his adopted father, who never missed a chance to label him ugly. As a result, Baldwin became a boy preacher in pursuit of affirmation -- and to outdo his father at his own game -- and quit the church at the age of 16. It never left him, though. When David Baldwin died, he was a few days shy of 19 and living away from home, still "locked up in his terrors," as Baldwin wrote in "Notes of a Native Son," his 1955 essay. "Go Tell It on the Mountain" was a remembrance of Baldwin's mother's love, his father's bitterness, and the world that formed him, the bastard child eternally seeking legitimacy while clashing with and attempting to destroy the established quo. Postcolonial thought takes numerous forms and interventions, but all of them share a fundamental claim: the society we live in cannot be understood apart from its history of imperialism and colonial control. James Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room was published in 1956.The novel focuses on the happenings in the life of an American guy living in Paris, as well as his feelings and disappointments with his connections with other men, particularly an Italian bartender named Giovanni whom he meets at a gay bar in Paris. Giovanni's Room is notable for presenting complicated images of homosexuality and bisexuality to a reading public with empathy and artistry, encouraging a greater public dialogue about same-sex desire issues.