BONUS: The Doors of the Church are Open with Deesha Philyaw

[00:00:09] What's good? I'm Nikesha Elise Williams and this is Black and Published on the Mahagini Books podcast network.

[00:00:17] Bring a youth of journeys, of writers, poets, playwrights, and storytellers of all kinds.

[00:00:23] And I'm excited to share with you five of my favorite episodes from the last four seasons.

[00:00:28] First up is my conversation with award-winning author and literary citizen extraordinaire, Deesha Philyaw.

[00:00:35] Offer of the Shirt Story Collection, The Secret Lies of Church Ladies.

[00:00:39] What I love about this episode which is from season one, Don't Mind Audio, is that it even happened in the first place.

[00:00:46] When I first had the idea to start this podcast, I was very resistant to it because who needs another job that doesn't pay them?

[00:00:53] Right? Right.

[00:00:54] But I pursued it anyway and had a list of offers I wanted to be in conversation with and Deesha was on the list.

[00:01:00] Church ladies was winning all of the awards and she's from Jacksonville, Florida, which is where I live.

[00:01:05] And we're so many of the Church ladies' stories are set or allu-to.

[00:01:09] My only question was, would you want to be in conversation with me?

[00:01:13] So like the millennial that I am, I slid and Deesha's deans, I followed up with a respectable email though.

[00:01:19] And she said, yes, both times, meaning Black and Published podcasts was something I had to see through.

[00:01:24] So without further ado, here's the doors of the Church are open with Deesha, Philia.

[00:01:50] So first question, Deesha, when did you know that you were a writer?

[00:01:56] So I spent some time looking for validation for somebody to tell me I was a writer.

[00:02:07] So when did I kind of just know it for myself?

[00:02:13] You know, maybe I reached out to a writer, a local writer.

[00:02:18] He's a veteran reporter and columnist and editor here at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette Tony Norman.

[00:02:25] In the early 2000s, might have even been 2000, I reached out to him and wanted advice on how to become a writer.

[00:02:33] And I don't know what all else I said in that email, but one of the things he said when he wrote me back was you're already a writer.

[00:02:43] And that just, you know, I just, you probably could have like, you know, little room with me.

[00:02:50] I just lit up when he said that.

[00:02:54] And so I think it's sort of that recognition that can help, but then there still has to be a moment where you stop looking for permission and validation.

[00:03:07] And I'm not exactly sure when, but maybe it was like a few years after that, I started writing a column for a site called literary mama and every month I wrote a parenting column.

[00:03:24] Usually it was about being an adopted parent because my youngest child is adopted.

[00:03:33] And, and so maybe you know having that regular writing gig.

[00:03:38] Maybe that was the moment.

[00:03:41] So it's a little bit something for you that you maybe didn't want to accept.

[00:03:47] Oh, I wanted that. I absolutely wanted it.

[00:03:50] I just didn't think it was a thing that I had the freedom to simply claim.

[00:03:54] You know, I was looking for the validation and the credentialing.

[00:03:59] You know, there's sometimes people don't feel like they are a real writer or they can call themselves a writer until they've published or until they've published and made money.

[00:04:08] Like there's always some arbitrary measure because unlike a lot of things, you know, all of us can write.

[00:04:15] You know, all of us can't, you know, court. Oh, I guess you could say all of us can dance or whatever.

[00:04:20] But, you know, but with writing this, there's something else, you know, because of the running joke that so many people have a novel in there, you know, a site, a nightstand drawer and that sort of thing.

[00:04:33] And so there's all of this sort of, you know, this question of validity.

[00:04:39] But I think I just got to the point where it started to feel like I was doing what I wanted to do in part.

[00:04:47] You know, writing regularly. I had relationships with writers. The other literary mama columnist and editors we worked very closely together.

[00:04:56] It was like having a regular writing workshop.

[00:05:01] That felt very right or leave to me.

[00:05:04] And that I will say that was not a paid position that column get columnist kid, but it did lead to some paid positions in print.

[00:05:13] So, wasn't the money. I think it was, you know, just being part of a community of writers made me, made me feel like this is real. I'm really doing it.

[00:05:24] What did you learn from that experience of your regular column for literary mama that helped you along in some of your other gigs and writing?

[00:05:33] It really, the main thing is that it taught me to love revision and it taught me to love that writing is rewriting.

[00:05:46] And that like Anne Lamont said we all write shitty first drafts is just, you know, unavoidable.

[00:05:53] And so I think that was the biggest thing to, you know, to get away from this idea of wanting people to think I'm a good writer and wanting people to like what I wrote and tell me it was good.

[00:06:03] But wanting people to give me something even more important, which is the feedback and some guidance that would help me take a good piece of writing sorry that's my dog.

