[Cheerful music]
Thank you for joining us to celebrate
the launch of Deesha Philyaw's
triumphant collection of short
stories,
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.
Hello, I'm Stephanie Flom, Executive Director
of Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures.
Welcome. This program is part of our
Made Local series,
produced with Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
Thank you to the library and
to White Whale Bookstore,
where you can purchase
copies of Deesha's book.
We are thrilled that
Deesha is
joined in conversation with Khirsten L. Scott. 
Khirsten is Assistant Professor
of English Composition at the
University of Pittsburgh
and co-founder of D-Black,
a mentorship network
offering writing support for Black
scholars. She is working on her first
book, which looks at
published histories of
Historically Black Colleges and
Universities
for inclusion of student writing.
Deesha Philyaw's writing on race,
parenting, gender, and culture
has appeared in The New York Times,
The Washington Post,
McSweeney's, The Rumpus,
Brevity, and elsewhere.
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
has been called
"triumphant," by Publishers Weekly;
"tender, fierce, and proudly black and beautiful,"
by Kirkus Reviews; and is predicted by
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"to be selected by Oprah's Book Club
before the end of the year."
Pittsburgh Current lauds Deesha's
telling of stories
"full of humanity, warmth,
and compassion."
Please welcome Khirsten Scott
and Deesha Philyaw.
Hi Deesha, so glad to be
in conversation with you today about
your collection of short stories,
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.
It was such a treat.
I actually completed
all nine short stories in one sitting.
It was the highlight of my
my quarantine struggles, and so
I laughed, I cried, I really reflected
and saw myself and so many
other folks that I know
in these stories and in these
secrets, and so I'm really excited
to talk with you and
learn a bit more about
the writing process and just you!
So let's start there - could you tell us a
little bit about yourself
as a writer and your motivations
and/or inspiration for this collection?
Yes, so my first
writing impulse was fiction,
and that would have
been in say the
early 2000s, and
I don't have a writing background,
I don't have writing degrees
or anything like that, but
I've always enjoyed writing and
storytelling and, you know, you're
a daughter of the south too, so you know
we tell stories and we don't know
short stories, everything is long, so
I hope we can keep this in the
time frame, but I've always liked
to tell stories, and so
in the early 2000s, I was actually a
stay-at-home mom at that time,
I had one child
and that's how I would kind of
steal a little time for myself.
And then over time, just looking for
different publishing opportunities,
I ended up writing a parenting-related
column for a site called Literary Mama,
and so that's how I got pulled into
the personal essay non-fiction world, and
fiction was just always sort of
something on the side.
There were a couple of bad
novels I tried to write
over time and still writing
short stories here and there but
really the personal essay world just
opened up a writing career for me,
because then I started writing for
places like The Washington Post,
and it was all focused around
parenting, race, gender,
things like that. And then
my first book was actually a book
I co-authored with my
ex-husband and co-parent,
and it's a book about co-parenting,
and so I was always sort of
pining away for fiction
while all of that was happening,
and came back to—
not came back to, really—
but I guess in 2007,
started a novel that
isn't terrible,
but it was in fits and starts,
and with all of the personal
essay parenting stuff going on,
and then I have an agent from the
co-parenting book, and she knew
that I was working on a novel
and so she said when you're
ready for that novel, we can
make that happen.
And it was not happening, and so I
was still writing these short stories
and my agent would come and hear
me read the short stories
and finally after one of the events,
one of the readings, she said, "you know
these stories with these church
ladies, they're really great,
and while you're
kind of on hiatus from that novel,
you know for the last decade,
maybe you could do
a short story
collection with these
church lady stories."
And at that time, I hadn't really thought
of it as "church lady stories," these
were just the stories that
came to my mind, but at that
point at her suggestion,
I got really intentional
about writing a collection or
series of stories that all had
church ladies or people that I call
"church lady adjacent," that there's a
church lady in their life
that who is influential, and so
where they came from initially, I think
it's just they just live in my memories,
because I grew up in
the church, and I
I watched church ladies a lot, I was very
curious about them,
and they just kind of
stuck with me, and so
when I started imagining
and thinking about
situations or people or questions,
they just, they were the ones
that popped up, initially,
and then I just sort of ran with it.
I love that, especially the
the relationship between
memory and recall, and even
nostalgic retelling of stories too,
to really kind of cast larger critiques
or considerations for the 
larger culture, and so what I'm
curious about - you mentioned that
you grew up in the church and you had
these experiences with
church ladies - what were
they like, in your direct memory,
not from the fictionalized piece that you wrote—
Right. Sure.
