Terry McMillan 1951–

Author, educator

At a Glance…

“Looking for Mr. Right”

Sued by Former Lover

Determination Got Anthology Published

Third Novel Raised Contemporary Issues

Selected writings

Sources

“Terry McMillan has the power to be an important contemporary novelist,” stated Valerie Say-ers reviewing Disappearing Acts in the New York Times Book Review back in 1989. “Watch Terry McMillan. She’s going to be a major writer,” predicted a short but positive review of the same novel in Cosmopolitan. McMillan had already garnered attention and critical praise for her first novel, Mama, which was published in 1987. Over the next five years, these predictions began to come true. In 1992 McMillan saw the publication of Waiting to Exhale, her third novel. Her publisher sent her on a 20-city, six-week tour, and McMillan appeared on several popular television programs including the Oprah Winfrey Show, the Arsenio Hall Show, and Today.

“Seriously, I just don’t get it; I really don’t,” the unpretentious author mused during an interview with Audrey Edwards for Essence. But McMillan’s honest, unaffected writings have clearly struck a chord with the book-buying public. Paperback rights for Waiting to Exhale fetched a hefty $2.64 million, making the deal with Pocket Books the second largest of its kind in publishing history. And in September of 1992, Twentieth Century-Fox optioned the book for film.

McMillan grew up in Port Huron, Michigan, a city approximately 60 miles northeast of Detroit. Her working-class parents did not make a point of reading to their five children, but McMillan discovered the pleasure of reading as a teenager shelving books in a local library. Prior to working in the library, she had no exposure to books by black writers. McMillan recalled feeling embarrassed when she saw a book by James Baldwin with his picture on the cover. In a Washington Post article, she was quoted as saying, “I... did not read his book because I was too afraid. I couldn’t imagine that he’d have anything better or different to say than [German essayist and novelist] Thomas Mann, [American nature writer] Henry Thoreau, [American essayist and poet] Ralph Waldo Emerson.... Needless to say, I was not just naive, but had not yet acquired an ounce of black pride.”

Later, as a student at a community college in Los Angeles, McMillan immersed herself in most of the classics of African-American literature. After reading Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcom X, McMillan realized that she had no reason to be ashamed of a people who had such a proud history. At age 25, she published her first short

At a Glance…

Born in 1951; raised in Port Huron, MI; children: Solomon (with Leonard Welch). Education : Received degree in journalism from University of California—Berkeley; studied film at Columbia University.

Writer. Worked as a word processor; participated in Harlem Writers Guild literary workshop; attended MacDowell and Yaddo artists colonies, 1983; University of Wyoming, Laramie, instructor, 1987-90; University of Arizona, Tucson, professor, 1990—.

Addresses: Home—Danville, CA, and Tucson, AZ. Office —Department of English, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; or c/o Viking Penguin, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014-3657. Agent—Molly Friedrich, Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency, Inc., 122 East 42nd St., Suite 3902, New York, NY 10168.

story. Eleven years after that, her first novel, Mama, was released by Houghton Mifflin.

McMillan was determined not to let her debut novel gounnoticed. Typically, first novels receive little publicity other than the press releases and galleys sent out by the publisher. When McMillan’s publisher told her that they could not do more for her, McMillan decided to promote the book on her own. She wrote over 3,000 letters to chain bookstores, independent booksellers, universities, and colleges. Although what she was doing seemed logical in her own mind, the recipients of her letters were not used to such efforts by an author. They found her approach hard to resist, so by the end of the summer of 1987 she had several offers for readings. McMillan then scheduled her own book publicity tour and let her publicist know where she was going instead of it being the other way around.

By the time Waiting to Exhale was published, it was the other way around. The scene at a reading from the novel was described in the Los Angeles Times this way: “Several hundred fans, mostly black and female, are shoehorned into Marcus Bookstore on a recent Saturday night. Several hundred more form a line down the block and around the corner. The reading... hasn’t begun because McMillan is greeting those who couldn’t squeeze inside.... Finally, the writer... steps through the throng.”

McMillan had come a long way since the publication of her first novel, which started out as a short story. “I really love the short story as a form,” stated McMillan in an interview with Writer’s Digest. “Mama” was just one of several short stories that McMillan had tried with limited success to get into print. Then the Harlem Writer’s Guild accepted her into their group and told her that “Mama” really should be a novel and not a short story. After four weeks at the MacDowell artists colony and two weeks at the Yaddo colony, McMillan had expanded her short story into over 400 pages. When her agent suggested certain revisions to the book, McMillan questioned whether the woman truly understood what the book was about.

Frustrated by this and by certain events taking place in her personal life, McMillan took things into her own hands and sent her collection of short stories to Houghton Mifflin. Hoping that she would at least get some free editorial advice, McMillan was surprised when the publisher contacted her about the novel she had mentioned briefly in her letter to them. She sent them pages from Mama and approximately four days later got word from the Houghton Mifflin that they loved it.

Mama tells the story of the struggle Mildred Peacock has raising her five children after she throws her drunkard husband out of the house. The novel begins: “Mildred hid the ax beneath the mattress of the cot in the dining room.” With those words, McMillan’s novel becomes “a runaway narrative pulling a crowded cast of funny, earthy characters,” stated Sayers in the New York Times Book Review. Because of McMillan’s promotional efforts, the novel received numerous reviews—the overwhelming majority of which were positive—and McMillan gave 39 readings. Six weeks after Mama was published, it went into its third printing.

“Looking for Mr. Right”

Disappearing Acts, her second novel, proved to be quite different from Mama. For Disappearing Acts, McMillan chose to tell the story of star-crossed lovers by alternating the narrative between the main characters. Zora Banks and Franklin Swift fall in love “at first sight” when they meet at Zora’s new apartment, where Franklin works as part of the renovating crew. Zora is an educated black woman working as a junior high school music teacher; Franklin is a high-school dropout working in construction. In spite of the differences in their backgrounds, the two become involved, move in together, and try to overcome the fear they both feel because of past failures in love.

Writing in the Washington Post Book World, David Nicholson pointed out that although this difference in backgrounds is an old literary device, it is one that is particularly relevant to black Americans: “Professional black women complain of an ever-shrinking pool of eligible men, citing statistics that show the number of black men in prison is increasing, while the number of black men in college is decreasing. Articles on alternatives for women, from celibacy to ’man-sharing’ to relationships with bluecollar workers like Franklin have long been a staple of black general interest and women’s magazines.”

McMillan expressed her thoughts on this issue in an article she wrote entitled “Looking for Mr. Right” for the February 1990 issue of Essence. “Maybe it’s just me, but I’m finding it harder and harder to meet men.... I grew up and became what my mama prayed out loud I’d become: educated, strong, smart, independent and reliable.... Now it seems as if carving a place for myself in the world is backfiring. Never in a million years would I have dreamed that I’d be 38 years old and still single.”

Throughout the rest of the article, McMillan discusses how she had planned to be married by age 24 but found herself attending graduate school instead. She ended up loving and living with men who did not, as she puts it, “take life as seriously as I did.” When she was 32 years old, she gave birth to her son, Solomon. Shortly after that she ended a three-year relationship with her son’s father. Since then McMillan had been involved in what she called “two powerful but short-lived relationships,” both of which ended when, without any explanation, the man stopped calling.

McMillan believes that “even though a lot of ’professional’ men claim to want a smart, independent woman, they’re kidding themselves.” She thinks that these men do not feel secure unless they are with passive women or with women who will “back down, back off or just acquiesce” until they appear to be tamed. “I’m not tamable,” declared McMillan in Essence. In response to a former boyfriend who told her that it is lonely at the top, McMillan replied, “It is lonely ‘out here.’ But I wouldn’t for a minute give up all that I’ve earned just to have a man. I just wish it were easier to meet men and get to know them.”

Reviewers commended McMillan on her ability to give such a true voice to the character of Franklin in Disappearing Acts. One reviewer for the Washington Post Book World called the novel “one of the few... to contain rounded, sympathetic portraits of black men and to depict relationships between black men and black women as something more than the relationship between victimizer and victim, oppressor and oppressed.” In the New York Times Book Review, another reviewer stated: “The miracle is that Ms. McMillan takes the reader so deep into this man’s head— and makes what goes on there so complicated—that [the] story becomes not only comprehensible but affecting.” Not only did McMillan’s second novel win critical acclaim, it also was optioned for a film; McMillan eventually wrote the screenplay for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Sued by Former Lover

Leonard Welch, McMillan’s former lover and the father of their son, also found that portions of Disappearing Acts rung true—so true, in fact, that in August of 1990 he filed a $4.75 million defamation suit against McMillan. Welch claimed that McMillan used him as the model for the novel’s main male character, and therefore the book defamed him. The suit also named Penguin USA (parent company of Viking, the publisher of the book) and Simon & Schuster (publisher of the book in paperback) as defendants.