[00:06:15] A good piece of writing and make it better or take a piece of writing that's just not working and give me feedback that can help me make it work.

[00:06:24] So, I, that experience taught me to focus less on publishing getting published and more on getting better.

[00:06:34] So, so that was the biggest takeaway.

[00:06:37] The other thing from a very practical standpoint is having, being edited on a regular basis, you know, just that that's the work of it and then rewriting every month.

[00:06:48] And then also the columnist read each other's work and get feedback.

[00:06:54] So, critical reading also helped me to grow as a writer because often you can see the problems and somebody else's writing that you can't see in your own.

[00:07:03] But there was also just some learning about writing the craft of writing that I think happened through us most is by having those.

[00:07:13] Exchanges with my fellow columnists about their work and then there it insights on my work in that back and forth I was really growing as a writer as well.

[00:07:24] And this seems like it was a safe space as well for you to do that growth.

[00:07:28] Yes, you know, it was not a classroom kind of environment everybody was a mother, everybody had their own lives and were really busy.

[00:07:38] And so, and we were writing very personal things and so.

[00:07:44] We all had skin in the game I guess and so it had a different kind of feel and also you know it was one of those things where the I think the editors for literary mama were very intentional about who they brought into that columnist community and so it was all people with good intention and all people who.

[00:08:06] It was no competitiveness there was just none of that.

[00:08:11] Did the experience with literary mama know you said it led to some other paid gigs but did that also kind of plant the seed for your book co parenting 101.

[00:08:20] Eventually, yeah I mean it I was not thinking about something about nonfiction much less writing about parenting.

[00:08:28] I started writing fiction but in that time when I was like I just need to get published to make this you know make this real.

[00:08:35] I was looking everywhere for publishing opportunities and this opportunity to be a columnist at literary mama popped up and I was like I'll take it it's not fiction but I'll take it.

[00:09:00] And then.

[00:09:01] I've been working with you around up for the Washington Post where I reviewed a set of five different parenting books for them but you know all it once and then another opportunity came with.

[00:09:13] I think it was a very interesting opportunity which is no longer being published but it was Disney's effort to do a parenting magazine that was beyond sort of like diaper conceiting but like really.

[00:09:25] I mean, you know talking to parents brains and talking about media or subjects and so when they were in their pre launch phase one of the editors there saw my column and they were looking for you know people who wrote about parenting.

[00:09:44] I think I wrote maybe three pieces for them before they folded when the economy collapsed in like 2008 and so that kind of branded me as someone who wrote about parenting.

[00:09:58] And then from there it was pretty easy to then build the co-parenting brand and platform that we built.

[00:10:08] In order to be in a good position to get a book deal for what became the co-parenting book.

[00:10:14] Is your background in journalism or writing or anything like that?

[00:10:18] Nope my undergraduate degree from Yale is at is an economics and then I went to maybe a couple of years after graduation.

[00:10:31] I was I took it was in a master's for teaching masters in teaching program at Manhattanville College and I taught elementary school for a couple of years but I don't have.

[00:10:45] I'm not sure if you could read and writing or communication or anything like that.

[00:10:48] All right, I got a backup so how do you go from economics and teaching?

[00:10:54] Parenting writing and if we're going to get to it the secret laws of charge like that's in long journey.

[00:11:00] Okay yeah, you know part of it was being a first generation college student who really didn't understand the concept of liberal arts and how you could you know explore and learn and do what you want to do like for me that was like what white people did.

[00:11:20] You know finding yourself and discovering your passion for me it was you go to college to get a good job to make money and take care of yourself and be self-sufficient.

[00:11:30] And so I didn't really see like a buffet of choices I was like well I don't want to be a doctor, I don't want to be a lawyer.

[00:11:37] Nothing in the sciences because that is not my ministry.

[00:11:43] And I just didn't see a lot of options not because they weren't there but just I just my you know I had such a small worldview about what I could do and so I thought business that sounds good you know and then.

[00:12:00] Because speaking of Florida as we were earlier my one of the other schools that I was considering after high school was Florida and M and had I gone to Sam.

[00:12:10] I would have gone through their business program and so I was like okay business and then Yale doesn't have an undergraduate business major so I was like.

[00:12:19] And economic close enough it's not even not the same thing at all but I was like I'll choose that and so that was my major and I didn't enjoy it at all and I did.

[00:12:30] The you know the bare minimum courses that you had to take to be able to declare the major and then I filled my course low with everything else that I actually cared about like.

[00:12:42] African American history and you know gender studies and that sort of stuff not knowing that like I could actually major in those things and yes still get a job after college like I all of that was just lost on me.

