Description
Book SynopsisThe Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church's double standards and their own needs and passions.
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.
With their secret longings, new love, and forbidden affairs, these church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be, and as free as they deserve to be.
Trade ReviewOur new decade deserves a new literary force with major literary skills. Deesha Philyaw uses the comic, the allegorical, and the geographic to examine Black intimacies and Black secrets. Her work is as rigorous as it is pleasurable to read." —Kiese Laymon, author of
Heavy"To encounter Deesha Philyaw’s work is to encounter contemporary folktales. They are the stories of southern customs and mores and of voices over the back fence. The daughters and granddaughters of Toni Cade Bambara and Bebe Moore Campbell readers need this book." —Yona Harvey, author of
Hemming the Water and writer for the Marvel Comics
World of Wakanda series
"This is no mere collection of sappy romance stories. The love in Philyaw’s stories runs the gamut from sweet to bitter, sexy to sisterly, temporary to time tested, often with hidden aspects. The word
secret in the title is earned, and some of the secrets are downright juicy." —Tara Campbell, author of
Midnight at the Organporium, from
Barrelhouse magazine
"Triumphant. . . . Philyaw’s stories inform and build on one another, turning her characters’ private struggles into a beautiful chorus." —
Publishers Weekly"A collection of luminous stories populated by deeply moving and multifaceted characters. . . . Tender, fierce, proudly black and beautiful, these stories will sneak inside you and take root." —
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The church, sexuality, and everyday life come alive in each story bringing readers closer to experiences we can, or have, seen ourselves in." —
Electric Lit, “24 New and Forthcoming Books That Celebrate Black Lives”
Table of Contents
- Eula
- Not-Daniel
- Dear Sister
- Peach Cobbler
- Snowfall
- How to Make Love to a Physicist
- Jael
- Instructions for Married Christian Husbands
- When Eddie Levert Comes
- Acknowledgments
