I was delighted to meet Patrice Gopo last spring at the Festival of Faith and Writing. She introduced her friend, Kate Motaung, in a little gathering celebrating Kate’s book release, and even though I didn’t know Patrice, I was moved and touched by the beautiful words she spoke in honor of her friend.
When I saw that Patrice recently released a book herself, I went out on a limb and messaged her on Instagram if ask if, on the off chance, she would be interested in guest posting over here, because I was really excited to introduce you to her voice and a bit of her story. Lucky us, she said yes! Her writing is at the same time quietly powerful, eloquent and lyrical, and I know you will find her as compelling as I do.
Please welcome Patrice Gopo to the blog today, and be sure to enter a comment at the end of this post for a chance to receive a free copy of her beautiful book, All the Colors We Will See: Reflections on Barriers, Brokenness, and Finding Our Way.
In the nightmare I find my toddler face up in a shallow pool. Her wide eyes haunt me. Her clothes balloon with water. I lean over, yank her out, and hold her lifeless body in my arms. I wake, open-mouthed, to the din of absolute silence.
Now alert in the night, I can split dream from reality. I know my daughter sleeps close by. But I see those vacant eyes. The limp body. The spreading circle of damp on my imagined clothes.
***
I am eleven years old when my pastor dunks me into a baptistery filled with water. Raised to walk in new life, I hear when pulled to the surface. A large towel greets me as I exit, my clothes heavy on my limbs, a puddle forming at my feet. Beneath the soft fabric, my skin feels the cool air, and my body begins to shake.
In the future words gush with great force. Well-intentioned opinions flood my mind and make my lungs burn for breath. Taught as tenets of this faith, I hear instructions about being submissive, respectful, and the keeper of the home. An ancient role, I’m told, assigned from the time the Tigris and Euphrates rushed through Eden.
There are things I will come to regret. The way I shrank myself, the way I silenced my voice, the way I believed that idea to be truth. But I will not regret that moment of immersion.
***
I gave birth to my daughter in a tub of warm water. She slipped from the sac of fluid within me to the birthing pool surrounding me. Below where I crouched and pushed, she could have remained there for seconds, minutes, maybe more, her body attached to a pulsating cord.
Instead, the midwife’s hands sank below the surface, cupped my girl’s wrinkled body, and guided the fresh baby to her mother. Thin skin pressed against my wet chest as I waited for a scream that never came. Just the flutter of a heartbeat and a soft mew.
“The gentle birth,” the midwife said while she drained the tub. “Water babies don’t really cry.”
***
Sometimes I daydream about my girl far in the future when she is big and grown. She stands on the bank of a great river or walks barefoot beside the ocean’s many lapping tongues. Her wide eyes stare into a blurry distance beyond the range of my imagination.
And I think how around her, words can rise. How jagged twists on a faith I have handed her may one day creep close and soak her shoes, her clothes, her being. But my daughter, I dream she floats in the river current, breathes with the ocean’s waves. Her strong arms cut through walls of water in a way even her mother never knew.
Why did I believe for so long? Because I didn’t know there existed a way to stop and still remain.
***
In the bright of morning, after the time for nightmares is over, I hear my toddler’s waking cries. Later we walk past a fountain. Her squeals prod me to stare with her at slim arcs of water splashing into the pool below. I loosen my grip on her hand and watch her touch the slight spray of what she has known since her beginning.
(This post originally appeared in the Journal of Compressed Creative Arts and is used with permission)
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Patrice Gopo is a 2017-2018 North Carolina Arts Council Literature Fellow. She is the author of All the Colors We Will See: Reflections on Barriers, Brokenness, and Finding Our Way, an essay collection about race, immigration, and belonging. Her book is a Fall 2018 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Please visit patricegopo.com/book to learn more. Facebook: @patricegopowrites; Instagram/Twitter: @patricegopo.
Patrice has graciously offered to give away a copy of her beautiful book, All the Colors We Will See. To be entered to win, simply leave a comment on this post — tell me the best book you’ve read in the last six months.
One name will be randomly drawn on Wednesday, August 29 at 8 p.m. Central Time, and I will notify the winner by email.
Gorgeous words. I am so glad you introduced us to this wonderful author and poet. I”m going to look for her further.
Ooh I’ve been looking forward to this book. The best book I read this summer was The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante. Mind altering.
Beautifully written! She makes me want to read more, learn more. Thank you for sharing Michelle!