[00:12:55] And so my first job out of college was for management consulting firm it was like good money and all of that stuff and I hated it.

[00:13:05] I hated everything about it. I didn't care anything about what I was doing I wasn't I just wasn't feeling it and.

[00:13:12] In undergrad I my college work study job was at career services and so I was providing admin and clerical support for that office and so when all the recruiters would come year after year.

[00:13:27] I got to know them because I would set up their interviews with students and different events and stuff like that I just did all the admin so one of the people who would come every year.

[00:13:37] What was this woman who was the equal employment opportunity officer for the town of Grinnage and they had Grinage Connecticut which is very white and they had a special program for.

[00:13:52] And so I was trying to recruit more teachers of college Grinnage and so as you came there they would pay for you to get your masters in one year and then.

[00:14:02] And then while you were getting concurrent you would be in the classroom working with a master teacher and then doing your student teaching and then you could be building stuff for the other half of the year and then after that one year be in a position to have your own classroom and be teaching with all of them.

[00:14:19] And when Michelle would approach me when I was an undergrad I was like I'm not teaching you know like you know teaching as a profession has changed in our community so much because it used to be.

[00:14:31] For black folks like a teacher was revered you know.

[00:14:35] Yeah, you know and so from that to when I told my mother I was going back to school to be a teacher she was like so then you're going to be a principal like it was just like you couldn't just just you know be a teacher.

[00:14:49] But that was something that I cared about.

[00:14:53] I was like I've always been focused and as a kid I used to play school and I was always a teacher and like I dreamed about that kind of thing but then it was all it was sort of.

[00:15:18] And it left me empty I was like well I'm going to do something that I actually care about so I taught for a couple of years in Greenwich and then my.

[00:15:27] Then husband and I moved to Pittsburgh because we got tired of the pace of life in New York and Connecticut because he was working on Wall Street at the time.

[00:15:35] And and then when we decided to move here and start a family I decided that you know I was going to be a stay at home mom.

[00:15:43] And that's when I started writing when I had a two year old who did not nap.

[00:15:49] And like writing was like something I could do for myself.

[00:15:54] And it was just like a little part of the day it started is just a little corner of the day that was just for me and I was.

[00:16:04] As I've been saying in some of these interviews I was not happy I was dissatisfied but I wasn't comfortable writing nonfiction about my own dissatisfaction so I gave it to these other characters.

[00:16:17] And I started writing fiction and creating these worlds where there were these women who were as miserable as I was you know but they weren't me, you know they were older and they were more majoringly they were how I felt but they were always older.

[00:16:31] And they had these ties to the church but that because I was like I'm going to write about church ladies but because those are the women that were so fresh in my imagination and in my memory.

[00:16:43] And I have been growing up in the church and I have had and still have obviously a lot in the soldier about how I grew up and where I grew up.

[00:16:52] And so that's when I started writing first and then everything else the co-parenting book and all the nonfiction is all been one big detour.

[00:17:06] And then returning to that fiction in one of those three different novels I worked on in the early 2000s and there was one that kind of had legs but even that one.

[00:17:22] I just didn't get off the ground well I shouldn't say that it is in fission but two thirds of the way done but I just couldn't I wasn't connecting with it and then I started writing these stories.

[00:17:31] And it was my agent who saw that church lady which she called church lady seen running through the stories and then she suggested that while I wasn't getting anything done with the novel that maybe being really intentional about these stories.

[00:17:47] I could put together a collection and that sounded really exciting to me.

[00:17:52] So all that detour and extra experience of other things that you've done how it's informed your fiction because one of the stories in the collection is how to make love to the physicists.

[00:18:05] It's not so much along the church lady, but it sounds like all those other things that you used to do that you brought.

[00:18:12] How has that both other experiences of form your collection?

[00:18:17] I think the totality of those other experiences you know it's they built my confidence.

[00:18:25] And so even though you know nonfiction and fiction storytelling there's some differences key differences who I am you know has funded I've fundamentally grown in my confidence I've grown in my skill.

[00:18:39] I've grown in my willingness to experiment and I'm not as you know precious and fragile as a result of having written before I'd have been then edited a lot.

[00:18:54] You learned you know that that's the beauty of it you know Toni Morrison like talks has written in such glowing terms about revision.

[00:19:05] And like I want to be like her and that you know embracing in revision as a gift when somebody gives you feedback and revision is when the real work and the real fun starts.

[00:19:18] It's taken me all of those other experiences you know to have that attitude.

[00:19:25] And to also not take rejection personally and to be able to you know just push through and not.

[00:19:35] Not be just thrown off my game just because something gets rejected but the it's funny you say that about how to make love to assist is because it is you know it's still very much the church stuff because of her.