Were you aspiring to
be a church lady?
Was that an aspiration that
manifested, one that you
departed from?
Right, I never felt
like there was,
that that was my future,
because
I saw them as really good
and really holy, and so
as an adolescent, you know,
pre-teen and into my early teen years,
and going through puberty and things
like that, I'm like, "do they like sex?
Do they think about sex?"
You know, like I just didn't—
I had sort of divorced them from
any kind of sex or sexuality,
and so it was very perplexing to me,
you know, "what were their lives like?"
And so I did not see— I mean I saw them
as like a template of what I could be,
but then I also saw women who were
outside of the church, and so I felt like
those were my choices, you know,
binaries are not our friends,
but yet, that's what
we're often presented with.
And so I was not sure,
and so it was kind of a bit of—
you know, I had secrets of
my own, of like, well
I know I want to go to heaven—or
mostly I don't want to go to hell—
and so I shoved that like over here,
but these women outside of church,
they have a lot more fun,
so I mean that's a
kid's eye view, right? And so then when
you become an adult, you realize
that life is not black and white,
and our choices are
not that neat, and people are complex,
and people have secrets, and people
have contradictions, and
and it's really messy, but I like that
messiness, and so
that's what I chose to kind of
focus on -
those lives, the interior
lives of those women,
that I didn't know their interior lives
when I was a kid observing
them, and so then I imagined them.
And then, you know,
my own struggles
and secrets,
they're in the book, too.
Awesome.
So you recently
facilitated a talk at
Chatham University
here in Pittsburgh about the ethics of
telling other people's stories and journeys.
So I'm curious about
the ethical
considerations you took in,
as you just said, and weaving in your
own secrets, those in the past.
What process did you
engage as you thought through what you
would share, how you would share it,
what relationship it had with folks who
you may still be in contact with or not,
or the larger Black community or the
Black church community - what kind of
considerations went into that process of
sharing and curating the stories?
So the  talk that
you're referring to,
the title, First Do No Harm, and so
I use that measure for myself.
I don't want to harm anyone
in the process of telling stories, and so
there aren't
characters that
you know, where somebody
would say, "oh, that's me,
Deesha wrote about me," except
maybe there's some elements in there
of my mother, but my mother
has passed away and so
and so nobody but my mother would
know which parts are my mother.
There are lots of mothers
in the story, so my mother wouldn't
be able, you know,
she's not here to see that,
But I didn't feel
the need to tell
anybody's story directly and then just
sort of like dress it up with fiction,
it was more just elements
of things or conflicts that I
knew of, and then
I built a character
around that conflict,
or there's a personality
that I was really drawn to,
but you know
that's my job
as a writer is to
amp up the drama and
and make it even more interesting.
I'll say this, so
the Dear Sister story is
semi-autobiographical. I do have
four sisters and
there was one that we
contacted
after our father died—we had never
had contact with her before—
but the sisters in the story, I
combined traits of my
different sisters, so I have a sister
who's a nurse but she's not like Tashita,
so things like that,
and that
sister has read the book and she liked
it, and she didn't have any
issues with how the
nurse was portrayed because
she knew that's not her.
So I played with the
interesting bits and pieces,
and so I don't feel like any real
people were harmed in the
making of of this book, so that's
sort of my standard,
and also in that talk, I
talk about
these questions as
this is how we need to approach writing
stories that aren't ours
as good literary citizens,
and so it's making sure that we
aren't doing harm and making sure
that we're making informed decisions,
because if you don't know
the context of what
you're writing and who you're
writing about, you won't
know if you're doing harm or not,
you don't know what you don't know,
and so you're really needing
to interrogate that and so I'm
pretty sure that I
did my due
diligence with that, because
the vast majority of this is
purely imagination
and not
necessarily inspired by
one person or anything like
that - composites of
people and situations, sure.
Yeah and I think
that's one
thing that drew me in.
I never quite identified with
any one character or could map it
onto someone else, but I was so
invested. I wanted to see
how their stories were unfolding,
and there was a beautiful
synergy and conversation happening
across the women,
and I want to get into
that a bit more
at the at the second half
of the interview, but
what I'm curious about is why the
church as the site? So I know you talked
about your agent,
and you mentioned that these stories
could be associated with anyone, right?
