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.
Publisher: Pushkin PressISBN: 9781911590712Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Beautifully crafted. A lovely collection'- Roxane Gay,author of Bad Feminist
'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
'Deesha Philyaw's The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is 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
'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
'This book is the one I've passed to friends,family and anyone else who will listen to me rave about how warm and wonderful this writing is. This collection is as wise as it is tender,the writing beautiful and honest. I'll be returning to these stories for a long time to come'- Caleb Azumah Nelson,author of Open Water
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