[00:19:50] The main character's mother and her influence of it but that story itself was not inspired by anything for my past life but my very current life I had a crush on a physicist.

[00:20:04] And so it was an unrequited crush so so this was me just sort of writing like a what could have been even though you know I'm not lira and he's not Eric but that concept of you know that could you know this man.

[00:20:20] I was really inspired by him that first line you know how do you make love to a physicist it has happened on piday I thought that was so clever.

[00:20:30] And then it was like almost a year before I went back to it you know was just that was the first line and then I was like you know who are these people who's the physicist who should have made love to him and I know they're going to make love on piday but you know got to throw some obstacles in their path.

[00:20:47] Yeah yeah.

[00:20:48] So like I have a journalism background I write fiction I recently left my journalism career and did the fiction thing full time my son is five so all he knows either me working in TV so are you going back to the TV station and it's like no dude.

[00:21:04] And I think it's a little bit more writing at home that you and your office of like I'm in my office so.

[00:21:08] I mean let's go back like talk about getting to the point to love revision because I think it took a while for me to begin to love revision and I think I'm just now getting comfortable with it.

[00:21:21] As a writer I know it's necessary but I wasn't always comfortable with it until like maybe my latest novel came out so how did you get comfortable with in that revision process.

[00:21:31] I mean I think it was just it was it happened concurrently with getting comfortable with myself.

[00:21:44] Sometimes when we're uncomfortable with revision it's because of something that's going on with us this has absolutely nothing to do with writing and like in my case.

[00:21:55] It was needing that validation that this was real work that this was worthwhile.

[00:22:05] Because it this wasn't just this indulgent thing so I will say it's okay for writing the feeling delgent it's great I think when writing feels indulgent.

[00:22:14] But you know I was a stay at home and you know people would say I didn't have a job but parenting is a job as you know.

[00:22:23] So there was all of that like how am I spending my time and so that was a pressure to like I got it you know this has gotta be valid.

[00:22:32] And you know getting published was a way to get validated and so it was like okay point me to the quickest way to get published that's what I wanted someone to do.

[00:22:44] And you know my mentor Tony the one I mentioned earlier you know when I sent him my first attempt at a novel.

[00:22:54] You know I was very disappointed.

[00:22:56] I think I might even use the word devastated that he didn't love it and he didn't tell me it was good even though I lied to both of us and was like yeah I want you to be honest you know because I thought was honestly he was going to be like this is so good you know this is a masterpiece.

[00:23:10] Because I didn't there was just so much I still didn't know about writing at that time.

[00:23:17] And this was predatory mom but just before that and so eventually I realized that what he did in taking the time to mark and he's old school for he used a pencil when he marked up.

[00:23:31] The chapters I sent him that that was an act of love and that was an opportunity to learn and so one thing I've always been is a learner and I'm curious and so when I changed my perspective around writing.

[00:23:45] I got to get published to I got to get better.

[00:23:50] It's just it and when it came when I started to view revision is not like this was stumbling block and somebody telling me something wasn't good and a barrier between me and what I'm trying to do and rather seeing is like this is just part of the process this is writing revision you know rewriting is writing.

[00:24:07] Once that changed and my month by mindset changed then I welcomed you know the feedback and I welcome the opportunity to take my time with something revised and experiment and even bring in an element of play with it.

[00:24:26] Because the state suddenly weren't so high my whole sense of self wasn't tied to this piece of writing my worth wasn't tied to this writing I wasn't thinking about oh my god is just going to get published it was like what is this story who are these characters how can I do them justice.

[00:24:44] How can I register that I'm interested in because if I lose interest and nobody else is going to be interested you know and I started concerning myself with different questions.

[00:24:54] And so then revision just became a seamless part of the process for me and not just seamless but the part that I look for two months.

[00:25:03] What which one of the stories in the collection was the one that you think you revised the most.

[00:25:10] Let me think about that.

[00:25:18] Just going a little quick survey in my head.

[00:25:21] I would say peach cobbler.

[00:25:26] Because that story had a whole alternate ending the timeframe was different like in the original version of it.

[00:25:37] We meet the main character Olivia and Trevor the pastor son we meet them as adults in their 30s there's like an ending when he goes off the college and then we flash for to this really just one scene of them as a daughter.

[00:25:54] And I thought it was a beautiful scene.

[00:25:57] You know he comes to the bakery that she owns she finds out that he knew all along along about all along but he also knew about their parents having had an affair their parents are both dead at this point.

[00:26:11] And then she takes him in the back to the kitchen of the bakery and they make a cobbler and they have sex and I was like this is great.

