Temple Folk by Aaliyah Bilal

Published 2023 · 258 pages · 64,500 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Short Fiction

How hard is Temple Folk to read?

Temple Folk scores 45 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 42 out of 100
African American religious vocabulary.
Sentence structure: 42 out of 100
Clear, varied sentences.
Abstraction: 50 out of 100
Faith, community, and Black church life.
Information density: 45 out of 100
Dense with church culture.
Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
Stories reveal through accumulation.
Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
The temple, faith carry weight.
Ironic distance: 45 out of 100
Bennett observes with complexity.
Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
Stories end ambiguously.
Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
Story collection.

How Temple Folk is regarded

Temple Folk holds a literary regard score of 52 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

About the author

Aaliyah Bilal