When A Caged Bird Sings... Listen

A Black Eyed Story

Pearl de Luna. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

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I was in a rut. 

Nope, that’s not it.

I had a severe case of writer’s block. 

But, no. That’s not it either. 

I know. Here it is—something was broken inside of me. Was it a broken heart? Was it a broken dream? Something was hurting. But what? 

I didn’t feel good about myself. It’d been a long time since the last time I’d felt good about myself. Even longer since the last time I’d felt good within myself. It’d been an eternity since the last time I felt a quarter-filled-whole. It’d been forever and a day since the last time I felt any glimmer of hope. I saw the clouds, but not a single sliver of a silver lining. The days were the darkest dark. I’d lost my way home within the walls of my own home. I was listless. I felt the weight of nothing and everything. I felt my resilience had run out. The credits started to roll. The end. I was done. 

And that’s how I felt when my debut book released into the world. 

But from the top, shall we? 

I have loved books & wanted nothing more in life than to live a life within the world of books.

When I was a sweet, young, 27 year-old thing, I coerced my living-with-me-in-sin boyfriend into an engagement that only I was interested in. There was no proposal. No ring. Just a wedding date and an audacious expectation: “I think we should get married in August.” I can’t even remember what he said in return. The next weekend, we went to the mall to buy our wedding bands from a very nice kiosk. 

When you go to get your marriage license there’s a tiny box on the form that says “occupation.”

I hadn’t known about this detail until a girl who was a server with me at a fancy-pants Chicago restaurant informed me. “I had to say server,” she told the lunch crew as we polished the Riedel wine glasses and filled little copper salt and pepper shakers. She had actually, really and truly, gotten engaged on bended knee with a platinum and diamond ring. “My marriage license will say ‘server’ from this day forward till death do us part,” she added.

I quit my job the next day. Two weeks later, I started working at the Borders Books and Music flagship store on the Magnificent Mile, right next door to my former employer.

Forever, from this day forward, till death do us part, the tiny box marked “occupation” on the marriage license for my first marriage says “bookseller.” I’m happy to say that not even our divorce papers can change this. 

I have loved books and wanted nothing more in life than to live a life within the world of books. Like any actor, or musician, or grad student, or artist, we writers have slung our fair amount of hash with our dreams ever before us.

I’ve worked in highbrow restaurants serving foie gras and black truffles and vintage wines to the well-connected and wealthy while I wrote poems on the side. I’ve worked in hoity-toity boutiques hawking sofas and candles that I could never afford while I wrote a romance novel. I’ve worked as a nanny, rocking babies whose net worth was way more than I’d ever live to know while I wrote essays. I’ve worked this job and then that job. But working as a bookseller in a four-story bookstore was the best and the worst of all for a girl who, in her free time, wrote and dreamed and wrote so more.

The perks: 

• I had a 40% discount on just about everything except magazines. 

• For employees, the store was our library. I could “borrow” any book I’d like for up to two weeks. 

• I could keep any ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) conveniently left in the break room. 

• I got to meet every celebrity selling a book or CD (CDs, kids - it was the late 90s). I snuck Whoopi Goldberg into my manager’s office so she could smoke a cigarette. 

• I met every celebrity who came to shop for a book. I helped Mick Jagger’s kids pick out books in our Children’s section.

• I met literary giants. I got to assist the event manager with Madeleine L’Engle’s book-signing. 

The downside: I saw how the sausage was made. 

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Laetitia de Haas. “Bookstore” Cosy Dutch Painting of People Browsing in a Bookstore

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Did you know that just about every part of a bookstore is bought? The books out on the front tables pay rent to be there. The kiosk of the latest bestseller pays for their plot of land. And the discounted books castigated to basements, backrooms, and dark corners aren’t bad books. Much like the little tree in A Charlie Brown Christmas, they just need a little love and attention and they would bloom and glow right before our very eyes. 

Deserving books are not the bestsellers. “Bestseller” means exactly that—the most sold. It’s not called the New York Times Best-Written, or the New York Times Best Stories. And even when a book list is based on merit, like any awards program, those who are most deserving are often snubbed.

Glenn Close has never won an Oscar. Diana Ross never won a Grammy in a competitive category (she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement award). Barbra Streisand never won a Tony in a competitive category (she was awarded an honorary Star of the Decade). Proof that most lauded doesn’t mean most venerable. Most celebrated doesn’t always mean hardest-working. 

I was a wanna-be writer helping people find the latest James Patterson while quietly reorganizing my dreams to manage my lofty and grand expectations to one day be a literary darling. When I learned that most of the literary darlings I loved never made it big (or if they did, couldn’t manage to stay big) I asked myself the same question Langston Hughes asked America: “What happens to a dream deferred?” 

I felt my dream slipping. 

