The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

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Deesha Philyaw’s collection of nine stories about church ladies is fresh, tender, biting, raw, deeply moving and just downright beautiful. I think there was a moment I was holding my breath while reading a story and I could only release after finishing. These stories beg to be read, and be read widely. Seem like saved folks don’t like to do anything but talk about being saved, complain about sin, and go to church. And church be boring as hell, so I just watch Sweet Sadie and think about her sexy body and her secret past.” a b Snowden, Jordan. "Book Review: Deesha Philyaw's The Secret Lives of Church Ladies". Pittsburgh City Paper . Retrieved 2020-10-18.

There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who has a crush on the preacher’s wife. At forty-two, Lyra realizes that her discomfort with her own body stands between her and a new love. As Y2K looms, Caroletta’s “same time next year” arrangement with her childhood best friend is tenuous. A serial mistress lays down the ground rules for her married lovers. In the dark shadows of a hospice parking lot, grieving strangers find comfort in each other.Who Fears Deathtells the coming of age tale of Onyesowu in post-apocalyptic North Africa where her story makes her an outcast. She must go on a journey from self-reproach to love, but to do so she’ll have to overcome untold obstacles—defeating her hated sorcerer father and becoming the instrument of prophetic deliverance for a land of oppressed people, all the while fighting to master the terrifying powers growing inside her. These are the kind of short stories that make me glad that I’ve given short stories a chance these last few years. My biggest issue with many short stories is the feeling that the story needs completing. While I didn’t love every story equally ( hard to do with a collection), just about every one felt complete . That’s not to say that I didn’t want more of Deesha Philyaw’s characters and writing. Any of these characters could fill a novel and I’m hoping for more fiction from this talented writer. The relationship between women and their mothers are also at the center of this collection,usually fraught with familial tension and often with the daughters being caregivers to their aging mothers such as in Not-Daniel and When Eddie Levert Comes’ The latter is especially effective as the daughter is merely called Daughter despite each other character having a name. Sex, friendship, freedom, and agency are centered throughout this cheeky, insightful, and irresistible new book.” But what we really miss are the laughter and embrace of our mothers and grandmothers and aunties, kin and not kin… We miss how they laughed and were easy with each other. How their friendships lasted lifetimes, outlasting wayward husbands and ungrateful children.”

you think heaven is a real place? She said, Of course it is. Then I said, I think heaven is a lie. And she sat up in the bed and said, God is going to strike you down for talking like that, Jael! I just laughed and told her God is just a white man stupid niggas made up, like Santa Claus. Well, she didn’t like that one bit. She folded her arms across her chest and said, Well if there ain’t no God, then answer me this. Where do people go when they . . .” And while Philyaw does an excellent job of depicting the hypocrisy of church leadership and the misogynoir stemming from the intersection of class, sex, race, and religious belief, this story is really about the fragile relationships between mothers and their children, and how resisting parental neglect, essentially striving for self-love, can often look like rebellion.There are several women, however, who leap from that thin line of grace out to freedom in Deesha Philyaw's stunning first collection of stories, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. Women (& girls) who for better or worse, know exactly who they are & refuse to give even a penny less. Breathtaking and heartbreaking. This book felt like a hot cup of tea and a warm bath after a long cold day. We are welcomed to this collection by Caroletta, narrator of EULA. Caroletta knows exactly who she is; A woman who in love who should be in a longstanding relationship, but her supposed partner, Eula, is playing. Caroletta knows the men they have been entertaining all these years ain't shit & knows that time would no longer be wasted if Eula would just quit trying to float along that thin line of grace.