It’s 2021 and we’re thrilled to kick off the new year with our guest, Deesha Philyaw, the author of National Book Award Finalist, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. Today we discuss how Deesha sees a parallel between writing and math, what success looks like to her, and how publishing excludes the voices they need most.

The Stacks Book Club selection for January is The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans, we will discuss the book with Deesha Philyaw on January 27th.

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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes. You can also find everything we talked about on Amazon.

Books

• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
• Kiese Laymon
• Co-Parenting 101 by Deesha Philyaw and Michael D. Thomas
• Olive Witch by Abeer Y. Hoque 
• Carmen Maria Machado
• Toni Morrison
• August Wilson
• The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans
• The Stacks’ Antiracist Reading List
• Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
• Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz 
• How to Sit by Tyrese Coleman
• I’m Telling the Truth But I’m Lying by Bassey Ikpi

• White Tears/Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad
• The End of White Politics by Zerlina Maxwell
• Do Better by Rachel Ricketts
• Mediocre by Ijeoma Oluo
• Do Right by Me by Valerie I. Harrison & Kathryn Peach D’Angelo
• This Book is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell
• Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington
• The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
• Braiding Sweetgrasss by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• All We Can Save edited by Katharine K. Wilkinson & Ayana Elizabeth Johnson 
• How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
• Heavy by Kiese Laymon
• Untrue by Wednesday Martin
• Jason Reynolds
• Big Friendship by Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
• The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.
• Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour
• Punch Me Up to the Gods by Brian Broom
• Wayward Lives Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman
• You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love by Yona Harvey
• Survival Math by Mitchell S. Jackson
• The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott
• Finna by Nate Marshall
• Hallelujah Science by Kelli Stevens Kane
• Felon by Reginald Dwayne Betts
• Oreo by Fran Ross
• Harryette Mullen
• Alice Walker
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Mat Johnson
• The Happy Hooker by Xaviera Hollander
• Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether 
• James Baldwin
• Fences by August Wilson
• Why Didn’t We Riot by Issac J. Bailey

Everything Else

• “Ep. 118 Living the Revision with Kiese Laymon” (The Stacks)
• “Ep. 143 The Best of 2020 with Christine Bollow and Oscar Almonte-Espinal” (The Stacks)
• Traci’s 10 Favorite Reads of 2020 (Traci Thomas, The Stacks)
• “Ep. 123 Complication and Imagination with Brit Bennett” (The Stacks)
• National Book Award 2020 Finalists
• The Audacious Book Club from Roxane Gay
• “How white women use strategic tears to silence women of colour” (Ruby Hamad, The Guardian)
• Hidden Figures (Theodore Melfi, 2016)
• Neil Degrasse Tyson
• “Just How White Is the Book Industry?” (Richard Jean So and Gus Wezerek, The New York Times)
• Shine Theory
• Kirkus Review of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• White Whale Bookstore (Pittsburgh, PA)
• City Books (Pittsburgh, PA)
• Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe, 2020)
• The Tiny Bookstore (Pittsburgh, PA)
• Harriett’s Bookshop (Philadelphia, PA)
• Loyalty Bookstore (Washington, DC)
• Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee and Books (Philadelphia, PA)
• By The Book (The New York Times)

Connect with Deesha: Twitter | Instagram | Website

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