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.
There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who nurses a crush on the preacher's wife; the mother who bakes a sublime peach cobbler every Monday for her date with the married Pastor; and Eula and Caroletta, single childhood friends who seek solace in each other's arms every New Year's Eve.
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.
'Beautifully crafted. A lovely collection' - Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist
Review
'Our 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
'Mind-opening, heart-revealing, soul-shaking....triumphant' - Robert Jones, Jr., author of the New York Times instant bestselling novel, The Prophets, a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction
'Left me wanting more. Masterfully written. Deesha Philyaw knows the craft of writing as well as she does the nuances of sex' - Candice Carty-Williams
'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
'Startlingly fresh and flavoursome. These characters will blast through readers' preconceptions and win them over. All hail Philyaw for telling it like nobody else.' - Emma Donoghue, author of Room and The Pull of the Stars
'An astounding collection... so powerful' - Lauren Christensen, New York Times Book Review Podcast
'Following in the footsteps of Hurston, Angelou and Morrison before her - Deesha Philyaw tenderly explores words left unsaid and stories yet to be told by capturing the raw intimacies of Black women and those they can't help but love. A triumph' - Melissa Cummings-Quarry, Black Girls Book Club
'The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is one of the most original and essential short story collections of the year. Deesha Philyaw cuts right through the hypocrisy, religiosity and overbearing men to give her readers a rare glimpse into the deliciously dark, irreverent and fascinating world of church-going women. As a former church lady, I've been waiting to read a collection like this for an awfully long time' - Jan Carson
'Tender, fierce, proudly black and beautiful, these stories will sneak inside you and take root' - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
About the Author
Deesha Philyaw is an American author, columnist and public speaker. Her debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize for First Fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. It is currently being adapted for television by HBO Max. Deesha is also a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and will be the 2022-2023 John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.
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