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- [00:00]
A
It felt like a full circle moment to be like, oh, my God. These are the conversations I was always trying to like ear hustle on. And now they are not quite the same as the conversations that I had with my friends, but some aspects of them still feel true in ways.
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B
You're listening to books we've loved from npr, the book show where we reread.
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C
Old favorites and tell you why they still matter today.
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B
I'm Andrew limbaugh.
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C
And I'm B.A. parker.
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B
Parker, we did it. We did it.
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C
We did it.
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B
We did it. Jo, We've arrived. We arrived at the end.
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C
We made it to the end of the season. Can you stand it?
- [00:36]
B
I haven't read this much since, like, college. I'm like, oh, wow. Let me.
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C
We did a full course load.
- [00:44]
B
Yeah.
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C
This has been so fun, Andrew.
- [00:46]
B
Yeah. Yeah. And in a lot of ways, the book we're about to talk about today is a culmination of a lot of the stuff we've been talking about, which for sure. Yeah. Which we'll get to in a bit. But first, I want to introduce our guest. With us, we've got its Spin Minute host, Brittany Loos. Brittany, what's up? How you doing?
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A
I'm happy to be here today. I'm excited about this conversation.
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B
All right. We won't tease it anymore. The book we are going to be talking about today is Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale. Woo.
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C
Woo.
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B
I started doing the applause.
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C
Sheep, Sheep, Sheep. Baidu.
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B
It's a pretty big book. It's a pretty iconic. I don't want to overuse the word iconic, but I think it's fair here, right?
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C
I think totally fair in my house. It's iconic.
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D
Yeah.
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A
I was like, yeah.
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B
All right. Before we get to that, I'm just gonna do a quick synopsis for anybody who hasn't read it. This book follows four friends. We got Savannah, Bernadine, Robin, Gloria. They're all in their mid-30s. They're all a mess in some way, and they're all, like, looking for love. Each of them have their ups and downs with men, which for listeners out there, just a heads up, we will be talking about sex in this conversation. But at the end of the day, I don't think it's a spoiler to say that what's at the core of this book is the friendship between the four of them. I think that's a fair enough to start. That's a fair enough place to start. Yeah. Parker, you said you grew up with this book.
- [02:04]
C
Yes. It was the COVID that you have the old school paperback with the highlighter. Business suits with the fancy hats. I saw every day of my childhood on my mom's bookshelf. I mean, from that to the movie to the soundtrack, like, my entire childhood is, like, wrapped up in Waiting to Exhale, even though I've never read the book until today for the show. I'm sorry.
- [02:33]
A
Foundational. I mean, I read this book when I was, like, 12.
- [02:36]
C
I had to sneak and read things, and it was too hard. I did sneak and read How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Yeah. But wait until Exhale. I couldn't.
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B
It was, like, too high on the shelf.
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C
Like, you literally read it.
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B
Yeah. You read it at 12. 12's crazy.
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A
Yeah, I mean, like, I couldn't follow or didn't care about a lot of details that were in the book, like marriage, divorce, husband. Those things were not very relevant to my daily life so far away. But it felt like the epitome of grown folks business. But Waiting to Exhale, I mean, Parker's absolutely right. It's like, it is a foundational text for black American women and for women our age. This is, like, the backdrop of your childhood, essentially, whether you've seen the movie or read the book or not. They're inescapable.
- [03:24]
B
Just for reference. It was in the background of my life, you know, Not. It was like. Yeah, it was like. I also assumed it was grown folks business, and that was like, I never bothered to read it until now because when I was a kid, I was like, oh, yeah, that's not for me. That's like something beyond.
- [03:41]
A
You mean the movie about all the black women living and loving in Arizona in their 30s was not for you?
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B
Well, I was like, okay, I'll get there when I get there.
- [03:50]
C
That's fair.
- [03:51]
B
Yeah, but it was. It's hard to disentangle this book from the movie. Right. I think about kind of similar to Amy Tan's Joy at Lug Club. I do feel like I read this book through osmosis of seeing the trailer for the movie somehow, like, I sort of got the vibe of what it was about without ever having, like, touched it. So Brittany, being the only one who, like, read this, then reading it now, like, did you feel like you grew up into the book?
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A
Oh, absolutely. Like, I am now the age of the characters in the book.
