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A review by gabsalott13
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
5.0
I now can understand what people mean when they call a book “a revelation.” In The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, each of Deesha Philyaw’s nine stories revealed to me something new about the women I grew up with, and the woman I’m growing to become. This collection is so meaningful as someone who came up understanding womanhood from churched Black women. While the majority of these women were single, from my vantage point, even those who weren’t experienced acute dissatisfaction in their romantic, emotional, and sexual lives. While Philyaw has stated that she intended to explore this dissatisfaction, I believe The Secret Lives of Church Ladies shines in the clandestine, intimate moments where these women are allowed to experience the full range of pleasure—this is now my favorite definition of “beyond the veil.”
As Kiese Laymon notes in the book talk I shared earlier, Deesha Philyaw comes out the gate swinging with this collection. “Eula” is IT: everything in this opener is scrupulously churchy, down to the singles ministry links and fishing expeditions for your Boaz. During a beautifully rendered alternative to watch night service, we see two characters potentially take the first step beyond the “we’re just friends...who sometimes aren’t friends” dynamic that many closeted church girls fall into. I love Nichelle’s casual acceptance of the expansive definition of family in “Dear Sister”, and appreciated Philyaw ‘s mirroring act between Renee’s limiting faith in God and her misplaced faith in the sisters’ biological father. In a few places during this story, I felt Philyaw was a bit too preachy with the messages about religious hypocrisy—it began to feel like the characters weren’t talking anymore. However, this is literally the only complaint I have in this entire book, which y’all know is RARE for me.
Like many people have noted, “Peach Cobbler” dazzles the reader, and reverberates throughout the collection. I was so impressed by this story’s portrayal of shadow families and clandestine love. Many couples are driven into the shadows because of the narrow confines of who the church sets people up to publicly love: masculine, charismatic preachers; light-skinned first ladies; and cishet children who behave in manners approved by the adults around them. The affections of these characters are intricately layered in comparison to one another, which leads to some good old church MESS. (You can’t tell me the First Lady didn’t know about Olivia and Trevor fornicating, which is why she put that picture of his girlfriend out on the counter! Discretion, discernment, and drama are here in spades!)
My favorite story is “Snowfall”, which is one of the most perfect pieces of fiction I’ve read in a long time. Philyaw crafts the most touching, lived-in memory of 70s/80s Southern girlhood, then brings this recollection to a heartbreaking end: “But we lost all those things when we chose each other. Only the memories remain.” I related to Rhonda and Arletha’s experiences with losing the church to find themselves, and could not imagine a more accurate portrayal of Arletha’s longing for the people, places, and love she left behind (even while recognizing their flaws.) I imagine that Philyaw drew upon her experience as a Floridian living in Pittsburgh to depict a queer woman’s pattern of “noticing and cataloging all the things we do here that we didn’t--couldn’t--do back home.” When Philyaw allows her characters to “wonder if that catalog will ever grow long enough to become enough”, she is deep in communication with Jesmyn Ward and a host of Southern women grappling with their own migrations from the South. In addition to this geographic care, I think “Snowfall” has a lot to say about the particular experience of queer women in Gen X, who, in this case, are the precise age of my parents. Rhonda experiences a nearly total detachment from her family, in a way that due to social media and other networks, may be less common today. However, as someone with queer relatives who’ve been functionally “excommunicated” from extended family gatherings and memories, Rhonda’s experience provides a still-timely portrayal of these all-too-often invisible histories. “Snowfall”’s end is one of my favorite revelations in this collection, because Rhonda’s care for her partner holds both of their needs and insufficiencies at once. Also, you can never have a bad scene that starts with somebody laying out the newspapers! <3
“How to Make Love to a Physicist” made me so thankful for how Deesha Philyaw chose to show these characters loving on each other. She knows how to put forward a small action (Eric taking down the narrator’s book and music recommendations) that carries someone’s care, intention, and respect for their significant other. I loved the narrator’s therapy-guided revelation (!) that “if God were to welcome everyone into heaven, [her] mother would abandon Christianity immediately”. This is part of a continued journey to move beyond religion as a constricting opportunity for Black elitism, and discover what is waiting on the other side of the church’s all-but-encompassing sexual shame. As this narrator works to “forget [her] home training”, I was cheering her on every page--it gave me hope that I too can move beyond my own challenges with intimacy (95% of which I lay at the altar.) This story literally said no more girdles, no more slips! No more eggshell stockings, and no more modesty cloths!! You love to see it.
The final three stories alternate between sharp humor and deep generational trauma (“Jael”); a wry tutorial from an all-grown-up Olivia, whose life is determinedly--albeit deceivingly--different than her mother’s in “Peach Cobbler” (“Instructions for Married Christian Husbands”); and a gutting story about the limits of caregiving in “When Eddie Levert Comes.”
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is a behemoth of a book, and an immeasurable contribution to the growing conversation about the pleasure that can be found outside of the pews. Even better, all this work is wrapped into less than 200 pages, which I think opens it up for many more people to see themselves in these stories. Please share with your sisters, best friends, aunties, and maybe even some of the church mothers!
***For a book exploring the inner lives of the amen corner, y’all know I had to come correct with the meme corner. Most of the images here are courtesy of Keonte Vicson, the genius behind my favorite churchy meme account, @MimesBeLike. And believe it or not, one of these photos is an actual screengrab from an item currently available for purchase on Amazon or on your next women’s ministry conference. The jokes, (s)aints, write themselves.
Meme 1 and Meme 2: edifying sermons and devotionals for the women of God(™) in these nine stories.