The suit alleged that McMillan had acted maliciously in writing the novel and that she had written it mainly out of vindictiveness and a sense of revenge toward Welch. In addition to believing that the novel realistically portrayed his three-year relationship with McMillan, Welch claimed that he suffered emotional stress. McMillan had dedicated the book to their son, and Welch feared that Solomon would believe the defamatory parts of the novel when he was old enough to read it.

Martin Garbus, the lawyer for Penguin USA, maintained that if McMillan had been an obscure writer who wrote an obscure book, then there would not have been a lawsuit at all. One of McMillan’s writing peers was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, “I think it’s just part of the general nastiness of the time, that people see someone doing well and they want part of it.”

The suit raised the issue of the delicate balance fiction writers must maintain. Many novelists draw on their experiences when writing, and most feel that they have an obligation to protect the privacy of an individual. In the Los Angeles Times, Garbus explained: “What Terry McMillan has done is no different than what other writers have done. It has to be permissible to draw on your real-life experiences. Otherwise, you can’t write fiction.” Most people involved in the suit, including Welch’s lawyer, agreed that a victory for Welch could set an unfortunate precedent that would inhibit the creativity of fiction writers.

In April of 1991, the New York Supreme Court ruled in McMillan’s favor. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the judge in the case wrote that although “the fictional character and the real man share the same occupation and educational background and even like the same breakfast cereal... the man in the novel is a lazy, emotionally disturbed alcoholic who uses drugs and sometimes beats his girlfriend.” The judge declared that “Leonard Welch is none of these things.”

Determination Got Anthology Published

In 1990 Viking published Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction. Edited by McMillan, the anthology came into being as a result of the anger she experienced after reading a collection of short stories that did not include any black or Third World writers. Her research and book proposal were the first steps in correcting what McMillan felt was the publishing industry’s neglect of black writers. She received almost 300 submissions for the anthology and chose 57 seasoned, emerging, and unpublished writers.

In reviewing Breaking Ice for the Washington Post Book World, author Joyce Carol Oates characterized the book as “a wonderfully generous and diverse collection of prose fiction by our most gifted African-American writers.” Oates credited McMillan’s judgment for selecting such “high quality of writing... that one could hardly distinguish between the categories [of writers] in terms of originality, depth of vision and command of the language.”

Third Novel Raised Contemporary Issues

McMillan’s third novel, Waiting to Exhale, tells the stories of four professional black women who have everything except for the love of a good man. The overall theme of the book is men’s fear of commitment; a subtheme is the fear of growing old alone. The novel has hit a nerve with its readers—both male and female. Many women seem to identify with McMillan’s characters; so do some men. According to the Los Angeles Times, one black male from an audience of over 2,000 proclaimed: “I think I speak for a lot of brothers. I know I’m all over the book.... All I can say is, I’m willing to learn. Being defensive is not the answer.” This is precisely the response to the book that McMillan was hoping to get. She wants people to understand that she is not trying to offend or insult black males. She just wants men to be aware of the things they do that make it difficult for women to love them.

One issue that emerged from many reviews of McMillan’s earlier books is the amount of profanity she uses. Waiting to Exhale met with the same criticism. One critic called her characters male-bashing stand-up comedians who use foul language. For McMillan, reproducing her characters’ profane language is her way of staying close to them. She believes that basically the language she uses is accurate. She told Publishers Weekly: “That’s the way we talk. And I want to know why I’ve never read a review where they complain about the language that male writers use!”

For her portrayal of feisty, tough, black heroines, McMillan has been compared to [acclaimed black women writers] Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Zora Neale Hurston. McMillan acknowledges the compliment but asserts in the introduction to Breaking Ice that her generation of black writers is “a new breed, free to write as we please... because of the way life has changed.” Life has changed for her generation but it has also stayed the same for many women in one fundamental way: the search for happiness and fulfillment continues. In an article in the Los Angeles Times, McMillan maintained: “A house and a car and all the money in the bank won’t make you happy. People need people. People crave intimacy.”

Ever mindful of the fleeting nature of fame, McMillan views her celebrity status with a clear eye and remains focused on her mission as a writer. “This won’t last,” she stated in Essence. “Today it’s me. Tomorrow it will be somebody else. I always remember that.”

Selected writings

Mama, Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Disappearing Acts, Viking, 1989.

(Editor) Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction, Viking, 1990.

Waiting to Exhale, Viking, 1992.

Also author of the screenplay of Disappearing Acts, for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Sources

Books

McMillan, Terry, Mama, Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

McMillan, Terry, Disappearing Acts, Viking, 1989.

McMillan, Terry, editor, Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction, Viking, 1990.

McMillan, Terry, Waiting to Exhale, Viking, 1992.

Periodicals

Cosmopolitan, August 1989.

Detroit News, September 7, 1992.

Emerge, September 1992.

Essence, February 1990; October 1992.

Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1990; June 19, 1992.

New York Times Book Review, August 6, 1989; May 31, 1992.

New York Times Magazine, August 9, 1992.

People, July 20, 1992.

Publishers Weekly, May 11, 1992; July 13, 1992; September 21, 1992.

Wall Street Journal, April 11, 1991.

Washington Post, November 17, 1990.

Washington Post Book World, August 27, 1989; September 16, 1990.

Writer’s Digest, October 1987.

—Debra G. Darnell

Terry McMillan 1951–

Author, educator

Influence of Early Years

Promoted First Novel

“Looking for Mr. Right”

Sued by Former Lover

Determination Got Anthology Published

Third Novel Raised Contemporary Issues

Selected writings

Sources

“Terry McMillan has the power to be an important contemporary novelist,” stated Valerie Sayers reviewing Disappearing Acts in the New York Times Book Review in 1989. “Watch Terry McMillan. She’s going to be a major writer,” predicted a short but positive review of the same novel in Cosmopolitan. McMillan had already garnered attention and critical praise for her first novel, Mama, which was published in 1987, but it wasn’t until 1992 that these predictions came true with the publication of Waiting to Exhale, McMillan’s third novel. The book became a runaway hit with an appeal that crossed racial lines, and the movie that followed, starring Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett, was just as much of a blockbuster.

“Seriously, I just don’t get it; I really don’t,” the unpretentious author mused during an interview with Audrey Edwards for Essence. But McMillan’s honest, unaffected writings have clearly struck a chord with the book-buying public, particularly with her enthusiastic African American audience. Paperback rights for Waiting to Exhale fetched a hefty $2.64 million, making the deal with Pocket Books the second largest of its kind in publishing history, and future McMillan titles could earn the author as much as six million dollars. With her fourth novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, described as a “chatty, dishy, you-go!-girl tale” by an Entertainment Weekly reviewer and the movie rights already sold, McMillan has found success at the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

Influence of Early Years

McMillan grew up in Port Huron, Michigan, a city approximately 60 miles northeast of Detroit. Her working-class parents did not make a point of reading to their five children, but McMillan discovered the pleasure of reading as a teenager shelving books in a local library. Prior to working in the library, she had no exposure to books by black writers. McMillan recalled feeling embarrassed when she saw a book by James Baldwin with his picture on the cover. In a Washington Post article, she was quoted as saying, “I… did not read his book because I was too afraid. I couldn’t imagine that he’d have anything better or different to say than [German essayist and novelist] Thomas Mann, [American nature writer] Henry Thoreau, [American essayist and poet] Ralph Waldo Emerson.… Needless to say, I was not just naive, but had not yet acquired an

At a Glance…

Born in 1951; raised in Port Huron, Ml; children: Solomon (with Leonard Welch). Education: Received B.A. in journalism from University of California-Berkeley, 1979; studied film at Columbia University, MFA, 1979.

Career: Writer. Worked as a word processor; participated in Harlem Writers Guild literary workshop; attended MacDowell and Yaddo artists colonies, 1983; University of Wyoming, Laramie, instructor, 1987-90; University of Arizona, Tucson, professor, 1990-92. Novels: Mama, 1987; Disappearing Acts; Waiting to Exhale, 1992; How Stella Cot Her Groove Back, 1995.

Addresses: Home -Danville, CA, and Tucson, AZ. Office-Departmentof English, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; or c/o Viking Penguin, 375 Hudson St, New York, NY 10014-3657. Agent–Molly Friedrich, Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency, Inc., 122 East 42nd St., Suite 3902, New York, NY 10168.

ounce of black pride.”