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B
We are now the grown folks.
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A
We are now the grown folks. We are now in grown folks business. There's some things about it, like, where the contours of the story, I understood aspects of them as a child, even though I very much lived a child's life, still I was around women who were around that age who were in their mid-30s to mid-40s a lot when I was a kid and hearing their conversations. Terry McMillan is excellent at writing dialogue and the dialogue in this book and like the individual voices of the characters hear them very clearly because they sounded like my mom talking on the phone to her friends. So it was interesting. It felt like a full circle moment to be like, oh, my God, these are the conversations I was always trying to like ear hustle on. And now they are not quite the same as the conversations that I had with my friends, but some aspects of them still feel true in ways.
- [05:08]
B
All right. I want to put a pin that and go to a quick break. When we get back, we're going to talk about these sort of speaking conversation, the cultural conversation around this book. We'll be right back.
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D
This message comes from BetterHelp. As a dad, BetterHelp President Fernando Madera relates to needing flexibility when it comes to scheduling therapy.
- [05:29]
E
I have kids under 18, so, like, time is very limited. That's why at BetterHelp, our therapists try to have sessions, sometimes at night, depending on the therapist, or during the weekend. So I think that's what we need to tell the parents. You're not alone. We can help you out.
- [05:45]
D
If a flexible schedule would help you, visit betterhelp.com NPR for 10% off your first month of online therapy. Support for NPR and the following message come from Warby Parker, the One stop shop for all your vision needs. They offer expertly crafted prescription eyewear plus contacts, eye exams and more. For everything you need to see, Visit your nearest Warby Parker store or head.
- [06:11]
F
To warbyparker.com this message comes from Progressive Insurance. Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [06:29]
B
All right, we're back. Before the break, we talked about our personal connections to Waiting to Exhale. But let's do a quick bio of Terry McMillan. She's the oldest of five kids. She grew up in Michigan. She published her first short story, the End, while she was still in College. Her 1989 book, Disappearing Acts was a fictionalized account of a relationship falling apart. And after the book came out, McMillan's ex and the father of her child sued her for defamation. It's actually a pretty interesting publishing story about what can or can't be written about, but eventually, the suit was eventually dismissed.
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A
Yeah, I was going to say. I mean, how would anybody know it was him? That's my question.
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B
How would anybody know? He sort of volunteered.
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A
That's the Streisand effect. He did that.
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C
We would have never gave up.
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B
I would never know. This is too close to me.
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A
Exactly. And I'm like, all the guys in here, like, for the most part, they suck really bad. It's like, why would you voluntarily let people know?
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B
So this novel, Waiting to Exhale, as I understand, was the second largest paperback book deal in publishing history. And, you know, she's just like, credited with having introduced, like, this interior world of black woman professionals, right? Women who are like in their 30s, working, available, unhappy, you know, human, as some might say. And I kind of want to get into the influence of this book that we see today. Cause I think you can make an argument that without this book, you don't get everything from, like, Sex and the City to Call her Daddy to, like, the brand of, like, don't put that on her.
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A
Don't put that on a Terry. Do not put that on Terry McMillan.
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C
Take it back.
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B
You could draw a line, right? You could draw the line. And so, like.
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A
Let'S give that to, like, Erika John. We don't need to claim that.
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B
Well, we'll put a pin in it. But when it came out, like we were just alluding to before, I think there was a contingent of dudes who were like, this book is harmful to black men. This book is like saying something. I remember there was.
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A
That happens like every time that happens. Like it happens with the blue sky, color purple. I don't know what to tell you.
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C
Ah, the 90s really was like, black men get right and then getting the response 80s and the 90s, we wouldn't have she's gotta have it.
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B
And yeah, so speaking of Spike Lee, he actually blurbed the book, right? And what he wrote, in a way, sort of preempts the criticism, right? Because he says something along the lines of this book is a truthful and well written account of the, quote, volatile relationships between black men and black women, right? And so I just want to play you this clip. It's pretty funny. It's Terry McMillan talking to Terry Gross on WHYY's Fresh Air about Spike's reading of the book.
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A
This is amazing. I'm so excited.
