Deesha Philyaw Says Freedom Fuels ‘True Confessions of First Lady Freeman’

When Deesha Philyaw’s first short‑story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, finally found a home at West Virginia University Press, nobody could have guessed it would go on to scoop the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Story Prize, an L.A. Times Book Prize and a National Book Award nomination. Fast‑forward a few years, and she’s back with a novel that feels like a wild, gospel‑stage‑show gone sideways: The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman.

In a recent email Q&A, Philyaw described the book in a way that felt both grand and intimate. The story follows Scharisse Freeman – a woman raised in modest means who ends up married to a charismatic megachurch pastor. Just as she seems to be living the glossy, ‘first‑lady’ dream, a scandal erupts and long‑buried secrets start spilling out, turning her carefully curated life inside out.

Why does the church keep pulling Philyaw back, she asked herself, and why does it keep pulling us? For her, evangelical teachings were the soundtrack of childhood, even if the lyrics were riddled with contradictions. “I didn’t have the words for the hypocrisy, the abuse, the gendered double standards,” she wrote, noting that those early hurts were rooted in patriarchy and white supremacy – the twin pillars that still lean over many congregations today.

Those memories, the women she grew up with, the girls who whispered in pews, all haunt her fiction. “There’s so much for former and current church girls to unlearn, especially around sex,” Philyaw says, adding that she loves imagining how women can find freedom in that very terrain.

Fans will be intrigued to learn that Scharisse isn’t a brand‑new idea. Philyaw first sketched the character back in 2006, long before the manuscript took shape. “She’s been simmering for years,” she admits, chuckling that the earliest drafts were far more earnest and, frankly, self‑pitying than the final version.

One of the novel’s most striking choices is its playful structure. Scattered throughout are script‑style dialogues, footnotes that feel like marginal thoughts, and even printed emails. “I love to mess with form whenever I can,” Philyaw explains. Those bits weren’t in the original outline; they slipped in organically, mirroring how her brain jumps from one tangent to the next. They also keep her honest – “I get bored easily,” she laughs – and give readers fresh ways to see character, setting and backstory.

Sex and comedy? Absolutely. The novel didn’t start out as a satire, but in 2020, about fourteen years after she first thought about Scharisse, Philyaw pivoted. The shift let her poke fun at the pageantry of Black church culture while still wrestling with its painful realities. The result is a protagonist who is less passive, more self‑determined, and undeniably fun to watch.

When asked about Toni Morrison’s advice to “use our power to empower someone else,” Philyaw says she tries to live it every day. She mentors emerging writers, makes introductions, and even writes blurbs whenever she can. “I see fellow writers as community, not competition,” she notes, emphasizing that the ethic of care guides both her life and her craft.

She also drops a couple of must‑reads: Monica West’s Light the Way – a sophomore novel she’s currently blurbing – and Dawnie Walton’s These Girls Out Here, which she just finished and praised. As for her own comfort book, she swears by Andie Davis’s 2024 debut, Let Me Liberate You, describing it as “smart, irreverent, and endlessly funny.”

All in all, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman feels like a love letter to the messy, chaotic process of untangling faith, gender and identity – a letter that’s as much about breaking free as it is about finding the humor in the brokenness.