I mean, what hope did I have if Octavia Butler suffered a dry-season with nary a word published for five long years? I’m 54 years old. Do I have five years to spare out in the desert? How could I summon the nerve to think that maybe one day I’d receive an invitation to sit across from Oprah as she fawned over my book if it took Toni Morrison decades to be rightfully rewarded with such a platform? And if I stayed true to my roots, underprivileged and unlettered, would I, too, someday be buried in a pauper’s grave like Zora Neale Hurston until some benevolent progeny from the Black culturati came to save me? 

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Everybody Come Alive: A Memoir In Essays by Yours Truly – Marcie Alvis Walker

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I decided I would never publish a book. I’d write, but never subject myself to such a sullen final chapter. I’d write and read and find another way to make something of myself in this world.

For 30 years I tried to do just that. Never quite making something of myself, but by God, I was making it even if I was only earning the bare minimum, only awarded the “almost” leadership jobs. And I was happy (well, happy enough). But also restless. Until one day, I hit “publish” on my first blog post. 

Sometimes, you get exactly what you dreamed of. But what no one really talks about is that our dreamiest dreams are full of doubts, what-ifs, and paralyzing self-examination. Our dreams, while lovely and delectable, are also roofied with comparison, envy, perfectionism, shame, stress, frustration and—the strychnine of them all—fear. It’s a scary thing to get exactly what you were waiting for, especially if it arrives not as you expected. And may I just say, dear reader or listener: it most always arrives not as you expected.

So on May 30, 2023, I, Marcie Alvis Walker, had a book in bookstores. It’s been everything bright, beautiful and shiny, but also totally devastating. And as I’m sure many of you know from experiences of your own, it’s not the highs but the devastating lows that want to cling to us. 

Two nights ago, out of nowhere, I grieved and sobbed over my beloved little book’s journey into the world. In short, it’s hard to turn social media followers into readers. It’s even harder to do it in Black skin. I sobbed and sobbed while Simon worriedly held me and wished everything better. 

To be clear, I never expected to have a bestseller. At least not really, though every writer can hope – and I’m no different. I had hoped to just sell enough to grow my newsletter and maybe, just maybe, be able to finally call this thing that I’ve committed myself to everyday – a bona fide career. 

One day during my time as a bookseller at Borders, I stumbled upon a copy of the renowned poet, Li Young Lee’s memoir The Winged Seed. There were dozens of them neatly piled in two tall stacks on a remainder table in the sales section buried down in the corner of the basement. I was appalled. How could this be? Did the world not know how deserving any work of his was? 

Not long after that, I got to go to one of his readings. He was charming, affable, moving, and surprisingly funny. I sat in the front row, right in front of his podium – so close, I could reach out and touch him. When the Q&A portion of the evening opened, I was the first fan he called on: “Thank you Mr. Lee,” I reverently began, my bewildered heart running wild in my chest. “I read The Winged Seed. It was so beautiful. Would you ever write another memoir?”

He put his hand on his heart and gave me a nod of gratitude for my question. “Thank you for reading it. I really cherish that book. I thought it’d gone out-of-print.” 

As I sobbed and I sobbed, this was the memory that kept trying to save me. 

The next morning, I woke up early, puffy-eyed and heavy-lidded with dread. I decided to take our dog Evie on her walk alone by myself to collect thoughts. As we wandered the sidewalks, to keep my mind from whirling itself out-of-sync with calm reticence, I decided to listen to Maya Angelou reading Letter To My Daughter. No more than two minutes in, her words restored me and, I’m quite sure, healed me. Her voice spoke these words directly into my ear: 

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.

So my book is out. If you look at my Instagram numbers (and publishers do!) the sales are dismal in comparison. But the reviews have astonished me with their accolades. I mean, I know that I love my book, but to have others love it too? What a blessing.

When it comes down to it, I wasted a lot of years pitying myself because I’d learned that the thing dreamed— becoming an author—was not as easy, not as guaranteed and definitely not as romantic as it seemed.

It’s a common thing to only see the perfection of this profession, and that’s the only part of the profession that most of us will ever see: authors celebrating the book deal, hitting the best-seller, doing the coveted interviews, winning the elusive awards. But of all those shelves and rows and shelves and rows of books, this Instagram-perfect picture just can’t be possible for all of us. Not even the Li-Young Lee’s of the world.

I wrote a book and I will always cherish it. I’m certain that someday—probably sooner than I would like, judging from my less than lucrative sales—it will go out-of-print. But I will still cherish it. 

I don’t know what may or may not happen to me as a writer. I can’t control that. The only thing I can do is write. I don’t know if I’ll ever make a living as a writer. Judging from my bank account, perhaps not. And I’m fairly certain I’ll never be a literary darling with awards pinned to my name. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t be literary, and it doesn’t mean that the work can’t be rewarding.

So no more sobbing. I wanna be a rainbow, not a cloud. 

Oh and you’ll be relieved to know, The Winged Seed is still in print. Not a bestseller but one of the best written. 

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