Later, as a student at Los Angeles City College, McMillan immersed herself in the classics of African American literature. After reading Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Mai com X, McMillan realized that she had no reason to be ashamed of a people who had such a proud history. At age 25, she published her first short story. Eleven years after that, her first novel, Mama, was released by Houghton Mifflin.

Promoted First Novel

McMillan was determined not to let her debut novel go unnoticed. Typically, first novels receive little publicity other than the press releases and galleys sent out by the publisher. When McMillan’s publisher told her that they could not do more for her, McMillan decided to promote the book on her own. She wrote over 3,000 letters to chain bookstores, independent booksellers, universities, and colleges. Although what she was doing seemed logical in her own mind, the recipients of her letters were not used to such efforts by an author. They found her approach hard to resist, so by the end of the summer of 1987 she had several offers for readings. McMillan then scheduled her own book publicity tour and let her publicist know where she was going instead of it being the other way around.

By the time Waiting to Exhale was published, it was the other way around. The scene at a reading from the novel was described in the Los Angeles Times this way: “Several hundred fans, mostly black and female, are shoehorned into Marcus Bookstore on a recent Saturday night. Several hundred more form a line down the block and around the corner. The reading … hasn’t begun because McMillan is greeting those who couldn’t squeeze inside.… Finally, the writer… steps through the throng.”

McMillan had come a long way since the publication of her first novel, which started out as a short story. “I really love the short story as a form,” stated McMillan in an interview with Writer’s Digest. “Mama” was just one of several short stories that McMillan had tried with limited success to get into print. Then the Harlem Writer’s Guild accepted her into their group and told her that “Mama” really should be a novel and not a short story. After four weeks at the MacDowell artists colony and two weeks at the Yaddo colony, McMillan had expanded her short story into over 400 pages.

McMillan sent her collection of short stories to Houghton Mifflin, hoping that she would at least get some free editorial advice. McMillan was surprised, however, when the publisher contacted her about the novel she had mentioned briefly in her letter to them. She sent them pages from Mama and approximately four days later got word from Houghton Mifflin that they loved it.

Mama tells the story of the struggle Mildred Peacock has raising her five children after she throws her drunkard husband out of the house. The novel begins: “Mildred hid the ax beneath the mattress of the cot in the dining room.” With those words, McMillan’s novel becomes “a runaway narrative pulling a crowded cast of funny, earthy characters,” stated Sayers in the New York Times Book Review. Because of McMillan’s promotional efforts, the novel received numerous reviews-the overwhelming majority of which were positive—and McMillan gave 39 readings. Six weeks after Mama was published, it went into its third printing.

“Looking for Mr. Right”

Disappearing Acts, her second novel, proved to be quite different than Mama. For Disappearing Acts, McMillan chose to tell the story of star-crossed lovers by alternating the narrative voice between the main characters. Zora Banks and Franklin Swift fall in love “at first sight” when they meet at Zora’s new apartment, where Franklin works as part of the renovating crew. Zora is an educated black woman working as a junior high school music teacher; Franklin is a high-school dropout working in construction. In spite of the differences in their backgrounds, the two become involved, move in together, and try to overcome the fear they both feel because of past failures in love.

Writing in the Washington Post Book World, David Nicholson pointed out that although this difference in backgrounds is an old literary device, it is one that is particularly relevant to African Americans: “Professional black women complain of an ever-shrinking pool of eligible men, citing statistics that show the number of black men in prison is increasing, while the number of black men in college is decreasing. Articles on alternatives for women, from celibacy to ‘man-sharing’ to relationships with blue-collar workers like Franklin have long been a staple of black general interest and women’s magazines.”

McMillan expressed her thoughts on this issue in an article she wrote entitled “Looking for Mr. Right” for the February 1990 issue of Essence. “Maybe it’s just me, but I’m finding it harder and harder to meet men.… I grew up and became what my mama prayed out loud I’d become: educated, strong, smart, independent and reliable.… Now it seems as if carving a place for myself in the world is backfiring. Never in a million years would I have dreamed that I’d be 38-years-old and still single.”

Throughout the rest of the article, McMillan discusses how she had planned to be married by age 24 but found herself attending graduate school instead. She ended up loving and living with men who did not, as she puts it, “take life as seriously as I did.” When she was 32-years-old, she gave birth to her son, Solomon. Shortly after that she ended a three-year relationship with her son’s father. Since then McMillan had been involved in what she called “two powerful but short-lived relationships,” both of which ended when, without any explanation, the man stopped calling.

McMillan believes that “even though a lot of ‘professional’ men claim to want a smart, independent woman, they’re kidding themselves.” She thinks that these men do not feel secure unless they are with passive women or with women who will “back down, back off or just acquiesce” until they appear to be tamed. “I’m not tamable,” declared McMillan in Essence. In response to a former boyfriend who told her that it is lonely at the top, McMillan replied, “It is lonely ‘out here.’ But I wouldn’t for a minute give up all that I’ve earned just to have a man. I just wish it were easier to meet men and get to know them.”

Reviewers commended McMillan on her ability to give such a true voice to the character of Franklin in Disappearing Acts. One reviewer for the Washington Post Book World called the novel “one of the few … to contain rounded, sympathetic portraits of black men and to depict relationships between black men and black women as something more than the relationship between victimizer and victim, oppressor and oppressed.” In the New York Times Book Review, another reviewer stated: “The miracle is that Ms. McMillan takes the reader so deep into this man’s head-and makes what goes on there so complicated-that [the] story becomes not only comprehensible but affecting.” Not only did McMillan’s second novel win critical acclaim, it also was optioned for a film; McMillan eventually wrote the screenplay for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Sued by Former Lover

Leonard Welch, McMillan’s former lover and the father of their son, also found that portions of Disappearing Acts rung true-so true, in fact, that in August of 1990 he filed a $4.75 million defamation suit against McMillan. Welch claimed that McMillan used him as the model for the novel’s main male character, and therefore the book defamed him. The suit also named Penguin USA (parent company of Viking, the publisher of the book) and Simon & Schuster (publisher of the book in paperback) as defendants.

The suit alleged that McMillan had acted maliciously in writing the novel and that she had written it mainly out of vindictiveness and a desire for revenge. In addition to believing that the novel realistically portrayed his three-year relationship with McMillan, Welch claimed that he suffered emotional stress. McMillan had dedicated the book to their son, and Welch feared that Solomon would believe the defamatory parts of the novel represented reality when he was old enough to read it.

Martin Garbus, the lawyer for Penguin USA, maintained that if McMillan had been an obscure writer who wrote an obscure book, there would not have been a lawsuit at all. One of McMillan’s writing peers was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, “I think it’s just part of the general nastiness of the time, that people see someone doing well and they want part of it.”

The suit raised the issue of the delicate balance fiction writers must maintain. Many novelists draw on their experiences when writing, and most feel that they have an obligation to protect the privacy of an individual. In the Los Angeles Times, Garbus explained: “What Terry McMillan has done is no different than what other writers have done. It has to be permissible to draw on your real-life experiences. Otherwise, you can’t write fiction.” Most people involved in the suit, including Welch’s lawyer, agreed that a victory for Welch could set an unfortunate precedent that would inhibit the creativity of fiction writers.

In April of 1991, the New York Supreme Court ruled in McMillan’s favor. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the judge in the case wrote that although “the fictional character and the real man share the same occupation and educational background and even like the same breakfast cereal … the man in the novel is a lazy, emotionally disturbed alcoholic who uses drugs and sometimes beats his girlfriend.” The judge declared that “Leonard Welch is none of these things.”

Determination Got Anthology Published

In 1990 Viking published Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction. Edited by McMillan, the anthology came into being as a result of the anger she experienced after reading a collection of short stories that did not include any black or Third World writers. Her research and book proposal were the first steps in correcting what McMillan felt was the publishing industry’s neglect of black writers. She received almost 300 submissions for the anthology and chose 57 seasoned, emerging, and unpublished writers.

In reviewing Breaking Ice for the Washington Post Book World, author Joyce Carol Oates characterized the book as “a wonderfully generous and diverse collection of prose fiction by our most gifted African-American writers.” Oates credited McMillan’s judgment for selecting such “high quality of writing … that one could hardly distinguish between the categories [of writers] in terms of originality, depth of vision and command of the language.”