We could think about
just women in a community,
or women in an apartment building,
I'm thinking about (inaudible) girls,
you know, I'm thinking about how we
construct groups
and societal orders,
whether it be a sorority,
or a book club, or just any gathering
that this could have been associated.
Why the critique and the place of the
church as the site,
and what work do you think
that's doing in this current moment
where we are, perhaps for some people,
thinking about the relevance of the
church, thinking about the relevance of
storytelling within the church,
or even resisting some of those binaries
of like you're in the church or you're
outside of the church.
Yeah. I think because I've
experienced in my own life
and with other black women
that I know, that even
when you— if you've never been
"in the church,"
the Black church still has influence,
because your mother was in the church,
or her mother was
in the church, and so a lot of the
the challenges that we have, and again
those binaries, and
the ways we construct our sexuality and
how we respond to our desires,
even if we never step foot in a
church, there's still,
it can still loom over
what we see
as our options, or what we see as
what it means to be good or
right or what is sexually healthy
or what is allowed,
and so there's this—
the church's influence,
I knew was prevalent for me
and for other women who
just sort of struggle with these notions
and desire— you know, one of the things
that we're taught in church
is the flesh is weak,
and so if you
start with that
premise— and our flesh is
everywhere, it's not just, like it's
our literal bodies.
If you're starting with the premise
that that's weak, that's a lifetime of unlearning that you have to do,
and so I saw the church
as a place
that taught us many things,
directly or indirectly,
and for those of us who are
trying to get free,
your life becomes a process of
unlearning those things that don't serve
any of us well. And then
with women, church women
in particular,  I'm just really
interested in the dynamic that,
you know, black churches are
majority women. I mean we
just outnumber the men
vastly, but not in leadership.
You know? But we're present, and we're
present in larger numbers, but it's the
men that are still setting
the tone by and large, I mean
obviously there are exceptions.
So I'm really fascinated by how we
cling to—
and of course, church fathers,
the people who wrote
the books of the Bible,
so there's all of this
male influence on this
predominantly female group
of people, and that's just
extraordinary to me,
and so I wanted to
explore the ramifications
of that and what
happens when we don't unlearn, what
happens when we start trying to unlearn
but there's some resistance;
fear - there's so much fear
at the root of how
we're taught in traditional
evangelical Christianity - fear of hell,
fear of condemnation, and we
know that fear is just no way to live.
And so I also wanted to
play with [the idea of] what do women do
because they're afraid, and then what
would they do if they were
no longer afraid?
With that, I really want
to segue into the stories
and talk about this concept of
vulnerability.
The vulnerability attached
with sharing a story, so
I think there's a certain vulnerability
as a writer that you inhabit as you
compose and curate these
stories into a collection,
but if we were to imagine that these
church ladies were telling their stories
in response to that fear that you just
described, in response to
the really hegemonic orders
of the church that really
kind of place women at the margins or
just invisibly doing this work
behind the scenes.
What level of vulnerability goes into
even imagining telling your story,
or thinking through
your story as critique or as healing?
Some women never get to that point
where they see the value of that,
they see that it may even harm them more,
to kind of circle back to you
"do no harm" piece, and if we are to
tell stories and understand the power of
storytelling in the church,
what role do you think vulnerability
plays in women being able to share their
secrets as a way
to build and grow and
unlearn, as you said, those church ways.
That's a tough one,
I think about the other part of
your prior question about the role,
the larger role of church in
this present moment,
and I was doing an interview and
someone sent me the questions in advance,
and I'm glad they did because they
were like, "we're in this present
moment and the church— 
the black church— is leading the way,"
and I'm like, "no it's not,
like that was the civil rights movement."
Dare I say that
the church
is a little silent right now,
and so I think that
you know, we have this
history of the church as
a place, as a cornerstone
of our struggle, collective
struggle, for liberation,
but not necessarily
for personal liberation and specifically
not for women. I think it can be that way,
and I would love it
if my
book could usher that in,
so that
when women are reading these
stories, that they
realize that there are
things to unlearn and
I'm taking this great course
right now on sex and faith,
and one of the things that I'm learning
in that class is that there are your faiths,
and then there are beliefs, and your beliefs
are what can be harmful and unhealthy,
but you don't have to
abandon your faith just
to work through and do the
unlearning; you can unlearn
harmful beliefs and still have
your faith intact,
and so I think that
churches
and individuals within churches
who can do that work on coming alongside
women, and just really
looking with a critical
lens at "what is our church teaching,"
historically and then
in individual churches now,
like what messages are we
sending, and often,
a lot of it is implicit,
you know, you have
the background, you know that
there's so many things that were never
hammered into us explicitly, but we knew.