Meme 3: While reading this book, I was able to fill a space on the “church thot bingo” card during every story. Some of the bingo spots are a little bit more relevant to my generation of church thots, which kept me from getting some points for these characters, who are generally the age of my aunts or my mom. If the card had swapped out Forever 21 and Bath & Body Works for TJ Maxx and DKNY...I would’ve struck gold!
As Kiese Laymon notes in the book talk I shared earlier, Deesha Philyaw comes out the gate swinging with this collection. “Eula” is IT: everything in this opener is scrupulously churchy, down to the singles ministry links and fishing expeditions for your Boaz. During a beautifully rendered alternative to watch night service, we see two characters potentially take the first step beyond the “we’re just friends...who sometimes aren’t friends” dynamic that many closeted church girls fall into. I love Nichelle’s casual acceptance of the expansive definition of family in “Dear Sister”, and appreciated Philyaw ‘s mirroring act between Renee’s limiting faith in God and her misplaced faith in the sisters’ biological father. In a few places during this story, I felt Philyaw was a bit too preachy with the messages about religious hypocrisy—it began to feel like the characters weren’t talking anymore. However, this is literally the only complaint I have in this entire book, which y’all know is RARE for me.
Like many people have noted, “Peach Cobbler” dazzles the reader, and reverberates throughout the collection. I was so impressed by this story’s portrayal of shadow families and clandestine love. Many couples are driven into the shadows because of the narrow confines of who the church sets people up to publicly love: masculine, charismatic preachers; light-skinned first ladies; and cishet children who behave in manners approved by the adults around them. The affections of these characters are intricately layered in comparison to one another, which leads to some good old church MESS. (You can’t tell me the First Lady didn’t know about Olivia and Trevor fornicating, which is why she put that picture of his girlfriend out on the counter! Discretion, discernment, and drama are here in spades!)
My favorite story is “Snowfall”, which is one of the most perfect pieces of fiction I’ve read in a long time. Philyaw crafts the most touching, lived-in memory of 70s/80s Southern girlhood, then brings this recollection to a heartbreaking end: “But we lost all those things when we chose each other. Only the memories remain.” I related to Rhonda and Arletha’s experiences with losing the church to find themselves, and could not imagine a more accurate portrayal of Arletha’s longing for the people, places, and love she left behind (even while recognizing their flaws.) I imagine that Philyaw drew upon her experience as a Floridian living in Pittsburgh to depict a queer woman’s pattern of “noticing and cataloging all the things we do here that we didn’t--couldn’t--do back home.” When Philyaw allows her characters to “wonder if that catalog will ever grow long enough to become enough”, she is deep in communication with Jesmyn Ward and a host of Southern women grappling with their own migrations from the South. In addition to this geographic care, I think “Snowfall” has a lot to say about the particular experience of queer women in Gen X, who, in this case, are the precise age of my parents. Rhonda experiences a nearly total detachment from her family, in a way that due to social media and other networks, may be less common today. However, as someone with queer relatives who’ve been functionally “excommunicated” from extended family gatherings and memories, Rhonda’s experience provides a still-timely portrayal of these all-too-often invisible histories. “Snowfall”’s end is one of my favorite revelations in this collection, because Rhonda’s care for her partner holds both of their needs and insufficiencies at once. Also, you can never have a bad scene that starts with somebody laying out the newspapers! <3
“How to Make Love to a Physicist” made me so thankful for how Deesha Philyaw chose to show these characters loving on each other. She knows how to put forward a small action (Eric taking down the narrator’s book and music recommendations) that carries someone’s care, intention, and respect for their significant other. I loved the narrator’s therapy-guided revelation (!) that “if God were to welcome everyone into heaven, [her] mother would abandon Christianity immediately”. This is part of a continued journey to move beyond religion as a constricting opportunity for Black elitism, and discover what is waiting on the other side of the church’s all-but-encompassing sexual shame. As this narrator works to “forget [her] home training”, I was cheering her on every page--it gave me hope that I too can move beyond my own challenges with intimacy (95% of which I lay at the altar.) This story literally said no more girdles, no more slips! No more eggshell stockings, and no more modesty cloths!! You love to see it.
The final three stories alternate between sharp humor and deep generational trauma (“Jael”); a wry tutorial from an all-grown-up Olivia, whose life is determinedly--albeit deceivingly--different than her mother’s in “Peach Cobbler” (“Instructions for Married Christian Husbands”); and a gutting story about the limits of caregiving in “When Eddie Levert Comes.”
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is a behemoth of a book, and an immeasurable contribution to the growing conversation about the pleasure that can be found outside of the pews. Even better, all this work is wrapped into less than 200 pages, which I think opens it up for many more people to see themselves in these stories. Please share with your sisters, best friends, aunties, and maybe even some of the church mothers!
***For a book exploring the inner lives of the amen corner, y’all know I had to come correct with the meme corner. Most of the images here are courtesy of Keonte Vicson, the genius behind my favorite churchy meme account, @MimesBeLike. And believe it or not, one of these photos is an actual screengrab from an item currently available for purchase on Amazon or on your next women’s ministry conference. The jokes, (s)aints, write themselves.
Meme 1 and Meme 2: edifying sermons and devotionals for the women of God(™) in these nine stories.
Meme 3: While reading this book, I was able to fill a space on the “church thot bingo” card during every story. Some of the bingo spots are a little bit more relevant to my generation of church thots, which kept me from getting some points for these characters, who are generally the age of my aunts or my mom. If the card had swapped out Forever 21 and Bath & Body Works for TJ Maxx and DKNY...I would’ve struck gold!