Wow, powerful essay! Must add this book to my reading list. I really enjoyed reading “The Lake House” by Kate Morton this summer.
This book is currently sitting on my desk – ready & waiting for me. I am so looking forward to reading it as I have heard so many wonderful things about it.
Wow. Powerful images and connections and questions. Will be reflecting on them for a while. Thanks for sharing with us!
Forgot to share a favorite book from this summer – “Maja and Me: My Journey with My Lesbian Daughter” by Mary Rose Knutson.
Beautiful – thanks for sharing! Best book I’ve read is Boundless Compassion by Joyce Rupp.
Michelle, you were right. Patrice has a lovely way with words and I am excited to read her All The Colors We Will See. Race and immigration…what a important conversation right now…I am thinking this would be a great selection for book clubs to read.
Thanks Michelle, for sharing Patricia’s lyrical voice. I’m glad you invited her to share your space. I want to hear more about that last line, ” I didn’t know there was a way to stop and still remain.” I read Hilary Yancey’s book, “Forgiving God” recently and I’m still thinking about how she said hard things.
Thanks Michelle, for sharing Patricia’s lyrical voice. I’m glad you invited her to share your space.
I want to hear more about that last line, ” I didn’t know there was a way to stop and still remain.”
I read Hilary Yancey’s book, “Forgiving God” recently and I’m still thinking about how she said hard things.
Terri
Thank you for sharing this lovely and powerful writing. I would love to read the book. My favorite summer read was the novel “The Great Alone” by Kristin Hannah.
Oh my word! I’m breathless. This is hardly what I expected to awaken to, Michelle–words so immediate, so immensely powerful, so immeasurably moving. I rarely print out blogposts, but I will this, and take Patrice’s words with me on the drive to the cabin, where Michael and I are going to put things in better order since our little excursion there (and I’m going to put my life in better order too for a few hours of contemplation). And I’ll reread, rather imbibe Patrice’s water words, words that gush life. I need to read them again, let them wash over me, because they are splashing me awake in some strange way that I can’t articulate . . . like when you splash cold water on your face to awaken from deep sleep–anything, anything really to *wake up*! I truly have been sleepwalking through my life for a number of years. Patrice’s dream is haunting, haunting *me.* I have a recurring water dream too from time to time–dream or real memory? I’m under water, eyes open. It’s yellowed and muddy (a river maybe), and while it’s shallow, I am trapped. I can’t rise. I’m frightened. I’m young. And then I awaken, never grasping the reality or the meaning of the dream. I think this happened, but I can never attach it to a tangible event in my life. It haunts too. I haven’t recalled it for a while till I read Patrice’s water words, especially these: “Raised to walk in new life.” I need to wake up. I need new life (even though, yes, I know I have this in Christ). But I’m not walking water-cleansed, raised, new. I’m not living my purpose. I’m wasting time–ergo, wasting life. And like Patrice, I’m questioning some things, much of which center on not just acting Christian, but truly *being* Christian. I see so much mean-spiritedness of late on social media, e.g., and from those I actually know well and love or those I admire from afar–cruel meanness directed towards the “other” (other race, other beliefs, other politics–just other), and I am wondering what it means to be Christian in this world. I thought I knew. I read how Jesus constantly raised people up to life–both literally from the dead and from the deadness of deadening ways. But I’m not seeing it in the world around me. I’ve asked my pastor if I’m crazy to want to live and behave differently. He says, emphatically, “No, Lynni! You’re growing, and that is a good thing.” Maybe growing is like awakening, like rising from having been submerged beneath water. I surely hope so. I know my post is rambling mercilessly, and for that I apologize. I can’t quite piece together the deep ways in which Patrice’s eloquent, evocative post is moving me on some meandering, but meaningful current of thought. Michelle, I’ll take her words with me, and I’ll take my journal and pen and see what else God shows me. But I love that she is refusing to accept the status quo of what was assigned her both as a woman (and perhaps by race and all the prejudice in this world), and moving out on a wave of wonder, waking up to a new, Christ-risen way of being in the world. Jesus walked on water after all, and He bids rise and walk toward Him and others on the current of His love. Thank you soooo much for sharing about this beautiful book. I’ve been reading much lately–so many good books. I particularly loved Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren…. another lovely, lyrical read. Thanks again dear Michelle!!
