Though her family sometimes received food stamps and occasionally had their utilities cut off, Marcie Alvis Walker’s parents led her to believe that they were an average middle-class Black family. They encouraged her to pursue her dreams and told her that if she worked hard enough, she’d achieve them. The small catch was that Walker’s dream was an elusive one for any cash-strapped and undereducated Black woman: being a New York Times-bestselling author. Now, as a published non-bestselling author, she wishes she’d had a backup plan.
Though no one had said otherwise, my mother felt it necessary to regularly and relentlessly remind me and my siblings that there was more Black representation in the ’90s and early ’00s, when we all came of age, than there was when she did in the ’50s and early ’60s.
