This is an absolutely beautiful collection of short stories about Black women living in America. Every story is different—told in a different voice with a different situation, some tragic, some unexpectedly joy-filled. But they are the stories of Black women living lives as Black women with no one else as their betters, let alone their equals.
I loved every one of them, loved the characterizations, loved the little zingers here and there. Some voices are confident, some are more reserved, but every one of them comes from a central strength that carries them along in life to survive.
It is very hard to pick out a favorite, like trying to pick a favorite key in music or a favorite child in life. How can you admit that you do not just love them all, equally? But as in life where we will find something that just speaks to us differently in one thing versus all others, I especially liked the story of “How to Make Love to a Physicist.” That was the kind of story that you read through your fingers, hoping that something good might happen but waiting for that deadly result nearly all the way through—and along the way you discover someone that you simply never knew even though you’d been listening for so long you thought you were familiar.
This is a genuinely good book to read. I envy people who can write like this. Whether it is effortless or not, it is wonderfully open and direct, connecting with me not just in what I know but in how I feel. That’s danged hard to do when writing but the author succeeds here.
The Secret Life of Church Ladies, by Deeshaw Philya (September, 2020)