You know, we knew who
was shamed, we knew
who, when their name was mentioned,
there was that look and that "Hm."
You know what I mean?
So there's a lot that's communicated
indirectly, and so a lot of
unspoken rules and things like that,
and so I think that
the church as a place of
liberation, if we can get back to that
and really look at the harm that
has been done, and let's first
be honest about that
and then collectively be a place
where people get free of that.
Individually, though, so
many of us have done that work
on our own, but I think
the church absolutely can
have that role. It's just a matter of
willingness, and some churches do.
you know I'm talking about
"THE Black church,"
and so it's more traditional,
but we know that there's
liberation theology, we know that
there are churches that
embrace queer folks, and so
they've kind of set
the the tone for others to follow.
Yeah, sure.
I appreciate
that response because
one thing that I felt as I read the
non-short stories, was that
the church becomes a character, whether
stated or unstated, and
it was so central to the construction of
most everything,
whether it was a periphery
reference or if it was just central,
as in like Eula, where
we know that we are critiquing the
church from the beginning.
That's the first story, we know
exactly what's happening. But one
thing that I'm thinking about
as a battle for church
constructions—and I also
resist the idea of "THE Black church"—
that to kind of
go back to a
comment you made earlier about binaries,
that we have to resist these ideas of
either/or, right?
That you can't have faith and pleasure;
that you can't have faith and freedom;
that there has to be
room for us to occupy those spaces, and I
think for Black women and Black girls as
you've mentioned here, we have been
inculturated to believing in things
and that unlearning process is
uncomfortable,
right? It's something that is not taught,
it's often something that's not modeled,
and so you begin
to do what you've seen.
And so I think specifically
about The Nap Ministry,
I don't know if
you're familiar—
Yes! Yes.
And this idea of grind culture, and
I felt that was in conversation
with what I was reading
here, this idea of
"why did I aspire to be so present in the
church? What were my examples?"
and so I really want to get
into a few of the stories that stood out
to me with that piece in mind—
Okay.
And so I want to just start
with Eula, because it's what
opens this up, and
as I listen to
my memories
as I read this story, I thought
about Audre Lorde,
and the power of the erotic, and how
so many women, but
specifically Black women,
have not embraced the politics
and the practice of pleasure.
And so there's a lot of
unknown possibilities and unknown
desires that then become
kind of masked and fueled by the church.
And so I'm curious
about how you
decided that this would be
the opening story.
It was brief, it hooked
you right in,
and when I think about the audiences
that may engage this, if this is the
first story that you read—
It's about to go down!
You're not holding back.
you know and Caroletta, I was like
"I'm here for you," because
we got different prayers. We in this
together but we're praying for different
things, and there's so many
realities in any relationship and so
just curious about the role of sex,
desire, the erotic, and holding place
for both your faith and pleasure
as a possibility.
Sure. So first I want to give a shout out to
adrienne maree brown's book,
Pleasure Activism,
and she talks about— and actually I
think she reprints in full
Audre Lorde's Uses of the Erotic, and
so this idea of the erotic
as life force for women,
and so her work is just incredible,
and her work is a curation
of many voices and
many practices, and so
I read that after the collection was
done, but I felt like I hope that this
collection can be a part of that
movement towards pleasure.
Eula in particular, so initially—
I mean it's a multi-part answer.
Eula was the first
story that I had published
elsewhere - in Apogee Journal
it was published,
and so part of it was initially like, I
want to celebrate the fact that
that was the first story and
the first publication that
said, "Yeah, this is good,"
because it got rejected.
So that was sort of
the easy answer,
but then, you've alluded to it a bit
too, I kind of wanted it to be,
as one reviewer said, I wanted to
snatch everybody's edges
in the very beginning, so that if you
are someone who's maybe
uncomfortable reading about
explicit sex or reading about queer
people, then you know
right away that this
is what this book is,
and where we can, you know—
so it wasn't like a building up to it or
anything like that,
and also because I don't feel like I
need to ease people into it,
like this is real life, you know?
We're all grown, we all had sex before,
and so I wanted to—
and you know, the attention,
it is an attention grabber,
just in general.
So that was my
thought behind that.