Third Novel Raised Contemporary Issues

McMillan’s third novel, Waiting to Exhale, tells the stories of four professional black women who have everything except for the love of a good man. The overall theme of the book is men’s fear of commitment; a sub-theme is the fear of growing old alone. The novel hit a nerve with its readers-both male and female. According to the Los Angeles Times, one black male from an audience of over 2,000 proclaimed: “I think I speak for a lot of brothers. I know I’m all over the book.… All I can say is, I’m willing to learn. Being defensive is not the answer.” Women responded just as enthusiastically; one fan spoke for many in a Newsweek article when she said, “Terry talks about problems, but with humor and fun. I laugh through the tears. That’s what I need.” McMillan affirmed her own desire to portray the struggles of women in a positive, yet realistic, light, saying in the same article: “I don’t write about victims. They just bore me to death. I prefer to write about somebody who can pick themselves back up and get on with their lives. Because all of us are victims to some extent.” The movie that followed the success of the novel brought McMillan’s voice to an ever-widening audience, grossing $66 million.

One issue that emerged from many reviews of McMillan’s earlier books is the amount of profanity she uses. Waiting to Exhale met with the same criticism. One critic characterized her characters as male-bashing stand-up comedians who use foul language. For McMillan, reproducing her characters’ profane language is her way of staying close to them. She believes that the language she uses is accurate. She told Publishers Weekly: “That’s the way we talk. And I want to know why I’ve never read a review where they complain about the language that male writers use!”

McMillan continued to employ the narrative style that made her such a popular author, to great success, in her fourth novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Published in 1995, the novel had a first printing of 800,000 copies in hardcover-an unheard of number for an African American novelist-and the movie rights were quickly sold. The sensual, heavily autobiographical story chronicles a love affair between a successful African American woman and a Jamaican cook 20 years her junior. The book revisits several themes McMillan has dealt with in her past work, including the difficulties of finding a good man and the trials of self-definition. While some reviewers have complained about McMillan’s dependence on a stream-of-consciousness narrative technique, her use of language continues to appeal to her audience who find their voices in her own.

For her portrayal of feisty, tough, black heroines, McMillan has been compared to acclaimed black women writers Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Zora Neale Hurston. McMillan acknowledges the compliment but asserts in the introduction to Breaking Ice that her generation of black writers is “a new breed, free to write as we please … because of the way life has changed.” Life has changed for her generation but it has also stayed the same for many women in one fundamental way: the search for happiness and fulfillment continues. In an article in the Los Angeles Times, McMillan maintained: “A house and a car and all the money in the bank won’t make you happy. People need people. People crave intimacy.”

Ever mindful of the fleetingness of fame, McMillan views her celebrity status with a clear eye and remains focused on her mission as a writer. “This won’t last,” she stated in Essence. “Today it’s me. Tomorrow it will be somebody else. I always remember that.”

Selected writings

Mama, Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Disappearing Acts, Viking, 1989.

(Editor) Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary

African-American Fiction, Viking, 1990.

Waiting to Exhale, Viking, 1992.

How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Viking, 1995.

Also author of the screenplay of Disappearing Acts, for Metro-Goldwy n-Mayer.

Sources

Books

McMillan, Terry, Mama, Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

McMillan, Terry, Disappearing Acts, Viking, 1989.

McMillan Terry, editor, Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction, Viking, 1990.

McMillan, Terry, Waiting to Exhale, Viking, 1992.

Periodicals

Cosmopolitan, August 1989.

Detroit News, September 7, 1992.

Emerge, September 1992.

Essence, February 1990; October 1992.

Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1990; June 19, 1992.

Newsweek, April 29, 1996, pp. 76-79.

New York Times Book Review, August 6, 1989; May 31, 1992.

New York Times Magazine, August 9, 1992.

People, July 20, 1992.

Publishers Weekly, May 11, 1992; July 13, 1992; September 21, 1992.

Wall Street Journal, April 11, 1991.

Washington Post, November 17, 1990.

Washington Post Book World, August 27, 1989; September 16, 1990.

Writer’s Digest, October 1987.

—Debra G. Darnell and Rebecca Parks

Terry McMillan

1951-

Novelist, educator

"Terry McMillan has the power to be an important contemporary novelist," stated Valerie Sayers reviewing Disappearing Acts in the New York Times Book Review in 1989. "Watch Terry McMillan. She's going to be a major writer," predicted a short but positive review of the same novel in Cosmopolitan. McMillan had already garnered attention and critical praise for her first novel, Mama, which was published in 1987, but it wasn't until 1992 that these predictions came true with the publication of Waiting to Exhale, McMillan's third novel. The book became a runaway hit with an appeal that crossed racial lines, and the movie that followed, starring Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett, was just as much of a blockbuster.

"Seriously, I just don't get it; I really don't," the unpretentious author mused during an interview with Audrey Edwards for Essence. But McMillan's honest, unaffected writings have clearly struck a chord with the book-buying public, particularly with her enthusiastic African American audience. Paperback rights for Waiting to Exhale fetched a hefty $2.64 million, making the deal with Pocket Books the second largest of its kind in publishing history, and future McMillan titles could earn the author as much as six million dollars. With her fourth novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, described as a "chatty, dishy, you-go!-girl tale" by an Entertainment Weekly reviewer and the movie rights already sold, McMillan has found success at the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

Enjoyed Reading from an Early Age

McMillan was born on October 18, 1951, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan, a city approximately 60 miles northeast of Detroit. Her working-class parents did not make a point of reading to their five children, but McMillan discovered the pleasure of reading as a teenager, shelving books in a local library. Prior to working in the library, she had no exposure to books by black writers. McMillan recalled feeling embarrassed when she saw a book by James Baldwin with his picture on the cover. In a Washington Post article, she was quoted as saying, "I … did not read his book because I was too afraid. I couldn't imagine that he'd have anything better or different to say than [German essayist and novelist] Thomas Mann, [American nature writer] Henry Thoreau, [American essayist and poet] Ralph Waldo Emerson…. Needless to say, I was not just naive, but had not yet acquired an ounce of black pride."

Later, as a student at Los Angeles City College, McMillan immersed herself in the classics of African American literature. After reading Alex Haley's Autobiography of Malcom X, McMillan realized that she had no reason to be ashamed of a people who had such a proud history. At age 25, she published her first short story. Eleven years after that, her first novel, Mama, was released by Houghton Mifflin.

Knew the Power of Publicity

McMillan was determined not to let her debut novel go unnoticed. Typically, first novels receive little publicity other than the press releases and galleys sent out by the publisher. When McMillan's publisher told her that they could not do more for her, McMillan decided to promote the book on her own. She wrote over 3,000 letters to chain bookstores, independent booksellers, universities, and colleges. Although what she was doing seemed logical in her own mind, the recipients of her letters were not used to such efforts by an author. They found her approach hard to resist, so by the end of the summer of 1987 she had several offers for readings. McMillan then scheduled her own book publicity tour and let her publicist know where she was going instead of it being the other way around.

By the time Waiting to Exhale was published, it was the other way around. The scene at a reading from the novel was described in the Los Angeles Times this way: "Several hundred fans, mostly black and female, are shoehorned into Marcus Bookstore on a recent Saturday night. Several hundred more form a line down the block and around the corner. The reading … hasn't begun because McMillan is greeting those who couldn't squeeze inside…. Finally, the writer … steps through the throng."

Started with a Short Story

McMillan had come a long way since the publication of her first novel, which started out as a short story. "I really love the short story as a form," stated McMillan in an interview with Writer's Digest. "Mama" was just one of several short stories that McMillan had tried with limited success to get into print. Then the Harlem Writer's Guild accepted her into their group and told her that "Mama" really should be a novel and not a short story. After four weeks at the MacDowell artists colony and two weeks at the Yaddo colony, McMillan had expanded her short story into over 400 pages.

McMillan sent her collection of short stories to Houghton Mifflin, hoping that she would at least get some free editorial advice. McMillan was surprised, however, when the publisher contacted her about the novel she had mentioned briefly in her letter to them. She sent them pages from Mama and approximately four days later got word from Houghton Mifflin that they loved it.

Mama tells the story of the struggle Mildred Peacock has raising her five children after she throws her drunkard husband out of the house. The novel begins: "Mildred hid the ax beneath the mattress of the cot in the dining room." With those words, McMillan's novel becomes "a runaway narrative pulling a crowded cast of funny, earthy characters," stated Sayers in the New York Times Book Review. Because of McMillan's promotional efforts, the novel received numerous reviews—the overwhelming majority of which were positive—and McMillan gave 39 readings. Six weeks after Mama was published, it went into its third printing.

Exposed the Difficulties of Romance for Professional Women

Disappearing Acts, her second novel, proved to be quite different than Mama. For Disappearing Acts, McMillan chose to tell the story of star-crossed lovers by alternating the narrative voice between the main characters. Zora Banks and Franklin Swift fall in love "at first sight" when they meet at Zora's new apartment, where Franklin works as part of the renovating crew. Zora is an educated black woman working as a junior high school music teacher; Franklin is a high-school dropout working in construction. In spite of the differences in their backgrounds, the two become involved, move in together, and try to overcome the fear they both feel because of past failures in love.