[00:26:17] And nobody and my friends who read that version nobody liked it nobody felt like that rang true they couldn't say exactly why but you know how this so because you just have a feeling.

[00:26:31] And I think I was so in love with the scene that I wasn't seeing what they were seeing that it just didn't.

[00:26:41] And so somewhat somberly I decided okay I'm going to try a different ending I'm going to go back to the drawing board what is you know this is a game you play what is what is I ended with her as at her age at high school age.

[00:26:57] And it ends when she's done tutoring Trevor.

[00:27:02] There were some things this unfinished business you know so she had unfinished business with her mother and so the scene we you know the story now in with a confrontation with between her and her mother so I added that but I also had to kind of look more closely at the relationship throughout to make that last scene.

[00:27:25] And I think it was true in the sense that as a teenager when we are stuck in situations where it's less than ideal you don't have often don't have anywhere to go and that was it was for her she was kind of stuck but you knew as soon as she could go she was out you know.

[00:27:49] And I also use that as an opportunity to develop the relationship between Trevor and Olivia in the original draft.

[00:28:00] Their relationship remain platonic and so then I went back in and I made their relationship be have more depth to it which also then created the opportunity for more heartbreak for her.

[00:28:17] And so did you cutting that scene in their original draft is a meeting as adults then it's a part laying into instructions for cheating Mary husband.

[00:28:29] Yeah, I saw the line I make this piece covered I was like oh I couldn't let me.

[00:28:35] That was not planned and I don't think it.

[00:28:40] If it connected all it was subconscious because there was so much time between those two stories but but I think Olivia stayed on my mind she stayed on my mind you know and so I did not plan and I'm writing I was writing instructions and that when I got to the part and she says and I'd make the best peach cobbler and.

[00:29:02] I had the reaction that I think of everybody else had which was like it's her is her and that's all right you know however we still about her choices.

[00:29:12] It's all right to know at least where she landed.

[00:29:16] Yeah, when I read the loud was like.

[00:29:20] I can't put a Michael posted on social media for though to have it read about was like I when I get those little Easter eggs I was like I love it.

[00:29:28] Yes, what was the journey of taking these these stories written over this expansive length of time.

[00:29:36] Just stories in your head on the page to this national book of work final is book that we now have.

[00:29:43] Mm-hmm you said the process.

[00:29:46] What was the journey like the process of holding.

[00:29:50] Um, I mean it has truly been wild like wild.

[00:29:58] Hopefully the best we're in a pandemic right pandemic and so initially like a lot of writers who had books coming out it was like oh my gosh what does it mean to have a book in a pandemic like everything is shifted all of the ways that you.

[00:30:14] Um, you know promote your book you can't go on a book tour you can't go to the book into book search you can't and can't but what.

[00:30:24] We all seem to have pivoted towards is okay here's what we can do and one of the things was the week it's a 40 each other.

[00:30:33] Um, so like a lot of writers I and just people in general I sort of buying books by writers who's books were coming out and in March and and so forth.

[00:30:42] And so I if I never bought another book I think I still have an.

[00:30:46] I think I can read for the rest of my life because I wanted to support other authors that way the other thing that happened is that people started offering writing workshops myself included and so I started taking these writing workshops and again like connecting with the writer and reader community that way by offering and taking workshops.

[00:31:08] And so building these relationships and then recognizing that you know going virtual was not.

[00:31:17] You know not the the death of anything, you know we actually got to see and connect with greater audience than we would have otherwise so that was was the plus.

[00:31:31] But you know so much of this is unexpected because you know when you write a collection or write a novel right anything you don't know how it's going to be received so you don't know if you can sell it so I told it.

[00:31:42] And then you don't know how readers are going to receive it and then it was well received.

[00:31:50] And then it's a small book it's short stories which are hard sell and which doesn't have a huge audience in which often.

[00:31:56] Doesn't get the same attention from the folks who give them awards and things like that it's on a university press.

[00:32:05] So there was nothing in that experience that said you know this is just going to change your life but it literally has changed my life and so before I was nominated for the National Book Award just the readers responses to it.

[00:32:24] And it just humbled me and made me so thankful because I you know mission accomplished I wanted black women to see themselves in this book and to be affirmed and to feel seen and heard and they were and that's what I heard and I was like.

[00:32:38] I did it, that's what I wanted to do and then everything else all of these other flowers and gravy I mean I guess it's mixing metaphors but you know hearing from people that even though they aren't black women that they connect it with a book.

[00:32:53] I knew that was possible right because August Wilson and Tony Morrison said all along that black life the specificity of our stories and our experiences we are the human story.

[00:33:06] And so you know we don't have to include white people in our stories in order for white people to connect with our stories, you know.