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G
And he said, you know, Terry, you know, they gonna jump all over you. And I said, yeah, Spike, I know. But I told a story I wanted to tell and I'm prepared for it because I'm not gonna let the African American community dictate how I tell a story. And also, when I tell a story, I wish they would just get it once and for all. That we. Not just myself, but other African American writers, you know, we're not trying to represent the entire black race. We are telling a story about the characters that inhabit the pages of our book.
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B
That's it.
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G
You know, and the ones who usually are whining and complaining are the ones who are usually guilty.
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A
She said, hit dogs holler. That's what she said. She said, hit dogs holler. Wait, what year is that interview from?
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B
92. The entire interview is, like, brilliant. She's on edge. And she's like. Cause when Terry Gross asks About this criticism, McMillan goes like, Are you saying that Terry's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm saying she does the journalism thing.
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A
Everybody involved needed to have this experience. This is healthy.
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C
Oh, my goodness. Terry on Terry Crime.
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B
Yeah. Well, I think what I was alluding to, Parker, earlier, about how this book is a culmination of everything, of some of the stuff we've been talking about this season. Right. When we're talking about this extra burden certain people have when it comes to the criticisms of their book. Kind of like In House Family Fighting, where it's like, you're making us look bad. I think she's just being honest and truthful. It's a funny criticism that I don't think we're quite over yet to this day.
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C
It's a real intracultural conversations that are being had that happen to be mass marketed and have this huge publishing deal that's like, you'll have something like Joy Luck Club, where it's like, Amy Tan's trying to exercise these feelings she has about her family and her mother's past and all these things through all these separate women, or whether it's their Eyes are Watching God, where she's also having an intercultural conversation. Critics may not have felt that way at the time, but Terry McMillan is writing about what she knows and what she has experienced and what she's lived. And it's that thing where, like, the specific becomes universal. So it's why, when I was reading Waiting to Exhale, I could see tinges of, like, Pride and Prejudice.
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A
Absolutely.
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C
Of just like. I was like, oh, my God, I have to find a husband right now or I'll die.
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A
That was the top book that came to mind, reading Waiting to Exhale. There was so much talk about money, finances, caring for parents, caring for children, salary, selling Your house, selling your condo, paying off your student loans. Like, how much does a guy make? What does that mean? I was like, oh, my God, Mother Bennett, are you with us?
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B
Right, yeah.
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C
But it's the thing in this book that I think also probably of its time, but as an adult now, like a black woman in her 30s, professional, single out in the world. There's a level of desperation in the book of, like, you can't make it through this world alone.
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A
Moms still talk like that now.
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C
I know they sometimes will still talk.
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A
Like that after you get married.
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C
Golly.
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B
It doesn't stop. It doesn't stop.
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C
It's 2025.
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F
But, yeah.
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C
And then it was like, I feel like we've progressed.
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B
Okay, here's the thing about reading this book and watching the movie is that, like, I think more. So reading this book, it feels like I'm listening to a podcast.
- [12:31]
C
No wonder you think about Call of Daddy.
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B
Yeah, kind of. This is the thread I'm trying. All the action happens in conversation. Right. A lot of it is like, hey, you don't believe this data just went on. Hey, you don't believe, like, I went on a road trip with this guy, it went awry, and da, da, da, da. Before we get to Caller Daddy, let's take this in baby steps. I do think it's fair to say that without this book, you don't get Sex in the City. Right?
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A
Absolutely not. 100% agree.
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C
Yeah.
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B
I've been dating since I was 15.
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C
I'm exhausted.
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B
Where is he? Who?
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C
The white knight.
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F
That only happens in fairy tales.
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B
My hair hurts.
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A
Charlotte, honey, did you ever think that maybe we're the white knights and we're the ones that have to save ourselves?
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B
That is so depressing. Like, this sort of paves the way for mass market. Here's a conversation women are having. White. In Sex and Cities, very white women. Very, like, upper. A certain class of white women are having. But they're talking very openly about sex and, like, men who are bad at it and. Right.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Which then I think, then I'm jumping off. That's how you get to sort of, like, the media landscape we're in now where it's, like, talking openly about sex in podcast form or whatever. Is this iteration of, like, feminism, Right? Is this sort of the natural evolution of things?