Love
Lynn
Michelle thanks for inviting your special guest, Patricia. Her words bring such daunting thoughts and deep compassion for life! I hope her words reach many as they are needed to be heard! I am reading several devotions about nature and horses. Unbridled Faith has been a book that has proven to be a surprise book read this summer as I love horses and have never taken the time to learn the countless spiritual lessons we can learn from them. Anyone with a love of horses would really enjoy this devotion. The extra bonus to this book was it is written by Larry the Cable Guy’s wife, Cara Whitney.
Thanks for the opportunity to win this book! I’m always on the lookout for new authors.
And how on earth do I choose the best book I’ve read in the last 6 months?! I’m re-reading Gracelaced by Ruth Chou Simons right now, and finding it more meaningful now even than the first time around. One of my top fiction books I’ve read in the last few months was the House on Foster Hill by Jaime Jo Wright.
Fabulous!
Patrice is now ‘found & followed’ !
Thank you for the introduction, Michelle.
Best read in 6 months ?
A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live
by Emily P. Freeman
Patrice writes with such lovely words. A soothing author even through difficult subjects. My favorite book the past 6 months? The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton about being falsely imprisoned for almost 30 years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit.
Wow, I’ve heard of his story, Lisa. Can you fathom this?? Need to read this. Tx for the reminder.
L
Her words are lovely. Thank you for the chance to win this book. The book I liked best this past six months was Prayers of Honoring bu Pixie Lighthorse.
*by
Many thanks, Michelle, for sharing Patrice’s book – I would like to own it just for the shear beauty of the front cover!
My favorite read this summer was: God in the Yard – Spiritual Practice for the Rest of Us, by L. L. Barkat.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful author with us. Can’t wait to read the book! My favorite book this summer has been Tattoos on the Heart but Gregory Boyle.
The book that stands out to me and was of great personal help was, “Free of Me”, by Sharon Hodde Miller.
I loved being introduced to Patrice’s book. I am always on the look out for something new for our breakfast with Jesus weekly book club. We are just finishing up Heavenly Help by Sarah Bowling and we are all enjoying it. Next up is a book by Sandra McCollum, who is Joyce Meyer’s daughter. Earlier in the year we did your Luther book and it was a hit with all of us. In my own personal reading I just finished another book by Sejal Badani, The Storyteller’s Secret. I really enjoyed it. I would love to win this book because it can get expensive finding the next selection for BWJ.
The Masterpiece by Francine Rivers
It was recommended over and over, but to be honest I was listening to it on CD I truly did not get what all the hype was about?
About the last 2 or 3 discs I started to be drawn in. The end is amazing!
I ordered the large print copy from my library my mother took it and read it and now I am going to read it again so I can pay closer attention and really savor the ending this time!
Such beautiful language and word pictures! I’ve been hearing a lot about this book, and it looks like a great read. Thanks for your recommendation!
Powerful words
The best book I’ve read in the last six months is “The Gospel Comes with a Housekey,” by Rosaria Butterfield. Masterfully blends Grace and Truth….a worthwhile read.
“Her strong arms cut through walls of water in a way even her mother never knew.” A perfect description of my grown-up daughter and me.
Recently I read and, considering the topic of this post, recommend “Sing for Me” a novel by Karen Halvorsen Schreck. Set in 1937, it’s the story of a talented singer who breaks barriers of color for love and the love of music. Enjoy… xoxox
Beautiful, beautiful writing! Best book in my summer reading was God Help the Child by Toni Morrison.
Wow…that is something that needs to be read and reread and reread….what a gift if words! I would love to read her whole book!! The best book I’ve read lately is “Rhythms of Rest” by Shelly Miller….life changing.
Patrice has a real gift with words and the subject matter is one I am diving deep into these days.
My favorite read over the last 6 months, The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton. I truly cannot get it out of my mind and heart. A hard but beautiful, dare I say, life-changing read!
Thank you! The best book I’ve read is Whispers of Rest by Bonnie Graye. I’m reading it over and over.
It’s awesome for me to have a site, which is good in favor of my experience.
thanks admin
What an amazingly beautiful piece of writing! I am blessed by reading it; the book is amazing, I’m sure.
Blessings,
Kim
“What Alice Forgot” by Liane Moriarty
OH! I did not meet Patricia at FFW, but I’m glad to meet her here….and see she is coming to Greensboro, my new hometown, in November. I look forward to that!
I’m currently into Jacqueline Woodson’s “Brown Girl Dreaming.” Reading it silently while sitting in hospital waiting rooms, then reading it aloud on the ride back home…..to the great enjoyment of all!