[00:33:13] And so I knew it was possible I didn't know if people would and so then I started hearing from so many people who aren't black women about the different stories or characters that were entry points for them.

[00:33:27] And that made me really happy too because it started to feel like a conversation was starting around these means and the whole idea about getting free of the things that bind us.

[00:33:44] And so getting people talking about getting free or feeling validated or feeling like they don't have to be confined by all of the different binaries that the church and the larger culture tells us that we have to be limited by hearing people say that they're having conversations are they're going to start a conversation in their church.

[00:34:06] Engaging with pastors around this has been completely edifying.

[00:34:13] So it has been a wild ride against the backdrop of a pandemic, against so much death, against this reckoning that it looked like we were gonna have starting to have around race and injustice that has not been realized.

[00:34:35] It has often been a bright spot for me my book has been and then hearing from other people that for them it's been like a bright spot in this year.

[00:34:45] You know none of us could have predicted this and I just couldn't be happier about it.

[00:34:51] So I want you to read in a second but I remember.

[00:34:54] Okay.

[00:34:55] I became familiar with you through the binder network on say okay and so then I remember you were posting about like the covers and the key in advance.

[00:35:02] But let me go follow her.

[00:35:04] And then I did and then once the book was out and you started posting people's like reviews of it, I remember one of these that said no, I told when it was going to be hunting and this book and I was like oh I got to get it.

[00:35:17] I'm for the hunting stay for the other stuff you know.

[00:35:20] Yeah I was like oh, I got to get it.

[00:35:25] But then when I got it it was so much more and I was like oh it's so good just like from the first story you like take the breath away and did like you mentioned the public potatoes salad and I was like oh she knows home.

[00:35:37] Yeah.

[00:35:38] And yeah it was it was amazing.

[00:35:42] So before we get into this reading let's set the scene for those who don't know about the secret lies of church ladies.

[00:35:50] This is the book description from the back cover.

[00:35:53] The secret lies 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.

[00:36:05] The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters, grappling with who they want to be in the world.

[00:36:12] Caught as they are between the churches double standards and their own needs and passions.

[00:36:18] There is 14 year old G.L. who has a crush on the preacher's wife.

[00:36:22] At 42, Lyre realizes that her discomfort with her own body stands between her and a new love.

[00:36:29] As white two paleoings, Carol at his same time next year arrangement with her childhood best friend is Timiless.

[00:36:37] A serial mistress lays down the ground rules for her merry lovers and in the dark shadows of a hospice parking lot, grieving strangers find comfort in each other.

[00:36:48] 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.

[00:36:59] As unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be and as free as they deserve to be.

[00:37:07] This is the secret lives of church ladies.

[00:37:11] Okay, I am back.

[00:37:12] Alrighty, I'm ready.

[00:37:14] I got my book with you right here. I was like, yeah, I'm getting it.

[00:37:17] I will read from Snowfall and since I'm going to start in the middle I'll teet up a little bit.

[00:37:27] In this story, the narrator, Arlesa and her girlfriend, Rhonda have moved from the south to a colder place.

[00:37:40] And this passage starts off with how they're kind of adapting or not to this colder place.

[00:37:53] And so for your reference, I'm at the bottom of page 77.

[00:38:00] We were born and raised in warmer places, Georgia and Florida, warmer to in the residual charm, polite smiles, and gentility of the white people who's ancestors owned hours.

[00:38:14] In the south, the weather does not force peers from your eyes, causing the faces of passing strangers to register worry about you for a millisecond.

[00:38:22] It's the wind you want to tell them, but a millisecond is not enough time.

[00:38:28] In the south, the weather does not hurt you down to your bones or force you to wake up a half an hour early to remedy what has been done to your steps, your sidewalks, your driveway and your car as you slept.

[00:38:42] But the south has hurricanes, they say, yes, but not damn near daily, not for a full quarter of the year.

[00:38:49] You tell people up here that you're from the south and nine times out of ten, they say the same old thing.

[00:38:55] I'm sure you missed the sunshine.

[00:38:59] Rhonda and I both missed taking sunshine in easy morning commute for granted.

[00:39:04] But what we really miss are the laughter and embrace of our mothers and grandmothers and aunties, kin and not kin.

[00:39:11] We miss the big oak tables in their dining rooms where as kids in the 70s and 80s we ate bowl after bowl of their banana pudding.

[00:39:21] As they talk to each other about how much weight you gain, like you weren't even there.

[00:39:26] We miss helping them snap green beans and shell peas sitting at their kitchen tables watching the young and the rest was on the TV, perched on the past through.