I really also like the attention to age,
that you see their relationship
building over decades,
and how many women have held these
secrets for so long
and just kind of
deprived themselves of that pleasure
experience for that long, for some hope
that may never come,
but they may truly already be
experiencing, and so
I thought that was one of the,
you know, it did snatch my edges!
I was laughing at the shade and I was
reflecting on, you know,
how many women have
been in erotic, willing relationships
where there
was no sexual requirement
or expectation, but that
you really felt attached
and loving and caring
towards another woman, that that is a
politic that has not been fully embraced,
I believe, and the church site
is a site where it is maybe being
overlooked and this made us share
a conversation for this, so I saw
that it's definitely a (inaudible).
And then, as I got deeper
into things, the Dear Sister
was messy. Just messy.
Yes.
I loved all the (inaudible), where
she was trying to re-insert the
estranged sister back in like, "and this is
your uncle too," and "now don't forget
that you're in this family,"
so I just, I love that mess.
I wanted to talk about the
human nature of the church,
and trying to bring people down from
these pedestals and god-like—
Yeah.
presentations and kind of
talk through
how that humanity element is coming
through in all the stories, but
particularly near where we are
trying to make man more
human, instead of being god-like,
so how how are you grappling
with the politics and
ethics of telling that story?
I didn't want there to be villains,
you know, and so that's part of it.
And I know you're asking about
bringing them down
in a different kind of way,
but it is that
putting people on pedestals
and then because we put them on a
pedestal, when they act
human, like they're going to, then we're
afraid to do anything about it
because we put them
on this pedestal, as opposed to let's
just not put them on a pedestal,
how about that, so that they can be fully
human, so that they can mess up, so that
then you can hold them
accountable, but that
accountability piece never happens.
And so I grew up and there would be
all kinds of scandals in churches
involving pastors and deacons, and
in one situation in particular,
I'm thinking about an underage girl
and it just was messy,
to use that word,
and so I thought there's no way
you can write about the
church honestly without
writing that, and so it
was very natural,
but I also wanted to
to do it with a light hand,
and just let that—
how do I want to say it—
so, this is what Pastor Neely did, right?
and so there was not
a whole lot of
commentary around what
he was doing,
just that he was doing it, and I felt
like the reader could bring their own
commentary to that,
and there was even a moment where
he starts to advocate for Olivia
to go to the the birthday party,
and I felt like that was just real,
because again none of us are
all terrible or, even when
we're doing messy things,
you know we can still, in those
moments, do the right thing.
And so that was important for me,
that it's a type of grace, that
we have to show other people and
that I want people to show me,
and so I thought it was just
important that because
you know the book is a critique of the
church—it's many things but that is one—
I didn't feel like I needed to be
so heavy-handed with it,
but definitely to point out that,
as people say in the church,
these are people with feet of clay,
just like me and you.
Absolutely. I love that.
I think one
thing that became clear
as a recurring theme, and it's a
mindset and a response
that I study
pretty heavily, is that shame,
in the way that we are working with and
against shame, and so
I'd love to hear your take on the way
that shame is manifesting across
different stories, any of your choosing,
where you're seeing mother
and daughter relationships, you're
seeing intimate relationships,
you're seeing
imagined relationships that are
kind of based in infatuation and
attraction but never acted upon,
so all these
moments where shame is
either in the background
making you not say anything, or shame is
making you cover up that secret a little
bit more, how do you see
shame working across the
construction of these
these short stories as a kind of central
theme that pulls them
together and really amplifies the title
that like, that's what makes the secret
the secret - I'm avoiding some
type of shame or some
representation that might blur or muddy
my church or
my family name or myself.
So in the class that
I'm taking,
it's a class on sex and faith, we talk
about the unholy trinity:
fear, shame, and guilt.
Oh wow.
And so I kind of
think of them
as the triplets,
but shame
in particular, and its opposite,
 shameless,
and so that's almost one of the worst
things you can be is to
be shameless, and so
shame is a corrective
and it's how you keep
people in line.
It's how our parents can
keep us in line without
yelling or laying a finger on us they
could just [say], "you should be
ashamed of yourself,"
you know, those are powerful words,
or shame— you know, I
have loved ones that
their shame kept them
out of the church.
I had relatives
say to me,
"I'ma go to church when I get myself right," and
I just remember thinking— and I think I
put this, it might be in
one of the stories— that
it's like, well isn't church the
place where you go to get right, you know,
that's what I thought.
