Trespassers Will Be Baptized: The Unordained Memoir of a Preacher's Daughter

by Elizabeth Emerson Hancock

Elizabeth Emerson Hancock chronicles the hilarity and heartbreak of growing up as the preacher's daughter in the Southern Baptist church.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1599957086
• ISBN13: 9781599957081
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: Center Street
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

PK's memoir almost too smart for its own good!

Hancock's memoir about growing up as a pastor's daughter in the South during the 1980s is poignant and hilarious. Emy, as she is called by family, is the eldest daughter and full of ideas about what it means to be a PK (preacher's kid). She tries to follow all the rules and live a spotless life so that her sins don't reflect on her father, but at the same time, she wants the spotlight on her, so she occasionally slips up, like taking a pair of stone-washed Guess jeans from the donation box. Meg, Emy's younger sister, is fiercely independent and an enigma not just to her older sister, but to her parents as well. She is described as: and a little child shall spoil it for everyone else. Hancock ennobles the embattled position of minister in her description of her father and his faith. He is unable to cry when a best friend dies, because a pastor tucks those feelings away. He doesn't get to cry, because he has to support everyone else who is. Emy's deepest wish is to understand the her father's dichotomy. How does he wash away sin when baptizing and still give his daughters baths at night? Her mother has to put on her game face at church and hides Redbook magazine inside a Christian mother's magazine when sunbathing. Hancock truly captures not only her family's humanity, but their enormous faith as well. The book is filled with anecdotes you'll find yourself sharing with friends long after you've finished it. Hancock manages to straddle the fine line between humor and heresy with ease.

At the Creation

This is an exceptionally vivid, finely crafted and thought-provoking recollection of childhood. It captures with remarkable clarity the experience of seeing the world -- particularly family and community -- from the eyes of a child. It moves with great timing and grace among the situations, both humerous and serious, that formed the mind and heart of the author. Her candor and power of expression are remarkable, but never overcooked. It's an extraordinary first book that engages and builds beautifully to a conclusion that left me wanting more. It is hard to imagine how growing up Southern Baptist (an experience I shared) could have been captured more delightfully or poignantly.

good time reading

I ordered two copies of this book by mistake, but I'm sure glad I did! I immediately started one copy and quickly gave the other to my Mother. We both finished and thought of two more people who "had" to read it! I'm not sure where either copy is right now, but I know whomever has it, that person is having a big laugh out loud time! This book brought back some of my fondest childhood memories growing up in a Southern Baptist Church.

Pleasantly Surprised

I picked this book off a display at a local bookstore, mainly because the cover art looked interesting. I thumbed through the first few pages out of curiosity. As you might guess from my screenname, I'm not the kind of guy who normally would read a female coming-of-age memoir, but the first several pages had me chuckling out loud, so I bought it. In the end, it turned out not to be a female coming-of-age memoir, so much as it is a tale of any child's struggles with keeping faith, not only in religion, but in humanity. It captures perfectly the ripping away of the veil that usually occurs around age ten, when one realizes that adults aren't the superhuman beings we've imagined them to be, and that the line between childhood and "grown up" is often fuzzier than one imagined. While there are plenty of allusions to church politics and the changing nature of the Southern Baptist Church during the 1980s (about which I knew little other than conjecture), the main vehicle for the book is the touching tale of Hancock's comatose grandmother, whose deteriorating sends the book hurtling toward its conclusion, leaving Hancock and the reader with the realization that the grown-up world Even setting aside the overall theme, the book is well-written, entertaining, and almost guaranteed to make you laugh out loud.

Wonderful Memoir

Trespassers will be Baptized tells the story of Elizabeth Emerson Hancock's early childhood as the oldest daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher living in Kentucky. Miss Em was a precocious little girl who grew up certain that she knew exactly the way it was, only to find out that even her parents weren't always so sure. It is her experiences coming to learn and understand how her parents, most especially her father, live within the spaces between their holy" (public) life and their "human" (private) life that make this memoir interesting and applicable to almost anyone who once was a child. Although you should never judge the book by its cover, I really feel as though I got exactly what I was eagerly anticipating from the moment I first held the book in my hand. Hancock tells her story in a vivacious manner that pokes fun at her childhood notions and background while honoring it all at the same time. She sheds light on what it is like to grow up in a Southern Baptist home, but also provide insight on girls coming of age in the early to mid-1980s. The stories she tells specific to her religious upbringing ring true, but so do her experiences as an oldest child. She brought back so many memories for me. I laughed as much at her story about fishing a pair of acid washed Guess jeans out of the Missions box for herself as I did about times when I used my advanced reasoning with my younger siblings to get them to go along with my schemes. Once I convinced myself that what I was setting out to do was okay, I could often easily recruit the rest to go along with me. The tricky part was working it so that they would get the blame if we were caught... I very much enjoyed my time reading Trespassers will be Baptized. It was well paced and smoothly written. I reminded me of how much I enjoyed reading A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel. It's nice to read about childhood experiences that weren't traumatic or abusive. Living in a Southern Baptist area, I am happy now to know a little more about how my neighbors might have been brought up and some of the characters they might have encountered at church. Even still, despite doctrinal differences, growing up in an religious yet open home and regularly attending church is more alike than it is different. I would most definitely recommend this book.