- [13:50]
A
Well, yeah. All these books, podcasts, movies, TV shows are her sons. That's a really good point. I mean, Sex and the City absolutely jumped to mind for me when I was reading this book. Not just because it's like, Four women with different personalities or whatever. But you could actually really see the craft on the page as far as the dialogue and the storytelling is concerned, but the perspective. I think Sex and the City is one of the best television shows of all time. And it is because when you watch that show, something that's missing from a lot of similar shows now that I also see in this book Waiting to Exhale, and that I think McMillan does such an incredible job of doing is constant perspective shifts. When you watch an episode of, say, Sex and the City and you compare it to a similar show from the 2010s or from the 2020s, something that is missing is that you feel like nothing happens when you watch it. And when you go back and watch an episode of Sex and the City, every single woman has a plot line that moves her overarching, like, full season arc forward. And that's what it was like reading this book. Each woman had a distinctive voice. I could see and hear their conversation in my mind because macmillan knew these characters so well and gave them such distinct personalities on the page. And that's how it felt like reminded me of an episode of Sex and the City. And I think actually probably definitely influenced, whether they realized it or not, influenced the writing of the show because it was constant handoff.
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B
Well, it's interesting that you said, Brittany, that when you read it as a kid, you read it, like, at one cousin's house here and at some there. It sort of built for that. Right. Like, the chapters are, like, short and, like, they're all, like, specifically to, like, one character and sort of meant to. It's like the perfect, like, commuter novel where it's, like, you pick it up. You read one chapter, two chapters, and they're like tight little vignettes, like, radio cover, it just, like, really short. Yeah. Boom, boom, boom. And then you can, like, pick it up whenever. Right?
- [15:39]
F
Yeah.
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B
Yeah.
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C
I mean, I will say, particularly about the book, about the movie, because it felt like it was part of, like, the monoculture at some point. There was this feeling or expectation that more would come of that. I think there is. I mean, like, after this was How Stella Got Her Groove Back, which also became a film. But the thing is, like, there was a whole discussion in the mid-2000s of, like, where did all the black films go? Yeah. And the fact that Tyler Perry took up a lot of real estate with a very particular kind of film. But a lot of it grabs from the problematic man and the independent woman, but with a more moralistic viewpoint towards it, but not the Fun of being footloose and fancy free in Phoenix and the power of friendship. Like it'll be 30 years this year since the movie.
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B
Since the movie came out.
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A
It is 30 years since the movie came out. Since the movie came out. Savannah, Bernadine, Robin, Gloria. Four friends determined to face reality.
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C
But yeah, so because it feels like such a very specific moment in time that there is like a nostalgia for it.
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A
I agree with you, Parker. I mean, I know you didn't love the book, Parker, but I do feel like I agree with you though that like the film and even just like the place that the book holds in our culture, there isn't really anything I can think of that replaces it on the same level at all.
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F
True.
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C
We can get to my feelings on the book, right?
- [17:17]
B
Let's take a break right there. Yeah, there's a tease. There's a tease. All right, let's take a quick break and then when we get back, Parker will lay out her manifesto.
- [17:34]
F
This message comes from Charles Schwab. When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices like full service, wealth management and advice when you need it. You can also invest on your own and trade on think or swim. Visit schwab.com to learn more. This message comes from progressive insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.
- [18:12]
B
Okay, we're back. Let's do a quick recap of who these friends are. You've got Savannah. She's the career minded PR executive who's looking for a guy on a similar socioeconomic trajectory. And she's the newest member of this group of friends. And then you got Gloria, the sort of rock of the group. She owns a beauty salon and cares more about doting on her teenage son than looking for a men to date. You got Bernadine, who actually ends up in the middle of a kind of nasty divorce from her husband who leaves her for his white secretary. And then you got Robin. She's the most open hearted. She seems to fall for the wrong guy at a faster rate than her friends. In this document, Parker, there's like a question that's highlighted. I think it's from you and it's. The question is just. The question is just, does Terry McMillan hate women?
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F
No.
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C
Okay.
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F
Okay.
- [19:07]
C
Go for it.
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A
Let's get into it. Let's get into it.
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B
Let's get into it.
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C
This is my question. Do we think Terry McMillan hates women?
- [19:14]
A
Does Terry McMillan hate women?
- [19:16]
C
Yeah.
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A
No, I don't think so.
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D
No.