Writing in the Washington Post Book World, David Nicholson pointed out that although this difference in backgrounds is an old literary device, it is one that is particularly relevant to African Americans: "Professional black women complain of an ever-shrinking pool of eligible men, citing statistics that show the number of black men in prison is increasing, while the number of black men in college is decreasing. Articles on alternatives for women, from celibacy to 'man-sharing' to relationships with blue-collar workers like Franklin have long been a staple of black general interest and women's magazines."

At a Glance …

Born on October 18, 1951; raised in Port Huron, MI; married Jonathan Plummer, 1998 (divorced 2005); children: Solomon (with Leonard Welch). Education: University of California, Berkeley, BA, journalism, 1979; Columbia University, MFA, 1979.

Career: Writer. Worked as a word processor; participated in Harlem Writers Guild literary workshop; attended MacDowell and Yaddo artists colonies, 1983; University of Wyoming, Laramie, instructor, 1987-90; University of Arizona, Tucson, professor, 1990-92.

Memberships: Artists for a Free South Africa.

Awards: American Book Award; Essence Award for Excellence in Literature.

Addresses: Publisher—c/o Viking Publicity, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

McMillan expressed her thoughts on this issue in an article she wrote entitled "Looking for Mr. Right" for the February 1990 issue of Essence. "Maybe it's just me, but I'm finding it harder and harder to meet men…. I grew up and became what my mama prayed out loud I'd become: educated, strong, smart, independent and reliable…. Now it seems as if carving a place for myself in the world is backfiring. Never in a million years would I have dreamed that I'd be 38-years-old and still single."

Throughout the rest of the article, McMillan discusses how she had planned to be married by age 24 but found herself attending graduate school instead. She ended up loving and living with men who did not, as she puts it, "take life as seriously as I did." When she was 32-years-old, she gave birth to her son, Solomon. Shortly after that she ended a three-year relationship with her son's father. Since then McMillan had been involved in what she called "two powerful but short-lived relationships," both of which ended when, without any explanation, the man stopped calling.

McMillan believes that "even though a lot of 'professional' men claim to want a smart, independent woman, they're kidding themselves." She thinks that these men do not feel secure unless they are with passive women or with women who will "back down, back off or just acquiesce" until they appear to be tamed. "I'm not tamable," declared McMillan in Essence. In response to a former boyfriend who told her that it is lonely at the top, McMillan replied, "It is lonely 'out here.' But I wouldn't for a minute give up all that I've earned just to have a man. I just wish it were easier to meet men and get to know them."

Reviewers commended McMillan on her ability to give such a true voice to the character of Franklin in Disappearing Acts. One reviewer for the Washington Post Book World called the novel "one of the few … to contain rounded, sympathetic portraits of black men and to depict relationships between black men and black women as something more than the relationship between victimizer and victim, oppressor and oppressed." In the New York Times Book Review, another reviewer stated: "The miracle is that Ms. McMillan takes the reader so deep into this man's head—and makes what goes on there so complicated—that [the] story becomes not only comprehensible but affecting." Not only did McMillan's second novel win critical acclaim, it also was optioned for a film; McMillan eventually wrote the screenplay for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Book Brought McMillan's Life into Limelight

Leonard Welch, McMillan's former lover and the father of their son, also found that portions of Disappearing Acts rung true—so true, in fact, that in August of 1990 he filed a $4.75 million defamation suit against McMillan. Welch claimed that McMillan used him as the model for the novel's main male character, and therefore the book defamed him. The suit also named Penguin USA (parent company of Viking, the publisher of the book) and Simon & Schuster (publisher of the book in paperback) as defendants.

The suit alleged that McMillan had acted maliciously in writing the novel and that she had written it mainly out of vindictiveness and a desire for revenge. In addition to believing that the novel realistically portrayed his three-year relationship with McMillan, Welch claimed that he suffered emotional stress. McMillan had dedicated the book to their son, and Welch feared that Solomon would believe the defamatory parts of the novel represented reality when he was old enough to read it.

Martin Garbus, the lawyer for Penguin USA, maintained that if McMillan had been an obscure writer who wrote an obscure book, there would not have been a lawsuit at all. One of McMillan's writing peers was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, "I think it's just part of the general nastiness of the time, that people see someone doing well and they want part of it." The suit raised the issue of the delicate balance fiction writers must maintain. Many novelists draw on their experiences when writing, and most feel that they have an obligation to protect the privacy of an individual. In the Los Angeles Times, Garbus explained: "What Terry McMillan has done is no different than what other writers have done. It has to be permissible to draw on your real-life experiences. Otherwise, you can't write fiction." Most people involved in the suit, including Welch's lawyer, agreed that a victory for Welch could set an unfortunate precedent that would inhibit the creativity of fiction writers.

In April of 1991, the New York Supreme Court ruled in McMillan's favor. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the judge in the case wrote that although "the fictional character and the real man share the same occupation and educational background and even like the same breakfast cereal … the man in the novel is a lazy, emotionally disturbed alcoholic who uses drugs and sometimes beats his girlfriend." The judge declared that "Leonard Welch is none of these things."

Edited an Anthology

In 1990 Viking published Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction. Edited by McMillan, the anthology came into being as a result of the anger she experienced after reading a collection of short stories that did not include any black or Third World writers. Her research and book proposal were the first steps in correcting what McMillan felt was the publishing industry's neglect of black writers. She received almost 300 submissions for the anthology and chose 57 seasoned, emerging, and unpublished writers.

In reviewing Breaking Ice for the Washington Post Book World, author Joyce Carol Oates characterized the book as "a wonderfully generous and diverse collection of prose fiction by our most gifted African-American writers." Oates credited McMillan's judgment for selecting such "high quality of writing … that one could hardly distinguish between the categories [of writers] in terms of originality, depth of vision and command of the language."

Found Great Success with Waiting to Exhale

McMillan's third novel, Waiting to Exhale, tells the stories of four professional black women who have everything except for the love of a good man. The overall theme of the book is men's fear of commitment; a sub-theme is the fear of growing old alone. The novel hit a nerve with its readers—both male and female. According to the Los Angeles Times, one black male from an audience of over 2,000 proclaimed: "I think I speak for a lot of brothers. I know I'm all over the book…. All I can say is, I'm willing to learn. Being defensive is not the answer." Women responded just as enthusiastically; one fan spoke for many in a Newsweek article when she said, "Terry talks about problems, but with humor and fun. I laugh through the tears. That's what I need." McMillan affirmed her own desire to portray the struggles of women in a positive, yet realistic, light, saying in the same article: "I don't write about victims. They just bore me to death. I prefer to write about somebody who can pick themselves back up and get on with their lives. Because all of us are victims to some extent." The movie that followed the success of the novel brought McMillan's voice to an ever-widening audience, grossing $66 million.

One issue that emerged from many reviews of McMillan's earlier books is the amount of profanity she uses. Waiting to Exhale met with the same criticism. One critic characterized her characters as male-bashing stand-up comedians who use foul language. For McMillan, reproducing her characters' profane language is her way of staying close to them. She believes that the language she uses is accurate. She told Publishers Weekly: "That's the way we talk. And I want to know why I've never read a review where they complain about the language that male writers use!"

Fourth Novel Returns McMillan's Personal Life to the Headlines

McMillan continued to employ the narrative style that made her such a popular author, to great success, in her fourth novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back. The sensual, heavily autobiographical story chronicles a love affair between a successful African American woman and a Jamaican cook 20 years her junior. Needing to take some time off, McMillan stopped work on her novel A Day Late and a Dollar Short, which she had started in 1993, and traveled to Jamaica. There she grieved for the recent deaths of loved ones and unexpectedly found love. Her romance with and eventual marriage to Jonathan Plummer was widely publicized. "Stella is as close to autobiography as I've written in a long time," McMillan conceded to Ebony. "When she realizes that she is a breath away from the 21st century, alone, and unhappy, her heart skips a beat. She recovers. Acts. Adjusts. I felt my mom on that beach in Negril, Jamaica. She was telling me, 'I know you miss me, but you've got a life to live.'" Published in 1995, the novel had a first printing of 800,000 copies in hardcover—an unheard of number for an African American novelist—and the movie rights were quickly sold. While some reviewers have complained about McMillan's dependence on a stream-of-consciousness narrative technique, her use of language continues to appeal to her audience who find their voices in her own.

