No-nonsense voices

In The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, a collection of short stories in which women pray, cook, shovel, scold, laugh, and most of all, touch, Deesha Philyaw honors everyday-courageous black women. My favorite was “Dear Sister.” After the death of her ne’er-do-well father, one daughter writes to a stepsister no one has ever met. “Is it better, she asks, “to have the one big hurt of your father not being around and not all those little hurts that come when he disappoints you? Or is it better to have a piece of a father, hurts and all?” Her matter of fact reflection sets him at a distance. She finishes by asking if the stepsister could possibly be pregnant? Because her grandmother had another of her “fishy” dreams and nobody was confessing.