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A
No.
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C
I don't know, man.
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A
Well, this is the thing. So I used to follow her on Twitter back in the day.
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C
She.
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A
I had no disrespect to Ms. McMillan. I had to unfollow her after a while because she was kind of, like, snapping at people. So I don't know if it's like.
- [19:33]
C
She has snappy tendencies.
- [19:35]
A
Yeah. I don't think she specifically hates women. That's not what I got. That's not what I gathered from the book.
- [19:39]
B
Parker, speak your truth. What led you to this? I want to know why you think.
- [19:42]
C
So, but I want to get into reading the book. McMillan's writing style gave very much like that friend who is always mean.
- [19:51]
A
Yes.
- [19:52]
C
But when you call them out, they're like, I'm just being honest. And like, there are ways in which to do that that aren't this. So I was reading the book. This is the conclusion that I came after talking to Andrea a little bit. I was like, I think the friends like each other, but I don't know if McMillan likes these women. Okay.
- [20:14]
A
I felt like. Cause, okay, this is the thing. One thing I will say very different. Going back and reading the book as a grown person after having seen the movie now so many times, because the movie is so much about sisterly love. You know, the movie is purely about sisterly love, but in the book, they have all these nasty things they say about each other behind their backs and think about each other all the time. But I think aside from, like, the fat phobic comments that they make a lot about Gloria, I think that a lot of what she's doing when she has them talk about each other behind their backs is it's like giving you, the reader, a peek into their truly private thoughts that they think that nobody else is hearing. So I think that creates a sense of intimacy for me as the reader. And then the other thing, too, is I think that their less charitable thoughts about each other are meant to connect with you as the reader. But I think another reason why she did that is to allow you, as the reader, to have somebody say, exactly. Like, she's pissing me off. Exactly.
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C
Exactly.
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A
And I think that is part of why she would have some of those mean asides, too. And also the reason why people come back to gossip and gossiping among women and friends more broadly, as a point in stories of all kinds is because people do it. So one of the things that I think she does a pretty decent job in this book of sort of braiding in is trying to touch on a bajillion topics of the day. And, like, the topics of the day of the 90s were like, crack was something that came up, and the MLK Day holiday is something that came up. And trying to deal with sexist men was something that they were thinking about, like, all. And divorce, like, divorce. Everything in the 90s is like, divorce.
- [21:58]
C
Divorce, divorce, divorce, divorce. Unique.
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A
What's.
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B
Cause they're cheating? Were people cheating like this in the 90s?
- [22:04]
C
But I also think it's more exacerbated because they are only dating, like, the same four black men in Phoenix.
- [22:11]
A
Speak on it.
- [22:11]
C
They're bound to be married. Like Savannah. Gotta ship one in that's married to cheat. Like, there's like, a whole. All of them, except for Gloria is out here, like, with a married man doing stuff.
- [22:27]
A
I mean, that's true. That's true. But I was a monthly reader of Essence magazine. You probably were too, Parker.
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C
And I was a weekly reader. Jet, Ebony. You knew all the business.
- [22:36]
A
A monthly reader of Ebony as well.
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B
And.
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A
And something that came up a ton throughout that entire time that actually colored the way that I thought about dating and, like, looking for a husband. I don't know if I put it that way. I was, like, looking for. I just found one, but there aren't enough black men to go around. It's scarce.
- [22:52]
C
It's a real scarcity mindset.
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A
The scarcity mindset, like, you know, watching movies, like, any of these movies. Stella Got Her Groove Back, watching Waiting to Exhale, and, you know, reading these books or even thinking about, like, BB Moore Campbell. Shout out to the late, great Bebe Moore Campbell. A lot of these kinds of books, like, regardless of the stats, I don't know them off the top of my head, but, baby, it was in the water. It was in the air. It was in the culture in a very intense way in the 90s that I was aware of. That was when I was becoming sentient. But it doesn't feel like it's necessarily changed today.
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C
Girl, it's gotten worse. The stat is now 49% black women are married.
- [23:27]
A
I know, but, like, do black women have to get married?
- [23:28]
C
I don't think so.
- [23:29]
A
I am married. But I did that. I married this person.
- [23:32]
C
You and I split the difference.
- [23:35]
F
That's true.
- [23:35]
A
That's true.
