The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
Ratings29
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings29
Average rating3.9
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I needed some time to marinate on THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES by Deesha Philyaw. It's incredible and I've been hanging onto this book literally and mentally.
I first heard about this book from @booksonthel, @booksbythecup, and @thatgoodgoodbook, and I love their reviews and bookish taste so that was that
“Don't ask me to repent because I regret nothing. You can't save me because I'm not in peril.”
The short stories are well written and overall enjoyable but I didn't find the secret lives of these church-going ladies quite as fascinating as everybody else (unpopular opinion, I know).
2.5 Rounded Up
It was a struggle to get through these stories, this collection of stories was underwhelming.
My favorite part of emerging from a good book is being transformed: I'd never thought of that; or, so that's what it's like; or, in one way or another, the way I see the world has changed.
This book did not affect me that way, and it took me a while to understand why: it's because most of the books I've read by nonwhitemale writers are written inside-out: offering the privileged reader a chance to experience the life of the underprivileged, to empathize and understand. Church Ladies is kind of the opposite, an outside-in, written by someone who escaped a shitty narrowminded world, for the benefit of those still stuck in it, showing them that it doesn't have to be that way, that they too can escape. It's one of those “what the hell is water” insights: religion, so prevalent that it's invisible, except in this case it isn't life-sustaining water but a toxic suppressing miasma. Philyaw paints so many of its insidious effects: intolerance, self-loathing, toxic masculinity, parental neglect and abuse, desperate loneliness. For the most part she does so in a gentle corner-of-the-eye sort of way, but once in a while she punches damn hard:
Your mother speaks longingly of Judgment Day, and the final accounting of who's allowed past the pearly gates, certain that God's accounting will mirror hers. “It will be a very small number,” she's fond of saying. “Only those who walk the straight and narrow path shall see the face of God.” / And you realize that if God were to welcome everyone into heaven, your mother would abandon Christianity immediately.