For her portrayal of feisty, tough, black heroines, McMillan has been compared to acclaimed black women writers Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Zora Neale Hurston. McMillan acknowledges the compliment but asserts in the introduction to Breaking Ice that her generation of black writers is "a new breed, free to write as we please … because of the way life has changed." Life has changed for her generation but it has also stayed the same for many women in one fundamental way: the search for happiness and fulfillment continues. In an article in the Los Angeles Times, McMillan maintained: "A house and a car and all the money in the bank won't make you happy. People need people. People crave intimacy."

McMillan resumed work on A Day Late and a Dollar Short and published it in 2001. In the book, McMillan explored new issues. As she told Essence: "First, I wanted to write about a woman whose whole life revolved around her children. But I wanted her to have her own issues, though to some extent she was avoiding them. Viola [the protagonist] has very high expectations of her children; she only wants the best for them. Then I wanted to write about a husband [Cecil] who is estranged from the family, but who is basically a decent guy. And I also wanted to write about a family where everybody keeps secrets." McMillan's story hit home with readers who kept it on the New York Times best-seller list for 12 weeks.

McMillan released The Interruption of Everything in 2005. The novel delves into the issues of mid-life for women who have spent much of their lives focused on their children and their husband. McMillan tried to highlight the differences between female and male perspectives on family and marriage. Calling the book "fresh" and "funny," People reviewer Natalie Danford said, "Breathe easy, fans: It's been four years since her last book, but McMillan's still got her groove."

The publication of this novel coincided with the much publicized break up of McMillan's marriage. Unlike her protagonist, McMillan fully understood her own power over her life. She told People: "I never thought my happiness was contingent on having a man. A man should enrich it. But when that ceases to be the case, he's gotta go." She remained committed to living her life happily, and continuing to write. Her work re-mained at the forefront of the publishing craze for stories about middle-class black women that she "discovered" in the 1980s.

Selected writings

Books

Mama, Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Disappearing Acts, Viking, 1989.

(Editor) Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction, Viking, 1990.

Waiting to Exhale, Viking, 1992.

How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Viking, 1995.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short, Viking, 2001.

The Interruption of Everything, Viking, 2005.

Sources

Books

McMillan, Terry, Mama, Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

McMillan, Terry, Disappearing Acts, Viking, 1989.

McMillan Terry, editor, Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction, Viking, 1990.

McMillan, Terry, Waiting to Exhale, Viking, 1992.

Periodicals

Black Issues Book Review, January-February 2002.

Cosmopolitan, August 1989.

Detroit News, September 7, 1992.

Ebony, May 1993, p. 23; December 1996, p. 116; July 2005, p. 32.

Emerge, September 1992.

Essence, February 1990; October 1992; January 2001; July 2005.

Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1990; June 19, 1992.

Newsweek, April 29, 1996, pp. 76-79.

New York Times Book Review, August 6, 1989; May 31, 1992.

New York Times Magazine, August 9, 1992.

People, July 20, 1992; July 11, 2005; July 25, 2005.

Publishers Weekly, May 11, 1992; July 13, 1992; September 21, 1992.

Wall Street Journal, April 11, 1991.

Washington Post, November 17, 1990.

Washington Post Book World, August 27, 1989; September 16, 1990.

Writer's Digest, October 1987.

—Debra G. Darnell and Sara Pendergast

McMillan, Terry 1951–

(Terry L. McMillan)

PERSONAL: Born October 18, 1951, in Port Huron, MI; daughter of Edward McMillan and Madeline Washington Tillman; married Jonathan Plummer, September, 1998 (filed for divorce, 2005); children (by Leonard Welch): Solomon Welch. Ethnicity: Black Education: University of California, Berkeley, B.S., 1979; Columbia University, M.F.A., 1979.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Viking Penguin, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014.

CAREER: Writer. University of Wyoming, Laramie, instructor, 1987–90; University of Arizona, Tucson, professor, 1990–92.

MEMBER: PEN, Author's League.

AWARDS, HONORS: American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation, 1987, for Mama; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1988.

WRITINGS:

Mama, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1987.

Disappearing Acts, Viking (New York, NY), 1989.

(Editor) Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction, Viking (New York, NY), 1990.

(Author of introduction) Spike Lee, with Ralph Wiley, By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of the Making of Malcolm X … including the Screenplay, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1992.

Waiting to Exhale, Viking (New York, NY), 1992.

How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Viking (New York, NY), 1996.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short, Viking (New York, NY), 2001.

The Interruption of Everything, Viking (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to Five for Five: The Films of Spike Lee, Stewart, Tabori, 1991. Contributor of short stories to periodicals.

ADAPTATIONS: Waiting to Exhale was adapted for audio cassette, narrated by Terry McMillan, and as a motion picture starring Whitney Houston and Angela Bas-sett, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1996; How Stella Got Her Groove Back was adapted as a film starring Bassett, Whoopi Goldberg, Taye Diggs, and Regina King, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1998; Disappearing Acts was adapted for a film by Home Box Office, 2001; A Day Late and a Dollar Short was adapted for audio cassette, Penguin Audiobooks, 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: Terry McMillan's character-driven novels, most of them best-sellers, have drawn an audience of all ages, races, and genders. McMillan has a talent for confronting universal themes such as romantic commitment, family obligations, and relationships between parents and children, in ways that resonate in her readers' lives. To quote Anne Bowling in Writer's Yearbook, "The women McMillan crafts draw readers by the millions. These characters seem familiar enough to walk through your apartment door, drop a Coach bag on the coffee table and flop down on the couch for a chat." Booklist correspondent Vanessa Bush commended McMillan for her "distinctive style of unveiling the trials and mishaps of modern-day life for black folks." Loosely based on her own life experiences, such novels as Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back explore the many lifestyle issues facing educated, dynamic upper-class women as they seek happiness and self-definition through their work and their relationships.

For her portrayal of feisty, tough, black heroines, McMillan has been compared to acclaimed black women writers Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Zora Neale Hurston. McMillan acknowledges the compliment, but asserted in the introduction to the 1990 short-story anthology Breaking Ice, which she edited, that her generation of black writers is "a new breed, free to write as we please … because of the way life has changed."

"McMillan has the power to be an important contemporary novelist," stated Valerie Sayers in the New York Times Book Review in 1989. By that time, McMillan had already garnered attention and critical praise for her first novel, Mama, which was published in 1987. Over the next five years predictions about the writer's future began to come true. In 1992 McMillan saw the publication of Waiting to Exhale, her third novel. Her publisher sent her on a twenty-city, six-week tour, and McMillan appeared on several popular television programs. As healthy sales of her novels, as well as the purchase of their film rights showed, the author's honest, unaffected writing style clearly struck a chord with the U.S. book-buying public.

McMillan grew up in Port Huron, Michigan, and discovered the pleasure of reading as a teenager while shelving books in a local library. As a student at a community college in Los Angeles, McMillan immersed herself in most of the classics of African-American literature, and at age twenty-five she published her first short story. Eleven years after that, her first novel, Mama, was released by Houghton Mifflin.

McMillan was determined not to let her debut novel go unnoticed. Typically, first novels receive little publicity other than the press releases and galleys sent out by the publisher. When McMillan's publisher told her that they could not do more for her, she decided to promote the book on her own. She wrote over 3,000 letters to chain bookstores, independent booksellers, universities, and colleges. By the end of the summer of 1987 she had received several requests to do readings. McMillan then scheduled her own book publicity tour and let her publicist know where she was going.

Mama had started out as a short story. "I really love the short story as a form," explained McMillan in an interview with Writer's Digest. "Mama" was just one of several short stories McMillan had tried unsuccessfully to get into print. Then the Harlem Writer's Guild accepted her into their group and advised her that "Mama" really should be a novel and not a short story. After four weeks at the MacDowell artists colony and two weeks at Yaddo, McMillan had expanded her short story into a book of more than 400 pages. When her agent suggested certain revisions, McMillan questioned whether the woman truly understood what the book was about.

Frustrated by this and by other events taking place in her personal life, McMillan took things into her own hands and sent a collection of short stories to Houghton Mifflin, hoping to at least get some free editorial advice. McMillan was surprised when the publisher contacted her, not about the short stories, but about the novel she had mentioned briefly in her cover letter to them. She sent them pages from Mama and approximately four days later got word from the publisher that they loved it.

Mama tells the story of the struggle Mildred Peacock has in raising her five children after she throws her drunkard husband out of the house. The novel begins: "Mildred hid the ax beneath the mattress of the cot in the dining room." With those words, McMillan's novel becomes "a runaway narrative pulling a crowded cast of funny, earthy characters," stated Sayers in the New York Times Book Review. Because of McMillan's promotional efforts, the novel received numerous reviews—the overwhelming majority of which were positive. Six weeks after Mama was published, it went into its third printing. Michael Awkward, reviewing the novel in Callaloo, deemed it a "moving, often hilarious and insightful exploration of a slice of black urban life that is rarely seen in contemporary black women's fiction."

