Deesha Philyaw Wrote the Black Church Satire She Needed to Read

Author Deesha Philyaw has grappled with the contradictions of the Black church her entire life. The 55-year-old spent her early years following what she thought was a preordained path for women: Attend services every Sunday, marry young, and become a stay-at-home mom. In 2006, she found herself “churchy and miserable,” and tried to write her way through ennui by crafting a story about a First Lady, or a pastor’s wife, who was ambivalent about Christianity.

She set the piece aside and wrote short stories about women balancing piety and desire, forming her award-winning debut collection. When Philyaw eventually returned to the unfinished work, she realized satire was the key to turning it into her first novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman.

In the book, which hit shelves on September 29, no one would call the titular First Lady Scharisse Freeman a tradwife. Yes, she’s married to the pastor of a fictional Georgia megachurch. But she’s also built a merchandising empire that funds her luxury designer wardrobe and an ice-cream parlor on the grounds of her palatial mansion. She’s even so sex-positive that she held a Honolulu pastor couples’ retreat sponsored by a sex-toy brand.

Through the convention-defying narrator, Philyaw’s hilarious, erotic romp lampoons the impossible standards that religious women try to meet, and the hypocritical, patriarchal culture that has turned younger generations away from the institution. The author distanced herself from organized religion at age 35, the same year she got divorced. But she tells Marie Claire that First Lady Freeman is fueled by a love of the community and an aversion toward the sex-negative tradition in equal measure.

“Around 2020, I took an online satire workshop. [I learned] George Saunders’ observation about satire, that you have to really know and have some affection for what you're critiquing, otherwise it’s just sneering,” she says. “That fits my critique of the Black church vis-à-vis sex to a T. I didn’t want to sneer at the church. I wanted to skewer the unchecked misogyny, patriarchy, hypocrisy, sexual double standards, abuse, and violence in the church.”

With her novel, Philyaw joins a long and vital legacy of Black satirical writers that challenge readers to question stereotypes, subcultures, and societal norms by pushing them to maximum absurdity. “Satire requires nuance. And we are currently in a literacy crisis and a critical thinking crisis and an empathy crisis and a nuance crisis. Reading satire kills all those birds with one tome.”

To coincide with the release of her highly anticipated new book, we asked the author to share the award-winning satires that inspired The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, from coming-of-age tales by Black female authors to genre-defying story collections.