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readingwithtrey's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
5.0
I’m going to start this review by saying this book will not be for everyone and that’s okay. If you’re not an open-minded reader, you may find yourself offended by some of the things in this book.
Now to my review, in my humble opinion, this book is a work 👏🏽 of 👏🏽art👏🏽. While I didn’t have any personal shared experiences with each woman, I could appreciate the nods to the culture that I could completely relate to. They include: being in church every Sunday with our moms & grannies and often times aunts, uncles, and cousins. (I was related to almost everyone in the small, country church I attended growing up.) Our grannies always telling us that they’re praying for us (and knowing for certain they actually were) and usually having a feast ready for us whenever we visited. Spending summers outside all day almost every day with our cousins without a care in the world. Getting a new beautiful frilly dress from my grandma each Easter. This book made me nostalgic for that time and made that ache that I still have to see both of my grandmas one more time feel as new as the days that they left us.
There is so much to this book than what’s on the surface level. & I highly recommend it for readers with open hearts and minds. Know that there are a lot of touchy/sensitive subjects. It was funny, incredibly sad, and totally different from anything I’ve read.
My only complaint is that I need updates on all of these women, especially Jael. Her chapter had me weak.
Favorite quotes:
“We miss their bare brown arms reaching to hang clothes on the line with wooden pins. We miss their Sun tea brewed all day in big jars on the picnic table in the backyard.”
“We miss how they made our Easter dresses and pound cakes and a way out of no way.”
Now to my review, in my humble opinion, this book is a work 👏🏽 of 👏🏽art👏🏽. While I didn’t have any personal shared experiences with each woman, I could appreciate the nods to the culture that I could completely relate to. They include: being in church every Sunday with our moms & grannies and often times aunts, uncles, and cousins. (I was related to almost everyone in the small, country church I attended growing up.) Our grannies always telling us that they’re praying for us (and knowing for certain they actually were) and usually having a feast ready for us whenever we visited. Spending summers outside all day almost every day with our cousins without a care in the world. Getting a new beautiful frilly dress from my grandma each Easter. This book made me nostalgic for that time and made that ache that I still have to see both of my grandmas one more time feel as new as the days that they left us.
There is so much to this book than what’s on the surface level. & I highly recommend it for readers with open hearts and minds. Know that there are a lot of touchy/sensitive subjects. It was funny, incredibly sad, and totally different from anything I’ve read.
My only complaint is that I need updates on all of these women, especially Jael. Her chapter had me weak.
Favorite quotes:
“We miss their bare brown arms reaching to hang clothes on the line with wooden pins. We miss their Sun tea brewed all day in big jars on the picnic table in the backyard.”
“We miss how they made our Easter dresses and pound cakes and a way out of no way.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Dementia, Grief, Death of parent, and Gaslighting
Minor: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Infertility, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Violence, Abortion, Pregnancy, Lesbophobia, and Toxic friendship
shieldbearer's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Every story was so well crafted with nuanced characters. Highly recommended.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Death, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Medical content, Death of parent, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Fatphobia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Dementia, Grief, and Lesbophobia
Minor: Cancer, Child death, and Car accident
ab_and_flow's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Misogyny, Racial slurs, and Religious bigotry
Moderate: Body shaming
Minor: Pedophilia
Colorism and groomingjourdanicus's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
I find it difficult to rate/review short story collections, personally. I don't typically read many of them because I usually find myself preferring a longer cohesive narrative. But I really enjoyed this book. It was good on audio; the narrator gave each story/character a distinct voice. I'll be looking out for more by this author.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship and Infidelity
Minor: Homophobia, Racial slurs, Abortion, and Toxic friendship
davidbythebay's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
5.0
Greg (Supposedly Fun on BookTube & Instagram) was absolutely right: this is an amazing short story collection! I shy away from short story collections because I never feel they are or of similar caliber to each other usually. Here, however, Philyaw has created an entire universe of Black women who are strong, unapologetically powerful, and asserting how they wish to live their lives. From queer/lesbian or heterosexual perspectives, these nine short stories cover a wide ground of topic areas and perspectives. And I'm living for it all! Absolutely amazing!