- [23:36]
C
Okay, I will say so. The book is about, like, the power of friendship. Sure. I think in my mind it reminded me a little bit of like Night of the Living Dead of this. Like these. No, it's like, no, I had a point here of just like these four women are in this house and these zombies and men are trying to come in and bring and white women out. Yeah, yeah, Zombies and white women are trying to tear down this house, trying to come through the windows. And they're kind of like sisters in strife, kind of uniting together to fight them off. That's what I got out of it. That was my interpretation as I, like, called my mom and was like, okay, you read this when I was like four, right? Were you having a good time while you were reading this? And she was like, no, because clearly. Cause my mom was a plus size single mom divorcee. And she was like, no. I felt awful reading this. Like, Zeri McMillan hated me.
- [24:44]
A
She was not kind to Gloria, man.
- [24:45]
C
She was not kind to Gloria. The book clubs were rough for the Baltimore black women at the time.
- [24:54]
A
My mom read the book, I asked her about it and she only told me details about the movie. She's like. I was like, well, you read the book. She's like, yeah. I said, what do you remember about it? She's like, well, Angela Bassett. I was like, all right, you're not helping me. I love you, but you're not helping me right now with anything.
- [25:10]
B
We're going to take a quick break and then get to our final question as to why we think this book should be read now. All right, stay with us.
- [25:22]
F
This message comes from KeyBank. Celebrating 20 years of Key for Women. Two decades of advocating, connecting and empowering business leaders to achieve their goals and strengthen communities. From championing women owned businesses to inspiring the next generation of leaders, KeyBank is proud of the impact they've made together. And they're just getting started. Here's to the next 20 years of lifting each other up, breaking barriers, and building brighter futures. Learn more and join Key for Women@key.com women.
- [25:56]
B
We are back. So our final question is, why do you think this book deserves to be read today? Brittany, do you want to take the first crack?
- [26:04]
A
Yeah, I think this book deserves to be read today because I think it is such an interesting time capsule of black professional middle class women in the 1990s, which is like a group of people who I don't think were understood more broadly in this country. And also they had each of them these rich interior lives that were written across every page. I was around for the 90s, but like, I wasn't doing much. I was in elementary School for most of it. And so I've always been fascinated with that time. As I've grown up, I've become way more fascinated with that time and what it must have been like to be a grown black woman back then at a point where we were gaining a certain type of visibility that we hadn't really seen in the same way before. Like the everyday kind of middle class black woman. It's not the only black woman. I think that now we're at a place where storytelling wise, I think that sometimes that is the case. Or like the super successful, very rich black woman. And those are obviously not the only stories to tell. But all of these women feel like regular gals that you would know. And the things that they did, the things that they talked about, the things that they thought about were very everyday. And I think that seeing the things that they were concerned with and seeing the ways in which those concerns still reverberate to today is so interesting. It's been making me think a lot about why some things have changed so much and other things not at all.
- [27:36]
B
Parker, are you a nay still?
- [27:38]
C
I am a yay. For anthropological purposes.
- [27:45]
A
I'm with that.
- [27:46]
C
I'm thinking of other black female literature across the decades. Right. And this kind of story we had never read before. And I think before then, you have your Zora Neale Hurston, you had Alice Walker, you have your Toni Morrison. That feels like it is revered in a way that I don't think Waiting Takes Hail is as revered in that capacity. And I think reading it for a very specific place and time, super interesting and super important.
- [28:21]
B
Interesting. Okay.
- [28:21]
C
What about you, Andrew?
- [28:23]
B
I'm pretty strong. Yay. For a couple of reasons. It is kind of funny that like these books, it's like women be like, what's up with these guys? What's up with men? What is that? What is going on? It's like, oh, yeah, that tracks though. And I just want to echo the fact that I thought it was like funny. Right. And it's like we can talk about how as shady as it is to this day, there's like the main group chat and then there's like the side group that you know. And you just like make sure you don't get the two mixed up. And like that's what reading this book feels like, you know? And I just think it's hilarious. Yeah. Like in today's parlance, it's like catching these women at a moment of crashing out. Right. And they're just like spiraling and it's like okay, this is.
- [29:04]
C
But it's like continuous crashing.
- [29:07]
B
Yeah.