And so I think
about the, you know,
with Not Daniel,
they're shameless,
they're out there,
tending to their grief,
and then in Dear Sister,
Renee wants Tashida
to be ashamed of her very vulgar,
very explicit talk around sex,
and she's not ashamed,
and then Peach Cobbler, you know,
that shared shame, right?
So you've got Olivia, and her mother is
doing the shameful thing with the pastor,
but then she wears that shame
and then it's amped up because then she
has to go to the man's house,
and see his wife, and uh! You know?
And I also think about shame
when it comes to
instructions for married
Christian husbands,
and the, you know, shouldn't
a mistress be ashamed,
like, it should be a secret,
it shouldn't be
talked about, and so she is so not ashamed,
she's so shameless, she wrote
a whole instruction manual.
That was one of my favorite stories.
It really took me from
this noticing of, the church is
central, to also this being
a celebration of women
and their power to tell their stories on
their own terms, make their own rules,
and that as you mentioned in the
beginning about your background with the
church, has not always been the role of
the woman in the church.
We've seen them not be able to take
leadership roles until, I would say,
maybe the last century, you know, or
not even that long, maybe in the last 50
or 60 years, that there has been a more
front-facing presence of women in the
church and so
when I got to
Instructions for— I want to make sure I—
Instructions for Married Christian Husbands,
I really love
the instructive
nature of what you were saying.
It was like a manual, you know?
And I thought about how many
people need to read this.
I thought also about the ways
in which you don't
always see women showing up in this,
as you said, shameless way,
where it's not, at least in the Church
Ladies realm, but you see maybe the
counter in hip-hop,
or in other secular
spaces, in business - where you're
saying like, "I'm the CEO, I'm the boss,"
and what it means to kind of reclaim
that space for the secrets of the church
ladies, like 1) identifying that 
I sleep with married men, but
further that
I am in control of this situation and
I'm clear about what we're doing
while we're doing it. I think
that was such a—
I must admit, it was so much later in the
collection that I was like,
"oh man, I'm all into my feelings now," and
now I'm like ready to fight,
I'm like, yeah that's right,
we're gonna travel,
you're paying for it!
I really, I needed that.
Good!
And so I want to
circle back to
this idea of shame and healing and
taking space for both/and,
and then about How to Make Love to a Physicist
as a similar productive type
of moment,
and really I'd like to key in and hear
your thoughts about
the role of therapy, as a technical space.
Mhm. Yeah.
Even today as the
wide accessibility of therapy options—
I know there's like therapy
for a black girl,
there's teletherapy that has been
really rising during the pandemic,
and so even though we have these
larger accesses—and I would even say
more access to education around why it's
helpful—there's still resistance in
certain communities, and perhaps
even focused in the church community,
as far as who's supposed to
be counseling you, that you're
supposed to seek counsel from your church leaders—
Right.
And that we can occupy space
for both/and. I remember
Yvonne Orji, she did an interview
talking about how she has multiple
therapists, like she has a Christian
therapist, she has just a
secular-based therapist
that gets her together about the world,
and really what you were hoping
to do with that,
like pushing back against that taboo of
therapy, but also that larger piece of
that short story of
How to Make Love to a Physicist.
Physicist, yeah!
That's a different story! So I'll talk
a little bit about that, and then I'll
actually read a little bit from,
that's what I want to read from, is
How to Make Love to a Physicist.
But shoutout to The Incarnation
Institute for Sex & Faith.
Their whole mission is around
reconciling this idea that
faith and sex are not,
you know, they're not
mutually exclusive, and they work on
training therapists in faith, and
training clergy in mental health,
so that people don't feel like, you know,
"I can't be in the church and, you know,
seek therapy,"
but also I think for
the church traditionally, it's been a
couple of things, with the Black church,
you know, therapy is for white people,
so there's that. You know, we don't
air our dirty laundry as a community,
we're not supposed to do that,
but also, if you're
going to therapy,
you can't keep other
people's secrets, right?
So that's another reason
to discourage therapy.
I just want to say that the race piece
is also mapped on the caste, that like
it's not only that it's for white people,
but it's for white people with money.
Money, yeah. Yes.
And you have to have a certain
profession, like I can't even afford this,
you know, and so I mean that
intersection intention is so real,
about even how we access
therapy or what it's associated with.
Right, and we have to remember that
mental health is health, and for Black
folks, the medical community
has exploited us and has harmed
us historically, so that's another piece
that would create a bit of a barrier.