Disappearing Acts, McMillan's second novel, tells the story of star-crossed lovers by alternating the narrative between the main characters. Zora Banks and Franklin Swift fall in love "at first sight" when they meet at Zo-ra's new apartment, where Franklin works as part of the renovating crew. Zora is an educated black woman working as a junior high school music teacher; Franklin is a high-school dropout working in construction. In spite of the differences in their backgrounds, the two become involved, move in together, and try to overcome the fear they both feel because of past failures in love.

Writing in the Washington Post Book World, David Nicholson pointed out that although this difference in backgrounds is an old literary device, it is one that is particularly relevant to black Americans: "Professional black women complain of an ever-shrinking pool of eligible men, citing statistics that show the number of black men in prison is increasing, while the number of black men in college is decreasing. Articles on alternatives for women, from celibacy to 'man-sharing' to relationships with blue-collar workers like Franklin have long been a staple of black general interest and women's magazines." McMillan expressed her own thoughts on this issue in an article in Essence. "Maybe it's just me, but I'm finding it harder and harder to meet men…. I grew up and became what my mama prayed out loud I'd become: educated, strong, smart, independent and reliable…. Now it seems as if carving a place for myself in the world is backfiring. Never in a million years would I have dreamed that I'd be thirty-eight years old and still single."

Reviewers have commended McMillan for her ability to give such a true voice to the character of Franklin in Disappearing Acts. A reviewer for the Washington Post Book World called the novel "one of the few … to contain rounded, sympathetic portraits of black men and to depict relationships between black men and black women as something more than the relationship between victimizer and victim, oppressor and oppressed." In the New York Times Book Review another reviewer stated: "The miracle is that Ms. McMillan takes the reader so deep into this man's head—and makes what goes on there so complicated—that [the] story becomes not only comprehensible but affecting." Not only did McMillan's second novel win critical acclaim, it also was optioned for a film by Home Box Office. Although it also sparked a defamation suit brought by McMillan's former lover, who claimed that McMillan used him as the model for the novel's main male character, the New York State Supreme Court ultimately ruled in McMillan's favor.

Waiting to Exhale tells the stories of four professional black women who have everything except the love of a good man. The overall theme of the book is men's fear of commitment; a sub-theme is the fear of growing old alone. The novel hit a nerve with its readers, both male and female, as many readers seemed to identify with McMillan's characters. According to a Los Angeles Times writer, one black male reader proclaimed: "I think I speak for a lot of brothers. I know I'm all over the book…. All I can say is, I'm willing to learn. Being defensive is not the answer." That was precisely the response McMillan was hoping to get.

One issue that emerges from reviews of McMillan's books is her use of profanity, and Waiting to Exhalesparked the same criticism. One critic referred to the novel's protagonists as male-bashing stand-up comedians who use foul language. For McMillan, reproducing the profane language people actually use is her way of staying close to reality. As she told a Publishers Weekly interviewer: "That's the way we talk. And I want to know why I've never read a review where they complain about the language that male writers use!"

"Fans of McMillan's previous novels … will recognize McMillan's authentic, unpretentious voice in every page of How Stella Got Her Groove Back," noted Liesl Schillinger in the Washington Post Book World. The story of a forty-something businesswoman whose life has been spent raising her son and working her way to success, How Stella Got Her Groove Back finds the resourceful, spunky protagonist off to Jamaica to shake up more than just a boring existence. Stella is determined to fill that empty place in her life where a permanent love interest should be, and a twenty-year-old Jamaican named Winston more than fits the bill. She brings Winston back to the United States with her and, almost unbelievably, he is accepted by her eleven-year-old son as well as by her sisters, and life continues happily ever after. Although noting that McMillan's novel "is not deeper or more searching than the average sitcom, no more dramatically powerful than a backyard barbecue," Richard Bernstein cited How Stella Got Her Groove Back as "an irreverent, mischievous, diverting novel that at times will make you laugh out loud," in his New York Times review. Maxine Chernoff dubbed the novel "not quite serious enough for summer reading" in her review in Chicago's Tribune Books. Schillinger praised McMillan for realizing that "women are ready to read about themselves not only as schemers or sufferers, but as the adventurous heroes of their own lives."

A Day Late and a Dollar Short, published in 2001, had its genesis in the early 1990s, but McMillan was sidetracked by the deaths of her mother and her best friend, then by her marriage to Jonathan Plummer. The novel employs six first-person voices to explore the dynamics of one family as the beloved matriarch lies dying in the hospital. "All six voices—male and female, young and old—are fresh and vital, propelling conflict and exposing the strengths and foibles of the good but imperfect people," declared Jewell Parker Rhodes in the Washington Post Book World. Rhodes further characterized the novel as a "glorious" work that, "like the best fiction, helped illuminate corners of my own heart. Like a call-and-response chant, [McMillan's] strong characterization and plotting dared me not to laugh, cry and shout upon recognizing this glittering, complicated portrayal of African-American family life."

McMillan does not shy away from portraying the most devastating aspects of modern life in A Day Late and a Dollar Short. She tackles infidelity, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual abuse, and sibling rivalry, while allowing her characters to defend—and condemn—themselves through their own commentary. "The story was important to me," the author told a Publishers Weekly interviewer. "My hope for my readers is that broken relationships among family members might be looked at again." A Publishers Weekly contributor called A Day Late and a Dollar Short "a moving and true depiction of an American family, driven apart and bound together by the real stuff of life." In a review for Book, Andrea King Collier lauded the work, noting that, "In the hands of McMillan, the master of edgy, ensemble storytelling," the novel "has drama and snap."

With her string of best-sellers, McMillan has proven to be a "crossover" artist who, while writing exclusively about black characters, transcends the bounds of ethnic issues. McMillan's voice belongs to what has been described as "the New Black Aesthetic": one that does not deal with everything from the perspective of race. For example, her novel The Interruption of Everything tells the story of Marilyn Grimes, a consummate wife and mother of three grown children who is married to an average Joe. This scenario could aptly describe many women of any race, creed, or nationality. Although her life appears to be a good one, Marilyn has postponed many of her own dreams so long that she can no longer quite remember what they are. Feeling closed in by irrelevant demands, Marilyn sets out to reinvent her life.

As McMillan explained to Writers Yearbook: "Everything I write is about empowerment, regardless of what kind it is. It's always about a woman standing up for herself and her rights and her beliefs, and not worrying about what other people think. But one of the things I think fiction should not do is be didactic. I'm not here to preach, I'm not trying to be Gloria Steinem in disguise. I would prefer that you be affected, that by reading something you get a sense of empowerment, and hopefully if it's subtle enough you won't even know it happened."

Commenting on her motivation for writing, McMillan explained to a Writer contributor that she has a good reason to keep working. "I write because the world is an imperfect place, and we behave in an imperfect manner. I want to understand why it's so hard to be good, honest, loving, caring, thoughtful and generous. Writing is about the only way (besides praying) that allows me to be compassionate toward folks who, in real life, I'm probably not that sympathetic toward. I want to understand myself and others better, so what better way than to pretend to be them."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 21, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Contemporary Black Biography, Volume 17, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 50, 1988, Volume 61, 1991.

Patrick, Diane, Terry McMillan: The Unauthorized Biography, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1999.

PERIODICALS

Black Issues Book Review, January, 2001, Gwendolyn E. Osborne, review of A Day Late and a Dollar Short, p. 15.

Book, January, 2001, Andrea King Collier, review of A Day Late and a Dollar Short, p. 71.

Booklist, November 15, 2000, Vanessa Bush, review of A Day Late and a Dollar Short, p. 588.

Callaloo, summer, 1988.

Christian Science Monitor, January 11, 2001, "Waiting to Exhale in the Thin Atmosphere of Troubled Siblings," p. 18.

Cosmopolitan, August, 1989.

Detroit News, September 7, 1992.

Emerge, September, 1992; June, 1996.

English Journal, April, 1996, p. 86.

Esquire, July, 1988.

Essence, February, 1990; October, 1992; May, 1995, p. 52; June, 1996, pp. 50, 54.

Library Journal, January 1, 2001, Emily Jones, review of A Day Late and a Dollar Short, p. 155.

Los Angeles Times, February 23, 1987; October 29, 1990; June 19, 1992.

Mademoiselle, July, 1996, p. 77.

Newsweek, January 8, 1996, p. 68; April 29, 1996, pp. 76, 79.

New Yorker, April 29, 1996, p. 102.

New York Review of Books, November 4, 1993, p. 33.

New York Times, May 15, 1996, p. B5, C17.

