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Everybody Come Alive
Everybody Come Alive: A Memoir in Essays | Marcie Alvis Walker
2 posts | 1 read | 1 to read
A dazzling memoir that explores what it means to become fully alive and holy when we embrace the silenced stories weve inheritedfrom the creator of Black Coffee with White Friends. To give you some idea of the kind of stuff Im made of, and the backbone from which I emerged and now stand, heres a story In her debut book, Everybody Come Alive, Marcie Alvis Walker invites offers readers a deeply intimate and illuminating memoir comprising lyrical essays and remembrances of being a curious child of the seventies and eighties, raised under the critical and watchful eye of Jim Crow matriarchs who struggled to integrate their lives and remain whole. Her writing is nostalgic but unflinching, candid yet tender. While swimming in rivers of racial trauma and racial reckoning, Alvis Walker explores her earliest memories of abandonment and erasure, of her mothers mental illness and incarceration, and of her ongoing struggles with perfectionism and body dysmorphia in hopes of leaving a healed and whole legacy for her own child. Everybody Come Alive is an invitation to be vulnerable along with her as she unravels all the beauty and terror of God, race, and genders imprint on her life. This is a coming-of-age journey touching on the bittersweet pain and joy of what it takes to become a person who fully embraces being Black, being a woman, and being holy in America. Alvis Walkers unforgettable writing challenges readers to not only see and hold her story as being fully human, but also to see and hold their own stories too.
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review
monalyisha
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Mehso-so

I was so excited about this memoir that I didn‘t just add it to my TBR. I preordered it. Now, I can‘t remember why! I don‘t remember where I read about it. And I don‘t know how I didn‘t realize that Walker would, as Kirkus puts it, “make extensive use of Christian theology.” God is a mystery and so am I, apparently — even to myself. 😅 👇🏻

monalyisha 1/2: At first, I thought her blunt exploration of her life and its lessons in relation to God, to Jesus, and to the Bible was revolutionary. It plays into her essay (poem?) about how very Black she wants to be (while not being limited or defined by her skin alone); her religion is a part of her culture. It‘s very much NOT a part of white Millennial culture (especially in New England)…but religion is always a topic that‘s fascinated me. (edited) 9mo
monalyisha 2/3: But then, I have to admit, I got a little bored. Not by her life! Her life stories are rich and deep. Her interdisciplinary critique of race, class, and mental health in America is sharp. But I was a little turned off by how much the essays felt like attending a Bible Study. (edited) 9mo
monalyisha 3/3: I can‘t pin down why this didn‘t work better for me than it did. It had a lot in common with Hijab Butch Blues (which I *loved*). I think it‘s because Walker focuses so heavily on not just the divine nature of God (and of humanity) but on particular passages and excerpts. Regardless, some pieces of some essays were fab. And sometimes, I found myself eager to be done. 9mo
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