The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

Every story is dazzling. Sex, identity, religion, difficult mother daughter relationships, Publix potato salad and sweet tea, what more does anyone need? I listened to the audio, and I think it is particularly well suited to audio (and also the reader, Janina Edwards, is superb.)

"Eula" is absolute perfection. Sexy, funny and sad and really physical. Such a sense of immediacy -- I feel like I am in that room with these two women in love.

"Not Daniel was a perfect piece of microfiction - Charming and ribald in the space of 6 minutes.

"Dear Sister", while less elegant than Eula, was sassy and smart and a compelling introduction to this complicated mess of a family that I 100% want to join.

"Preach Cobbler" broke my heart into crumbs

"Snowfall" show more broke what was left of my heart after reading Preach Cobbler; the damage bad religion can do almost outpaces the healing good love can bring.

"How to Make Love to a Physicist" is the story that most touched me personally. I understand this woman who had absorbed the message that she does not deserve love, but I rooted for the man that wanted to show her different."

"Jael" made me laugh and cry, not metaphorically. The surprises in a young girl's diary and the ugliness of fixed ideas of what a girl should be. Being sexually attractive to men and acting on that brings accolades and censure. Ignoring male attention brings the same. Men destroy women, and not wanting men is an abomination. It can all make a girl just a little crazy.

"Instructions for Married Christian Husbands" was tightly crafted and really enjoyable, but this was the one woman in this book I didn't know. That might be a hole in my experience. The women I know who have divided sex from feeling haven't thought things out quite so fully as the MC in this story,

"When Eddie Levert Comes" shows us a mother and daughter where there is love but no liking, a daughter longing for validation, taking on the work of caring for a mother with dementia, and finding that even in dementia only men matter. show less

Deesha Philyaw's debut, a collection of short stories, is a delight. Focusing on the lives of Black women, often queer, often financially precarious, this collection illuminates lives that are seldom written about. While there are commonalities, the lives Philyaw is writing about are varied and the stories never felt repetitive.

In my favorite of the bunch, Snowfall, a woman has moved north with her partner, forging a new life together after her family rejected her. She misses her extended family and the South, never more so than when she and her partner shovel out the driveway early in the morning. In How to Make Love to a Physicist, an art teacher is wary of the interest of the science teacher she meets at a conference. And Peach show more Cobbler, about a girl growing up with a single mother who bakes for and carries on with the married minister every week, has a companion story later on.

The writing isn't the focus, and neither are the plots; what makes this collection noteworthy lays in how Philyaw establishes a sense of place and in the remarkable characters in her stories. This is a great beginning for a young writer and I'm eager to read what she writes next. show less

A fascinating and moving collection of short stories about the inner lives and conflicts of Black women. The title gives the stories a framework but the characters are not all actively involved in a church. However they are all black women from the south, and the south and the church provide the framework that shapes and defines the scaffolding of their lives. Philyaw has written a powerful collection of stories of unfulfilled women whose needs are not really met by the life that is imposed on them. Through a variety of stories and experiences, the author explores the emotions and feelings we all keep hidden, and although in one sense this group of stories is about cultural expectations that are different than my own, much of the gist show more of it remains universal. I say this not so much about the specific stories or practices, and without judgement on the choices made or the actions taken, but because the pain and frustrations of these women is palpable. These are stories about women who are expected to play a specific role in society, women who have few options or choices if they do not conform to that role, women whose yearnings, needs, and hopes are not met by the society in which they live. These are stories about women who are not allowed to be fully themselves except behind closed doors, in secret. Powerfully rendered. show less

This collection of massively entertaining stories features Black women in tricky situations: being lovers with a woman who is longing for a husband; meeting a man at a conference and holding him at arm’s length while deciding whether or not he's for real; confusing your mother's minister lover with God himself; and reaching out to one of your father's many daughters when you've only heard rumors of her existence. There's true Black joy here, exuberant dialogue and quiet moments, and the only regret is that the collection is too short.

Quotes: "As a Black woman, you are there playing Count The Negroes as you do at every conference. He is number twelve, at a conference of hundreds."

"If God were to welcome everyone into heaven, your show more mother would abandon Christianity immediately." show less

Well, this was a revelation. In these emotionally explosive short stories, black, Southern, church ladies live out moments (or long lifetimes) that run counter to the strictures and rules, religion and theologies of their upbringing - so desperate to control or dismiss bodily desire. Some live those moments quietly, remaining hidden from view (and judgement), others with loud and public pride.

Philyaw's writing is supple, the characters beautifully rendered, and she evokes whole histories and complex weaves of faith and family, of race and place, lightly in both background and foreground of the characters lives. The stories are outrageously sexy and savage and sweet. Who knew that adultery, and murder, too, could be sacraments? show more Laugh-out-loud funny and cry-out-loud moving. What a great collection. show less

I whipped through this book. The stories fly by. They are sweet, tender, and cruel. At first I thought it was a perpetuation of a certain indictment against men (black men) but at the end I think it is the mothers that come in for the most approbation. All (?) of the protagonists are childless. On purpose. Sad the way pain travels and can't really correct itself until some brave woman says—there’ll be no more of that.

This is the author’s fiction debut, though she has written a number of nonfiction works. In this wonderful collection of short stories, Philyaw explores the modern African-American woman and her hopes, dreams, relationships, and actions both in and away from church. The stories feature all ages, from children to great-grandmothers.

These “church ladies” write about their love lives, their secret desires, their disappointments, their anger and their joys in stories that range from a professional woman meeting a scientist at a convention, to a woman connecting with a man who, like she, is visiting a mother who is dying, to a young girl who mistakes the preacher who beds her mother for God, to a teenager with a crush on the show more pastor’s wife (and the great-grandmother who is raising her and worried about her soul), to a woman struggling to care for her mother with dementia, to a lesbian couple struggling to make a go of it in a cold northern city far from home.

Philyaw does a marvelous job of bringing these many characters to life. Even when our circumstances were very different (basically every story), I could still relate to and understand their feelings and actions. I could see a few of these stories expanded to novel length, but I find them satisfying in and of themselves.

I look forward to reading more of her works in the future. In the meantime, I’m gonna have to learn to make peach cobbler … show less