New York Times Book Review, February 22, 1987; August 6, 1989; May 31, 1992; June 2, 1996, p. 21; February 4, 2001, Ruth Coughlin, review of A Day Late and a Dollar Short, p. 21.

New York Times Magazine, August 9, 1992.

People, July 20, 1992.

Publishers Weekly, May 11, 1992; July 13, 1992; September 21, 1992; May 6, 1996, p. 30; December 11, 2000, Diane Patrick, "Terry McMillan Is Back," p. 42; December 11, 2000, review of A Day Late and a Dollar Short, p. 65.

Time, January 8, 1996, p. 72; May 6, 1996, p. 77.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), September 23, 1990; May 31, 1992; May 5, 1996, p. 6.

Village Voice, March 24, 1987.

Wall Street Journal, April 11, 1991.

Washington Post, November 17, 1990; January 25, 2001, Linton Weeks, "Terry McMillan, Encompassing the Family Circle," p. C1.

Washington Post Book World, August 27, 1989; September 16, 1990; May 24, 1992; May 5, 1996, p. 1; February 11, 2001, Jewell Parker Rhodes, "The Price Club," p. 5.

Writer, August, 2001, interview with McMillan, p. 66.

Writer's Digest, October, 1987.

ONLINE

Voices from the Gaps, http://voices.cla.umn.edu/ (April 21, 2004), "Terry McMillan."

Writer's Yearbook, http://www.writersdigest.com/ (March 6, 2001), Anne Bowling, "Terry McMillan: 'Everything I Write Is about Empowerment.'"

McMILLAN, Terry

Nationality: American. Born: Port Huron, Michigan, 18 October 1951. Education: University of California, Berkeley, B.A. 1979; Columbia University, M.F.A. 1979. Family: Married Jonathan Plummer in 1998; one son (with Leonard Welch). Career: Visiting professor of creative writing, University of Wyoming, Laramie, 1987-90; associate professor of English, University of Arizona, Tucson, 1990-92; teacher of writer's workshop, Stanford University, Stanford, California; columnist and book reviewer for newspapers, including the New York Times, Atlanta Constitution, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Awards: Award for fiction (New York Foundations for the Arts), 1986; National Book award (Before Columbus Foundation), 1987; Matrix Award for Career Achievement in Books (Women in Communication), 1993. Agent: c/o Viking Penguin, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Publications

Novels

Mama. Boston, Houghton, 1987.

Disappearing Acts. New York, Viking, 1989.

Waiting to Exhale. New York, Viking, 1992.

How Stella Got Her Groove Back. New York, Viking, 1996.

Plays

Screenplays:

Waiting to Exhale (with Ronald Bass). Twentieth-Century Fox, 1995.

Other

Editor, Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction. New York, Viking, 1990.

Contributor, Five for Five: The Films of Spike Lee. New York, Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, 1991.

Introduction, By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of the Making of Malcolm X … Including the Screenplay by Spike Lee with Ralph Wiley. New York, Hyperion, 1992.

Critical Studies:

Lauren Hutton and … Terry McMillan (video recording), directed by Luca Babini, Turner Program Services, 1995; Terry McMillan: The Unauthorized Biography by Diane Patrick, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1999; Terry McMillan: A Critical Companion by Paulette Richards, Westport, Connecticut, Green-wood Press, 1999; African American Women Writers by Brenda Wilkinson, New York, J. Wiley, 2000.

Enormously successful, increasingly over-imitated, Terry McMillan became a literary superstar during the 1990s. Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back cemented her status as the decade's preeminent chronicler of contemporary middle-class African American women's lives. Both books achieved tremendous financial and popular success and were transformed into Hollywood films, demonstrating her appeal with a multitude of audiences. McMillan is not an overnight success, however. Her first novel, Mama, was the culmination of years of preparation. Her training in journalism at UC Berkley in the 1970s no doubt influenced the realism common to her novels; certainly it was during her time there that she began to write creatively, publishing her first short story. Likewise, McMillan's ability to create compelling visual scenes that are so well suited to cinematic treatment has been similarly attributed to her graduate studies in film at Columbia University.

McMillan's first novel, Mama, is the story of Mildred Peacock, who throws out her alcoholic husband and struggles to raise five children alone. The story is a familiar one: a feisty woman attempts to retain her sense of self while struggling for economic survival and negotiating the demands of family. However, McMillan's novel is complicated by the historical specificity of black women's lives. Mama is at once a response to the myth of the black welfare queen that gained significant cultural currency in the 1980s, and the earlier image of a castrating black woman popularized by the now infamous Moynihan Report. The character of Mildred provides a counter-image to these stereotypes: she is complex, dignified, and committed to raising her children to be capable, responsible adults. In asserting Mildred's dedication to her children and their future as inextricable from her personal success, both the book and its protagonist are revealed to have roots in the racial uplift ideology that has historically characterized much of African American women's literature. While the novel occasionally succumbs to the lack of focus common to first novels, one cannot fault its intervention in existing popular representations of black women, or resist the appeal of its energetic protagonist. Not surprisingly, Mama received an award for fiction from the Before Columbus Foundation.

With the publication of Mama McMillan asserted herself as a force with which to be reckoned. In the face of indifference from her publishers, McMillan launched an aggressive one-woman marketing campaign, sending out thousands of letters, primarily to black organizations, colleges, universities, and bookstores, urging them to promote her novel. Her persistence paid off, and with the publication of her second novel, Disappearing Acts, McMillan proved to have an established base of enthusiastic fans.

Disappearing Acts returns to McMillan's thematic imperative of creating counter-narratives to mainstream images of African American women—and men. The novel alternates between the voices of Zora Banks, a music teacher, and Franklin Swift, the construction worker with whom she falls in love. While McMillan has been accused of relying on unsympathetic male characters to prop up her female characters' dilemmas, Franklin is a fully realized three-dimensional individual whose humanity—like Zora's—the reader connects with through extended introspective passages. The alternating narrative results in a novel that is not just a study of two individuals, but is also a consideration of relationships and romance in the modern world. An antidote to the glut of popular novels featuring white women and their quest for love, Disappearing Acts is a consideration of the dynamics of heterosexual relationships for African American men and women. The novel furthermore functions as a corrective to the lack of solidly middle-class African American heroines within this genre, empowering black female readers by allowing them to see their own reality reflected.

Throughout her exploration of the lives of African American middle-class women, McMillan has refused to create characters who are victims, instead preferring to concentrate on women who assert their agency and are willing to tackle adversity with determination and spunk. Her third novel, Waiting to Exhale, focuses on four such women. It is not the plot that carries this novel, but rather the portrait of female friendships that is so compelling. The relationship between the four women who sustain and nurture each other through heartbreak and loneliness may not be as dramatic as their relationships with men, but it is ultimately more convincing and, the novel suggests, more enduring. With over four million copies sold, the novel clearly struck a chord with American readers who identified with the frustrated desires, betrayals, and personal triumphs experienced by its protagonists.

Embraced by the popular press and the mainstream reading public, McMillan has yet to achieve widespread critical recognition, whether from the literary academy or known African American intellectual women like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. However, the instant success of How Stella Got Her Groove Back attests to the fact that while this kind of recognition may not be forthcoming, it is not really relevant to her fans. Like all of McMillan's fiction to date, the work had as its seed an element of the autobiographical, expanded and reworked via the author's imagination. Like the protagonist, Stella, an emotionally depleted McMillan also took a vacation to Jamaica to recharge and unexpectedly fell in love with a young man nearly half her age. The experience led to her writing an intense stream-of-conscious narrative that charts the ennui and rebirth of one woman. Despite her assertive independence and financial empowerment—she is very wealthy—Stella has lost her sense of self. Through the restorative power of love—and sex—Stella is able to reassert herself and her desires as being more important than the vision of success that she previously embodied. A reversal of her second novel, where McMillan charted how love can make one lose one's self, this novel is nevertheless not so uncritical as to ignore the difficulties posed by its primary relationship and the differences between the characters and their situations in life. This does not mean, however, that the representation of the Caribbean as an imperialist outpost for Western consumption receives sustained consideration, unlike Praisesong for the Widow, by fellow African American author Paule Marshall. While she most definitely critiques white American racism and its impact on her heroines, McMillan also endows her African American heroines with many of white middle-class America's values, asserting their right to hold them without apologizing.

Currently McMillan devotees are awaiting the publication of her much anticipated fifth novel, A Day Late & A Dollar Short, which returns to the themes of family and community through a family headed by a loving mother, and populated by siblings who must work out their own fraught relationships, rivalries, and jealousies. A Day Late & A Dollar Short promises to once again assert McMillan's recurring theme: that personal relationships are the foundation of African American individual and communal success.

Jennifer Harris