Deesha Philyaw

I DON’T MEAN TO BE A BOTHER, BABY. You know I don’t. But when are you gonna refill that shot glass? I mean, if you’re going to go through the trouble of putting whisky on your altar for me, at least keep the cup full. My cup doesn’t runneth over. Not even this itty bitty shot glass. At least let my tiny cup runneth over and not sit empty for your-months at a time, with a dirty brown grit at the bottom.
Take your time. I don’t mean to be a burden about the bourbon. But I gotta say this...

After that night, I'm screening dates for homophobia and transphobia before we meet, kiss, or eat tacos.

Does Love exist?

Is fat meat greasy? Cuz ain’t no way I could’ve fallen so hard, so fast, so far, by myself.

Rewind that.

I didn’t fall in love. Like Toni Morrison said, I rose in it.

Incoming message from Mom: You sure you don’t want a party for your birthday? Thirteen is a big one. . .

Cleo: I’m sure

Mom: Okay. . .
Mom: Let me know if you change your mind.
Mom: Grandma is going to bring potato salad and macaroni and cheese. Your favorites.

Cleo: ok

Mom: And I’m going to get some ribs and chicken from that place you like on Ardmore.

Cleo: ok

The ritual of the boil is both comforting and complicated, familiar and fraught.

THE PEACH IS the third most commonly used emoji on my phone. The reason: The cover of the U.K. edition of my book “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies” features a ripened peach that is boldly reminiscent of a vulva and a nod to “Peach Cobbler,” one of the short stories in the collection, which focuses on Black women, sex and the Black church. I’ve taken to adding the peach to the end of my tweets and Instagram comments about the book. In the world of emojis, the peach also signifies the derrièr...

You were 48 hours old when I called the midwife and told her that my uterus was falling out, hanging on by a thread. “That’s simply not possible,” she said, far too cool. I told her I was splayed on the bed, naked, holding a hand mirror, and nothing down there looked familiar. Sure, the reds and the pinks and the browns of me remained, but something had come untethered. Something gaped and was lost. You lay next to me sleeping, unaware, wrapped tight in a blanket like a burrito, the way they ...

On March 14th, 2012, Mayretta “May” Brunson Kelly Williams Bryant Jones slept away peacefully right into Jesus’ arms after a long undisclosed illness (and if that big-mouth Margaret Hill says May had a nasty woman’s disease, she’s a goddamn lie).
May was born August 13th, 1932 to Essie and Eddie-Frank Kelly (both deceased) in Bainbridge, Georgia. Eddie-Frank had too many outside kids to name, but May was one of twelve children born of the union between him and Essie: Meddie Ann (deceased), Fr...

JOAN IS OKAY
By Weike Wang
Is Joan, or Jiu-an, a Chinese American attending physician in a Manhattan I.C.U., OK? Some don’t think so. Her co-workers can’t seem to connect with her. Human Resources thinks she works too many shifts, while the hospital director delights in the fact that Joan is “a gunner and a new breed of doctor, brilliant and potent, but with no interests outside work and sleep.” When her father dies at the start of the novel, she travels to Shanghai for only 48 hours.
Joan’s ...

HOW THE ONE-ARMED SISTER SWEEPS HER HOUSE
Welcome to Paradise — also known as Baxter’s Beach, the Caribbean resort village at the center of Cherie Jones’s dazzling debut novel, “How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House.” The year is 1984, and the orphaned teenager Lala is being raised by her grandmother Wilma. The trouble in Paradise seems to be that men can’t control themselves, infidelity is a given, sex is currency and domestic abuse is in full bloom like lush tropical foliage.
The novel’...

I finished this story collection and wondered, “Is there anything Nana Nkweti can’t do?” In her raucous and thoroughly impressive debut, “Walking on Cowrie Shells,” Nkweti writes across multiple genres including science fiction, young adult literature, literary fiction and suspense, showcasing a host of voices — immigrant and first-generation, elder and Gen Z, human and supernatural, faithful and godless — hailing from the United States and Africa.
Nkweti’s utterly original stories range from...

Twelve-year-old Francie Coffin is going to be late getting back to school, again. Chatty Mrs. Mackey is delaying her with talk of dreams they both had the night before, dreams about fish. Madame Zora’s dream book gives the number 514 for fish dreams. This is important because Francie has come to collect Mrs. Mackey’s wager on the day’s number. Francie, Mrs. Mackey, and their Harlem neighbors all pin their hopes on “the numbers,” a type of daily underground lottery. Francie collects Mrs. Macke...

Good love.
The email request was that you write about good love for a Valentine’s Day reading event.
The event organizer is also a friend. She’d read your stories and essays. Didn’t she know that you could write about bad love and sexy love—the other types of love to be showcased at the reading—in your sleep?
Or perhaps that’s why she assigned you good love. As a challenge.
“Fuck,” you said. You didn’t need a challenge. You needed a little tenderness.
The weight of this story you’d been asked...