[00:39:34] We miss how they loved Victor Newman's hated Jill Foster and in Vietnamese Chancellor and how she drips diamonds and chandeliers.

[00:39:44] We miss their bare brown arms reaching to hang clothes on the line with wooden pins.

[00:39:50] We miss their son tea, brewed all day and big jars on the picnic table in the backyard, then later loaded with sugar and sipped over plates of their fried chicken in the early evening.

[00:40:02] We miss lying next to them at night in their four poster beds with two soft mattresses covered by iron sheets and three generation old blankets.

[00:40:12] We miss their house coats, perfume with absorbing junior linemen and hints of the white shoulders they've spritz on from an atomizer that morning before church.

[00:40:22] We miss tracing the soft folds in this skin when we held their hands and watched our favorite TV shows in their bed.

[00:40:30] Dallas, dynasty, not landing and falcon crust.

[00:40:35] We miss how they last and we're easy with each other.

[00:40:39] How their friendships lasted lifetimes outlasting, wavyred husbands and ungrateful children.

[00:40:44] Outlasted that time, Alma caught Joe cheating and she whacked him on the top of the head with the sword he brought back from the war.

[00:40:50] But he told the people at the hospital he didn't know who did it.

[00:40:55] Outlasted having to hide your medicine bottles and your shoes because otherwise seven of your nine children were liable to steal them.

[00:41:03] We missed how they seemed to judge everyone but themselves or maybe that judgment was in the nerve pill they procured from the Chinese doctor on Bay Street who didn't ask questions.

[00:41:16] We missed their furthest cups of brown liquor on Friday and unabashed cries for Jesus' consent day.

[00:41:24] We missed their one goal to that made us wonder who they had been as young women.

[00:41:32] We missed their blue crabs, the shelves boil to a blood red in washed hubs, a top ricks over makeshift fires built in the yard.

[00:41:40] The wash tubs reminded us of cauldrons full of rock salt and high-endrenched water, bubbling and rolling, mesh bags of seasonings and halved onions and pepper floating on top along with potatoes and ears of corn.

[00:41:55] We missed how they stood over those cauldrons like witches, staring a potion with sweat beating on the tips of their noses and smokes swirling around their hands and wrists.

[00:42:04] They wield at long handle spoons to press the frantic flailing crabs toward their death.

[00:42:12] We missed how they made our Easter dresses and pound cakes in a way out of no way.

[00:42:18] But we lost all those things when we chose each other.

[00:42:22] Only the memories remain, which is why even though we grew up in different places so many of our bedtime conversations start with.

[00:42:30] Remember when as we lie there in the dark with our nostalgia and nothing to distract us from it, not even each other, not anymore.

[00:42:45] I remember reading that story and it was like I could relate to all of it because growing up in Chicago, I remember when I first started driving I was 16 but getting up in the wintertime and going to warm up my car.

[00:42:58] We walked the snow in Chicago, they got we have a process called div so if I shovel my spot from my car in front of my house and I put my chair in front of it we're going to fight if you park in my spot.

[00:43:11] So I remember doing that and then coming down to Florida and then the hurricane conversation and I'm like I'm okay with a hurricane I had time to prepare but I was like, I was a loser.

[00:43:25] I was like, I'm not a loser.

[00:43:28] I was like, oh, I want to know what Chinese doctor is on bass.

[00:43:32] So go see what you were talking about.

[00:43:33] It was a nice, I love that I read in the collection.

[00:43:39] I could relate to it and then like their sister, I have a sister that I just found out about two, three years.

[00:43:46] Okay. And basically my dad is still alive but the car came and said, oh I just wanted to tell you that you have a sister she lives in New York.

[00:43:54] You're like, what? Okay bye.

[00:43:57] Really it was like the quickest two, three in the conversation that I was notified I had a sister.

[00:44:02] I looked her up on Facebook.

[00:44:04] We had been friends for like two years. I had no idea who she was.

[00:44:07] Oh my god.

[00:44:08] So then I sense a message to him like, so hey, I guess I'm your sister.

[00:44:13] This is what I was up.

[00:44:17] So the reading is sister and all of the the shenanigans I was like, I know this story.

[00:44:24] But I know this story.

[00:44:26] Right right.

[00:44:28] So I want to do a quick speed round and then I will let you go.

[00:44:33] What's your favorite book?

[00:44:36] Oh gosh. I'm terrible with the parlative.

[00:44:41] I will pick one from my childhood.

[00:44:45] Daddy was a number runner by Louise Merreweather.

[00:44:49] Oh sorry that makes me so good.

[00:44:53] I was looking for your beautiful smile right now.

[00:44:56] The way you just moon it up when I said that.

[00:45:00] Yeah, that book.

