First Ladies, Church Secrets & Respectability Politics: Deesha Philyaw's The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman

This week, Cassie Goodwin and I chat with Deesha Philyaw about her fiction debut The True Confessions of Lady Freeman!

Listen to hear about:

• How The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman evolved over nearly 20 years, and why Deesha had to become a different, more experienced writer before she could finally tell Sharice’s story. 
• Why Deesha transformed Sharice from a character modeled on herself into a woman who genuinely loves being a First Lady—and therefore has something meaningful to lose. 
• How embracing satire, humor, and an actual First Lady beauty pageant unlocked the novel and allowed Deesha to interrogate church culture without making the story overly earnest. 
• A nuanced conversation about Black church culture, respectability politics, patriarchy, white supremacy, and the tension between what people profess to believe and how they actually behave. 
• Why Deesha wanted her characters to be contradictory rather than simply good or bad, and how she explores shame, desire, marriage, family, faith, power, and the complicated reasons people stay connected to institutions that may also harm them. 

Books Deesha Recommends:

Good, God by Kiese Laymon

Friends and Family by Natalie Baszile

These Girls Out Here by Dawnie Walton

When It Gets Cold in the South by Exodus Oktavia Brownlow

Desperate Bodies by Lydia Mathis

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Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

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Erin Ashley @bellametaphor