A Review of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
With Deesha, erotic storytelling goes up and up!
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw is a collection of nine short stories that are at once hot and unconventional. I had my mind blown off (in a good way 😁) with every story.
My Review
It opens with an Eula story, which features a lesbian love shared between two unmarried, religious middle-aged women. It's set in Clarksville suite on New Year's Eve whereas the rest of the world heralds in the new year, these two must decide if they'd still choose each other 's body or go in search of a "Boaz".
When cancer —one of the breast and another of the ovary— brings two women together in a hospice center, their children: a woman and man, the latter married and Not-Daniel set up an unusual routinary which has them having sex in the parking lot in the woman's car.
In a letter written to an unknown but existing half-sister named Jackie in Dear Sister, Nichelle—one of her half-sisters — takes it upon herself to write to her about her three other half-sisters born of different mothers, their experiences with the deadbeat dad Jackie shares with them, his funeral, and an Alzheimer diagnosed aged grandmother who somehow has a magical power to dictate a half-sisters pregnancy before the host.
Peach Cobbler tells the story of a motherly love-starved teen girl whose mind fizzs with her mother's secret —an affair with the church pastor whose visit guarantees one: a well-made peach cobbler. It also shows how she navigates the bodily desires of adolescence.
When Arletha outed her sexuality to her religious mother who single-parented her their relationship crumbled. Now, she lives in a city obsessed with Snowfall with who she wants and loves, but for every memory of home, Arletha can't help but unpack a box of nostalgia.
Written in a second-person narrative, How to Make Love to a Physicist centers on Lyra James, a forty-two-year-old Art teacher who meets a life-changing physicist at a STEM conference.
Jael is told in two voices, a religious grandma and her orphaned great-granddaughter.
The latter is fourteen and crushes on their church Reverend's wife, the former finds her diary written on the subject and prays to God to change her but finds it difficult to confront her. Jael who because she struggles with the history of her dead parents builds an unpenetrated wall around herself.
Instruction for Married Christian Husbands is a sequel to Peach Cobbler. Here the daughter falls into the mother's footsteps which she swore she wouldn't. It's written in a manual format. One that feeds Christian men with stainless menus on ways to cheat on their wives.
The last story in the collection When Eddie Levert Comes tells of an unrequited love between a daughter and a young free mother who's at old age diagnosed with dementia. It's a story about disconnection and unsuccessful trials at reconnection.
*
I found it difficult to pin a favorite from the collection though every story made me feel a different way.
Genres: Short Stories, Queer, Fiction, Adult, Contemporary, Audiobooks
My Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Published year: 2020
Publishers: West Virginia University Press
Printed in the United States of America