But as you mentioned,
in How to Make Love to a Physicist,
she does
go to therapy,
and it's not a question.
She goes, it's just a question
of like, how is she progressing?
But she goes.
And so the part that I
want to read, though, is
this idea around reconciling
faith and science, and,
you know, larger, and so this is an
excerpt in the middle of the story,
I want to tee it up for those
who need context. The author—
or not the author, that's me!— the narrator
is an art school teacher
and the person that she met at a
conference is a physicist, hence
the title, and so I'll read
a bit from that.
"How do you make love to a physicist?
Ask him if he believes in God.
Ask him if he thinks it's possible to
reconcile science and religion.
'Physics principles
support the notion of God,' he says,
because they tell us that you can't
create something from nothing.
Something must have created all of this,
unless you believe that we have always
existed, that there's no big bang,
there's no beginning
point to the universe.
I don't know what the mechanism is, but
it's some higher power. All that energy
had to come from somewhere.'
'Oh, I assumed you were an atheist.'
'Even Einstein wasn't an atheist,' he says.
He talked about God all the time. Now, he
didn't believe in a god that was
concerned with human behavior, which is
the church's obsession and the reason it
uses guilt and shame to enforce Christianity.'
And then she says,
'You don't think god cares how we treat
each other
and the planet?'
'I think that's the most
important thing,' he says.
But human beings are
capable of doing
that outside of the
purview of the church.
I've studied the Bible cover to cover.
So much hinges on translation and
interpretation. I grew up
Catholic, and I love the ritual
of it all. But I've come to understand
that belief in a personal god is not
essential.
Not for me.'
You ask, 'What about heaven?' 
But what you really want to ask is
what about hell?
'What about it?' he says.
Heaven—getting into it,
avoiding the alternative—
is the whole point of
living right, isn't it?
Your mother speaks longingly of Judgment
Day and the final accounting of who's
allowed past the pearly gates,
certain that God's accounting will
mirror hers. 'It will be a very
small number,' she's fond of saying.
'Only those who walk
the straight and
narrow path
shall see the face of God.'
And you realize that
if God were to
welcome everyone into heaven,
your mother would abandon Christianity
immediately.
You don't know how to answer Eric's
question about heaven without
sounding like you're quoting a
fairy tale about good and evil,
reward and punishment.
You take a moment to soak it all in.
You think of your mother and the very
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.
'I guess a person could have
heaven right here on earth,' you say.
'I do,' Eric says. 'Every time
I see you smile,
or hear you talk about your students. And
even when you're quiet and painting or
just... folding towels.'
'Heaven is me
folding towels?'
'Okay... maybe it's you folding
fitted sheets. Miracles abound.'"
Thank you so much.
What drew you to want to share that
excerpt? What about that excerpt
is so important in this
moment of officially
launching the the book,
of thinking about the ways that it
will impact and spark conversations -
what what really moves you
about that piece?
This is such an intimate story. I mean I
think all the stories are intimate in
different ways,
but in this moment of quarantine,
and so we're all of us—
you know, those of us who are not
partnered, this
challenge around intimacy but
keeping safe, you know,
all of a sudden
talk about your
natural desires and you
have to squelch them, whether it's
platonic or romantic,
and have to have this other layer of
consideration, and so
I really love the intimacy between
these two people,
and they are long distance, but
eventually they get to see each
other and don't have to
wear masks and all
that kind of stuff, but in the present
moment, I'm really
sort of reveling in their
ability to be intimate.
I love that and I agree that
there are like so many
varying levels of intimacy,
where you see what's happening between
mother and daughter,
familial structures, whether a parent is
deceased, intimate
relationships through sex  -
there's just so much
there and if I had to think of one
audience for this text,
I could not name just one.
As much as I want to say,
based on the title that
folks in any church setting should have
these conversations,
to really talk through the power of
sharing stories as a means of healing,
as a means of reconciliation, as a means
of facing and being uncomfortable,
seeing the value
of that discomfort,
as much as I want to say that an
aspiring writer should read this text,
it will be helpful,
I would say young people
should read this text so that you can
begin to think through -
specifically young church-going
folks, and I think that
this is really a different
context than
thinking about religion, because I
think to push back against
being churched, is a very different thing -
as you said, the distinction between your
faith and your beliefs, those practiced,
those spoken and unspoken beliefs,
and then there's women - I see like this
as an appeal for women,
but I'm curious to hear from you who
would you like to read
this collection of stories? Who did
you have in mind when you penned it,
who have you thought about in
quarantine that might
value in experiencing
these stories, and
what action might you kind of
impart on folks as you read?
