Go Tell It On The Mountain - James Baldwin

This is a superbly constructed chronicle of a black family in America from the Nineteenth Century through to the fifties. There is a strong Exodus (and thus civil rights) theme, with characters repeatedly turning away and then returning to God, and a journey from slavery in the south to comparative freedom in New York. White people are either faceless or actively malevolent.

There are some lyrical, highly stylised passages as well as some realist moments. Both can be devastating, as in this description of an older woman's travails:

"by and by she had married and raised children, all of whom had been taken from her, one by sickness and two by auction".