A dazzling memoir that explores what it means to become fully
alive and holy when we embrace the silenced stories we’ve
inherited—from the creator of Black
Coffee with White Friends.
“Marcie Alvis Walker writes with an honesty that is both
dauntless and compassionate.”—Cole Arthur Riley, author of This
Here Flesh
In her debut book, Everybody Come Alive, Marcie Alvis Walker
invites readers into 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.
While swimming in rivers of racial trauma and racial reckoning, Alvis
Walker explores her earliest memories—of abandonment and erasure,
of her mother’s 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. Nostalgic but
unflinching, candid yet tender, Everybody Come Alive is an
invitation to be vulnerable along with the author as she unravels all
the beauty and terror of God, race, and gender’s 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 embraces being Black, a
woman, and holy in America. Alvis Walker’s 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.