[00:45:01] It was, you know it's a coming of age. Why a novel?

[00:45:05] The main character, France is this black girl living in Harlem in the 1930s.

[00:45:11] And so you know our lives could not have been more different in many ways.

[00:45:15] But it was really the first time I saw myself in a book and the first time I really experienced a book like

[00:45:21] taking you somewhere a different place in time which you know,

[00:45:25] I needed to know that like my world was bigger than just outside my front door.

[00:45:34] All right, what's your favorite author?

[00:45:38] Hi.

[00:45:39] Tony wants to change all of us.

[00:45:41] Okay.

[00:45:42] I feel like I knew one of those.

[00:45:44] All right.

[00:45:45] That two more superlatives and then we'll let those go.

[00:45:47] Okay.

[00:45:48] Favorite song?

[00:45:50] Oh gosh.

[00:45:54] Something by Prince.

[00:45:57] And it's like five songs in my head, but possibly if I was your girlfriend.

[00:46:04] And then your favorite movie.

[00:46:08] Oh that's a tough one.

[00:46:14] Let's see.

[00:46:27] Oh my goodness.

[00:46:30] This is like different, you know, it is like different seasons of your life.

[00:46:33] You like different things.

[00:46:36] I'm going to say the color purple because it's one that while I, you know,

[00:46:42] I do love it.

[00:46:43] It was one that I remember thinking as a mother as a black mother,

[00:46:47] I wanted my daughters to see.

[00:46:50] And so, you know, I remember watching that with them.

[00:46:55] I also watched House party with my girls.

[00:47:01] Oh, no, what kind of mother I am, but that was also important for me to see.

[00:47:08] But we won't talk about parenting.

[00:47:10] My father wrote his scene four out of six seasons of power and knows all the characters.

[00:47:16] My name is I.

[00:47:17] So I'm not judging you here.

[00:47:18] Not at all.

[00:47:22] Okay, store bought or home made potato salad.

[00:47:26] Home made public sweet tea or public lemonade.

[00:47:31] Oh, lemonade.

[00:47:34] All right.

[00:47:36] What church do you prefer?

[00:47:38] Baptist, Pentecostal, Cogic, AME or Nodinominationals.

[00:47:46] Oh, I'm going to go with the coat like Cogic just for the music.

[00:47:51] This is for the music.

[00:47:53] Okay.

[00:47:54] One thing you want to say, then thank the fire to stop doing.

[00:47:59] Oh, stop thinking that Jesus judges the people that they judge and that Jesus wouldn't sit with the people

[00:48:19] that they refuse to sit with.

[00:48:23] And one thing you want them to start doing.

[00:48:27] Truly sitting with the people that Jesus sat with, right?

[00:48:30] Like if you read the Bible, you know, the people who were out there wild and Jesus like,

[00:48:37] let's have some wine and break bread.

[00:48:41] And just meeting people where they are.

[00:48:44] I'm going to let the will.

[00:48:46] Yeah.

[00:48:46] And not sort of seeing them through the lens of their sin but seeing them.

[00:48:52] And also, you know, what the things that we now call consider sins, you know, what the Jesus consider sin.

[00:49:02] And yeah, sitting with people and worrying less about what happens in their bedroom.

[00:49:08] And more about whether or not they get justice in this world.

[00:49:12] All right. Let's question for the speed around.

[00:49:16] Do you miss this out?

[00:49:18] I do.

[00:49:19] I do miss this out very much so.

[00:49:23] All right.

[00:49:24] And then my final question, why let you go?

[00:49:27] So you had this huge success with this collection.

[00:49:31] I know you're working on other things.

[00:49:33] When you're dead and gone, what would you like someone to write about you and your legacy?

[00:49:42] I love this question.

[00:49:44] I would like someone to write that that I always centered black women.

[00:49:58] And that I always look to black women to see what was possible.

[00:50:05] And I tried to live my life so that other black women could look at me.

[00:50:10] Black women and girls could look at me and see what's possible.

[00:50:13] And I'm going to leave that there. Thank you, Disha.

[00:50:18] I hope you enjoyed this week's Black and published rewind with Disha Filia.

[00:50:22] And if you haven't read the super lives of church ladies and want to, you can get it from my

[00:50:26] How-any books where you can find a wide range of titles by black authors and support a black on business.

[00:50:32] Plus, listeners of this podcast saved 10% on regular price books and merchandise.

[00:50:37] When you use the coupon code BlackPub, that's BLKPUB at checkout.

[00:50:45] Head over to MahaginiBooks.com and grab your next great read today.

[00:50:50] And I'll highlight you on next week for another Black and published blast from the past.

[00:50:54] Peace.