Beyond enjoyment, because as I said,
it was totally an enjoyable read,
one that I didn't lament
or even want to put down, and so I
think that you won't have any trouble
there, anyone who's looking to get
into something juicy and energizing
as a read, but who else might be
interested in this collection and
towards what end?
Sure, so when I've
heard from Black
women readers
who have enjoyed the book,
I thank them and I say,
"I wrote this for us."
I really did, because as we've talked
about, there is a need for us,
but it's a text— there are
stories that
anyone can engage with, anyone who has
desires, and that's all of us,
anyone who's ever felt stifled,
anyone who's ever had to
keep secrets and felt torn
between
doing what they feel
comes naturally or doing what their
heart longs for,
and someone else's
disapproval - whether that's 
someone else is a
loved one or their view of god.
But I've heard from
white folks, I've heard from
men and women, some of
the early readers of this book
when the arc was available
were men who I heard from,
so I think that it can reach a lot
of people in that respect,
but specifically with regards to church
folks - absolutely hope that
church folks will
read it, that they won't be
terrified by Eula or upset by Eula that
they won't continue going,
and even as I've developed a
book club kit with some discussion
questions - I've made two sets of
questions: one for everybody,
including church folks, and
then a specific group
of questions for people who may be doing
this with a church
bible study group,
or pastors who may want to
figure out how to
bring it into discussion;
I have a Black
woman friend pastor who said,
"I wanna be able to talk to
other pastors about this book,"
and she really inspired me
to come up with that second set of
questions. So I say I know
enough bible in church
to be dangerous, so
I knew some questions
that would speak to people,
speak in their language, and
meet people where they are,
in addition to the other questions,
so that book club kit will be available
on my website for sure,
and possibly on
I think on West Virginia University
Press's website,
and it'll be a great resource
for folks who want to really dig into
the stories with their book club,
with their church group,
or even just some things to ponder
for themselves.
I love that. I think
that when we,
as a people—Black people—then get
to a point of understanding
the power of critical
vulnerability, of looking within
for those healing— for the power of
the multiplicity of stories,
that we don't have a singular narrative,
that there are so many things to be
uncovered and unveiled through our
questions, that our questions
are not always doing harm,
that they actually can be
gateways and bridges to healing, to
progress, and to connection
then I think that
that will be a beautiful
experience, and I
think that this book is the start for so
many churches and so many
church ladies and so many groups—
Yes!
And just black women
and girls at large,
and so
I really have enjoyed our
conversation here and I hope that
everyone who's listening
takes the time to
secure a copy of the text
and to share it with a friend and to
be in conversation.
This was a text that, I think I was in
the third story, and I was texting a
friend like,
"girl we gotta read this!"
I have to do this interview for it but when
I'm done, I'm ready, like let's have this
conversation.
I wanted to call my grandmother and
say like, "tell me about
some things that you have experienced,"
you know, and just opening
that space where it even
becomes normalized, and
I know there's a trend on social media
right now just like "normalize this" or
"normalize that," and I really want to impart
on folks to normalize
the sharing of stories
as a means of healing—
Yes!
and reconciling with the past
and our memory so that we
can move forward and towards 
a better future. So thank you so much, Deesha.
Thank you, thank you!
This has been my
second quarantine treat
of the the past month as I move
into a rather eventful semester,
so thank you—
Oh yeah.
for the gift of
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.
I know that it'll be a gift
to so many others.
Well I really
appreciate this conversation.
I love what you said about
storytelling and asking questions,
and now I'm thinking of something 
you said earlier about
why the church
and specifically
Christianity as it's often practiced -
it's that certainty, right?
You do this, you go to heaven. You
do this, you go to hell. But that's
just not how life works, and so
when we focus instead on stories and
asking questions,
it busts up that notion of certainty
which gives us some stability but it
also gives us a greater freedom too.
So thank you for giving me
that way to think about these stories
because I hadn't
thought about it that way.
Also, I'm so glad to have been in
conversation with you, thank you!
Yes.
Thank you Khirsten and Deesha
for delving deep
into the complexities,
psychologies, and characters
beautifully explored in these nine
remarkable stories.
And thank you for joining us.
Be well, stay safe, and stay connected.
[Cheerful music]
