The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw

"Tender, fierce, proudly black and beautiful, these stories will sneak inside you and take root." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Triumphant." --Publishers Weekly "Cheeky, insightful, and irresistible." --Ms. Magazine "This collection marks the emergence of a bona fide literary treasure." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "Full of lived-in humanity, warmth, and compassion." --Pittsburgh Current "These are stories about Black women that haven't been told with this level of depth, wit, or insight before, so it will not shock me if Oprah gets around to selecting it before the end of the year." --Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The 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.

“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.

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