All the Colors We Will See: Reflections on Barriers, Brokenness, and Finding Our Way

“With this exquisitely composed [essay collection], Patrice Gopo sets herself apart as one of the most promising and talented writers of faith of our time. All the Colors We Will See is evocative, compelling, surprising, and brave. Gopo has a special talent for weaving her story into the narratives of Scripture and for guiding the reader through some of the difficult realities of race, immigration, and identity in America with wisdom and grace. It’s rare to encounter a book that manages to be this honest and this generous with its readers at the same time. Every page, every sentence, is a gift!” —Rachel Held Evans, author, Searching for Sunday and Inspired 

Patrice Gopo grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, the child of Jamaican immigrants who had little experience being black in America. From her white Sunday school classes as a child, to her early days of marriage in South Africa, to a new home in the American South with a husband from another land, Patrice’s life is a testament to the challenges and beauty of the world we each live in, a world in which cultures overlap every day.

In All the Colors We Will See, Patrice seamlessly moves across borders of space and time to create vivid portraits of how the reality of being different affects her quest to belong. In this poetic and often courageous collection of essays, Patrice examines the complexities of identity in our turbulent yet hopeful time of intersecting heritages. As she digs beneath the layers of immigration questions and race relations, Patrice also turns her voice to themes such as marriage and divorce, the societal beauty standards we hold, and the intricacies of living out our faith.

With an eloquence born of pain and longing, Patrice’s reflections guide us as we consider our own journeys toward belonging, challenging us to wonder if the very differences dividing us might bring us together after all.

Praise for All the Colors We Will See

“What I find so very moving about this book is that its calm voice and winsome demeanor allow it to speak hard truths. Ms. Gopo is a writer both thoughtful and bold, deliberate and graceful, compassionate and rock solid. This is a wise and ruminative book on color, marriage, the church, and what it takes to continue in Christ’s love despite the fallen and falling world around us.” — Bret Lott, author, Letters and Life and Jewel

“As a white woman who grew up in South Africa, I’m so grateful to Patrice, a black woman who grew up in Alaska, for opening the pages of her life. My story is changed and challenged and enriched because of hers. And I am in her debt.” — Lisa-Jo Baker, bestselling author of Never Unfriended and Surprised by Motherhood

“In the chasm between race and culture lies Patrice Gopo’s heartfelt collection of essays. All the Colors We Will See is an interrogation of blackness and belonging from a woman who is as much Alaskan as she is Jamaican, Asian as she is Southern, engineer as she is writer, faithful as she is doubting. As she searches “for something that is lost before we can even remember,” Gopo arrives at the intersection of God, race, and country to realize that the only robes that fit are her own.”— Desiree Cooper, Next Generation Indie Book Award winner and author, Know the Mother

Patrice Gopo is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, and she was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. Her essays have appeared in a variety of literary journals and other publications, including Creative Nonfiction, Gulf Coast, Full Grown People, and Christianity Today. Her radio commentaries have been featured on her local public radio station. Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she is the grateful recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship in Literature.

Patrice has a bachelor of science in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and both a master of business administration and a master of public policy from the University of Michigan. While she is thankful she’s had the opportunity to study several different subjects, she’s also thrilled that engineering led to community development, which led to writing. Sometimes she wonders what might be next. She lives with her family in North Carolina—a place she has recently begun to consider another home. All the Colors We Will See is her first book.