The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

Product Information

Williams, John (2020-10-06). "National Book Awards Finalists Announced". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 2020-10-22.

You try to remember the last time a man made you a promise. You decide it doesn’t even matter. This man is making you one now. That’s what matters. There are several women, however, who leap from that thin line of grace out to freedom in Deesha Philyaw's stunning first collection of stories, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. Women (& girls) who for better or worse, know exactly who they are & refuse to give even a penny less.Sign me up for whatever Deesha Philyaw writes next! This was one of the best short story collections I’ve read in ages, maybe ever. Almost every story was a perfect 10. My favorite was “Peach Cobbler” for sure, as well as “Snowfall” and “Eula.” Mayer, Petra (2020-10-06). "Charles Yu, Kacen Callender Among National Book Award Finalists". NPR.org . Retrieved 2020-10-18. As a Southerner who lived in Milwaukee for four years, I related to the weather aspects of “Snowfall.” It's another tale of mother-daughter conflict, but it was nice to have a ‘warm’ resolution this time, especially coming after the previous story. Triumphant. . . . Philyaw’s stories inform and build on one another, turning her characters’ private struggles into a beautiful chorus.” We are welcomed to this collection by Caroletta, narrator of EULA. Caroletta knows exactly who she is; A woman who in love who should be in a longstanding relationship, but her supposed partner, Eula, is playing. Caroletta knows the men they have been entertaining all these years ain't shit & knows that time would no longer be wasted if Eula would just quit trying to float along that thin line of grace.

In Eula, 40-year-old Caroletta rings in New Year’s Eve 1999 in a hotel two towns over with her childhood friend Eula, who definitely does not think of herself as gay and clings to the Christian ideal of saving herself for a good husband, a life goal Caroletta gave up on long ago, much to her lover’s surprise. The combination of social stigmas, judgemental mothers and the Church all coalesce to make the women in these stories feel Othered or unable to comfortably occupy their own bodies. This is best detailed when a character has been made to wear a girdle her whole life by her mother, who finds it blasphemous when she arrives at church without one on after trying to learn to love herself in therapy sessions. The coached shame of ones body extends to their shame over sexuality or even feeling they are deserving of anything, much less love. The opening story, Eula, directly confronts the ways the Church’s insistence on purity is emotionally damaging. In it, two lifelong friends spend the last night of the 20th century together in a hotel and confront their sporadic sexual encounters with one another. Caroletta is hurt that Eula won’t admit her feelings and carries on in loveless relationships with men because she feels she must and because the Church sees their relations as unatural. The collection was rejected for publication by several publishers and presses, including the Big Five, before it was acquired by West Virginia University Press. [6] Reception [ edit ] Commercial success [ edit ] In Snowfall, Arletha has relocated from Florida to an inhospitably colder climate up north with her girlfriend Rhonda. Despite being rejected and nearly disowned by her churchgoing mother due to her sexuality, Arletha’s thoughts turn to home.taps 🎙️* Is this thing on? Yes? Ok. Let me introduce you to your new favorite author - Deesha Philyaw. Deesha isn't a new author, she's been writing for a minute, but what she does in The Secret Lives is something special. She flips the script and portrays "good church girls" as the real women and girls they are, not some perfect beings who worship at the altar 24/7 and never let their slip show. Before reading this book, I was likely to perceive “church ladies” as women who use the Bible to control or punish others, or who think of themselves as better than those Jesus is still working on. Philyaw portrays “church ladies” as real people struggling with morality like the rest of us, some for better, some for worse, but all human beings. Published by West Virginia University Press, the book became an unlikely finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. Tessa Thompson and HBO Max have optioned it for a planned film, with Philyaw writing the adaptation. I'm looking forward to it and her first novel. And while Philyaw does an excellent job of depicting the hypocrisy of church leadership and the misogynoir stemming from the intersection of class, sex, race, and religious belief, this story is really about the fragile relationships between mothers and their children, and how resisting parental neglect, essentially striving for self-love, can often look like rebellion.