Content Warnings
Minor: Addiction, Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Grief, Abortion, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol
kayschwe's review against another edition
emotional
medium-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Infidelity, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual content, Grief, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Alcohol
Minor: Abortion
rosalind's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia, Infidelity, Sexual content, Dementia, and Lesbophobia
Moderate: Alcoholism, Racial slurs, Violence, Alcohol, and Sexual harassment
nsfonline's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
This was an absolute masterpiece. Each story was so engaging and stood on its own. I could not put it down from chapter 1 to the end. I listened on audio which was great and toward the end I bought the Kindle version so I have a permanent record and to support this awesome storyteller. Will revisit this book and this author often.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Cursing, Emotional abuse, Racial slurs, and Racism
arlangrey17's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs
sherbertwells's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
“People say you’re supposed to put your faith in God, not men. Do you think God wants you, or anybody, to go untouched for decades and decades? For their whole lives? Like Sister Stewart, Sister Wilson, Sister Hill, my mother after my father died—all those women at church who think they have to choose between pleasing God and something so basic, so human as being held and known in the most intimate way” (10)
Let’s get one thing straight: this book was not written for me.
Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, is a celebration of Black women and their sexuality. I’m an asexual Catholic white girl who couldn’t be considered attractive if she had North and South poles. But I like to read, especially about religion and the individual, and one of my English let me borrow a copy of this book (thanks, Ms. Saunders!).
So here I am reviewing The Secret Lives of Church Ladies! Spoiler alert: it’s pretty darn good.
The stories are unabashedly sexual, but the depiction of sex is not gratuitous. Philyaw’s protagonists face bigotry from all sides, including from the Black Church to which they (nominally) belong. The bedroom is one of the few places where they can unashamedly be themselves.
“Note: in the event I do start to fall for you, you will know because I’ll stop responding to your text messages. This is for the best.
The austere tone of these instructions aside, I actually like you and can’t wait to fuck you. If I didn’t like you, if the thought of you didn’t make my panties wet, we wouldn’t be here” (154)
I have no clue whether the depiction of sex is accurate or not, but I can appreciate how Philyaw portrays food. In the story “Peach Cobbler,” for example, the main character’s mother bakes a dessert “so good, it made God himself cheat on his wife” (39). Meanwhile, “Snowfall” demonstrates an acute nostalgia for boiled blue crabs. While I’ve never had either dish, I can appreciate how they both add spice to the deliciously-complicated relationships between the characters that make them.
In general, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies excels at portraying interesting interpersonal relationships. My favorite story was “How to Make Love to a Physicist,” which follows a middle-aged art teacher who meets her soulmate at a STEAM conference but feels too self-conscious to open up to him. My Dad almost majored in physics (he got his PhD in math), so I can testify that the method of courtship is accurate. Both characters are huge nerds, and it’s a joy to see where their relationship takes them.
The story uses a second-person narrator, which I’ve never encountered outside of fanfiction before, to devastating effect. The opening question—”How do you make love to a physicist”—turns from a hypothesis into a plea as it is repeated.
Other stories that play with format are pretty cool too. “Instructions for Married Christian Husbands” manages to pack an emotional arc into a how-to-list. “Jael” juxtaposes the voices of a teenage girl and her religious grandmother, who is disgusted by her grandaughter’s homosexuality. Utilizing these formats is a fun way for Philyaw to challenge the hierarchies in which her characters live. But most of the stories in The Secret Lives of Church Ladies are literary fiction, and that’s not my favorite genre.
Nor is the straightforward prose, which clips along nicely but doesn’t stand out I also wish the stories featured more theology, but I understand that not every reader (or character) wants to get so nitty-gritty. As I said before, the stories weren’t written with me in mind, and they shouldn’t be. It’s obvious that they’re well-written anyway.
This year, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies won the English PEN/Faulkner award. Whether it will stand the test of time remains to be seen. I hope it does. Like organized religion, it’s got some really great elements, and it might just give meaning to a vast, complicated literary world.
“You take a moment to soak it all in. You think of your mother and the small version of God she clings to, the only version you’ve ever known and the one you’re afraid to let go of. Then you think of how your daily calls with Eric are a kind of ritual, and how when you finally meet up again, it could be a kind of consecration. You are thrilled and terrified at the prospect. Terrified because all you’ve ever known of religion is that it demands more than you can ever give”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity, Racial slurs, Sexual content, and Religious bigotry
Moderate: Homophobia and Violence
Minor: Abortion