- [29:07]
A
I mean, how are you living? I'm continuously crashing day to day.
- [29:10]
C
I'm crashing out day to day, baby.
- [29:11]
A
Day to day. Exactly. That was one thing I did, like, is they're constantly having breakdowns.
- [29:15]
C
I just think about the 90s black female author and how, like, our mom's bookshelves were so full, but somehow Waiting exhale and Terry McMillan kind of bubbled up to the surface, and the other women didn't have that same kind of shine in that moment.
- [29:28]
B
Actually, that's a great segue to our next segment, which is, if you like this, read that. Where we recommend books based off of this one. I think I want to start because I've got this collection called Where I'm Coming from by Barbara Brandon Croft. She was like, I believe, the first syndicated black female cartoonist in the 90s. What it is is that she's got these, like, nine characters, and the way her art style is, they're literally like talking heads. And they're just like. Sometimes all of these strips are just, like, these women talking to each other, sometimes on the phone. Sometimes, you know, they're just, like, talking to each other about, like, the news of the day, essentially. A lot of, like, ripped from the headlines. A lot of, like, the stuff that's going on when it comes to finding black men, when it comes to being a single mother, when it comes to, like, current day back then, Right. Like, the politics of the time. And it gives me the same. And I can't tell if it's specifically because of the aesthetics of the art. It gives me the same sense memory as Waiting to Exhale does, of like going to Starbucks to buy a cd. You know what I mean? That, like, that very. I can, like, see the furniture and, like, the kind of faded green of the walls. And it's given me that same sort of aura. And so that's my book recommendation. Brittany, you want to go next? Yeah.
- [30:42]
A
I want to recommend Things I Should have Told My Lies, Lessons and Love affairs by Pearl Clegg. It is such a good book. It's basically like a memoir of sorts. It is a collection of her personal journals from college age deep into midlife. Like, she a young child, free unmarried woman at the beginning of the book and at the end, she's in a completely different place in life. And I believe her daughter's grown by then. And Pearl Clegg, if you don't know her, is such an interesting person, a phenomenal writer, but she has just lived such an Interesting life. It feels like getting a front row seat to all of these really interesting moments in black American history and black American life, just through the journey of one woman's life. So I recommend that book. It's really good.
- [31:32]
C
Okay. So earlier this year, my mom was like, oh, I just heard about this book and I think you would really like it. I thought of you. I was like, oh, I'm on it. I always love when like I heard of a book and I thought of you. I love that. And she said, go read it. So I read it and it was called the Wilderness by Angela Flournoy. Oh, yeah, it's good. And it's like, it goes through this friendship of five friends over a span of time where it's like they're in their 20s and there's like, there's marriage, there's work, they become like grown women. But it kind of fills that hole that I was getting with Waiting to Exhale and it all kind of like, oh, this is the next generation. This is nice. Let me get into this. So I highly recommend that when the Wilderness.
- [32:22]
B
Brittney, thank you so much. I was really stoked to talk to you.
- [32:25]
C
Thank you so much, Brittany.
- [32:27]
A
Thank you for having me. This was like, this was a blast. I had the time of my life.
- [32:32]
B
And now for our final Fona fan, I got to chatting with romance author Tia Williams. Hey Tia, how you doing?
- [32:39]
H
Hi Andrew. I'm great. How are you?
- [32:42]
B
Not bad, not bad. I'm excited to talk about this book with you. When did you first read Waiting to exile?
- [32:47]
H
It was 92. I was 16.
- [32:50]
B
Oh, 16. Was it like getting passed around or how did you hear about it? Did your friends read it?
- [32:57]
H
So it's so interesting because first of all, at 16, I had been reading above my pay grade for quite some time. I mean, I was like 9 reading VC Andrews and like Stephen King, you know. So this was a book that was being passed around by my mom and her friends and my aunts because it was about them. It was about mid to late 30 something professional black women in the suburbs. And that was my mom and her people. And as the teenager who was always so curious about what the big girls were doing, I was really fascinated. And especially because these characters, a few of them are married or one of them is married, but you know, the rest of them are single.
- [33:42]
B
And then gets divorced.
- [33:42]
H
Yeah, and then gets divorced. And you know, I had a few single aunts in their 30s who were very high earning professional women who were dating. And like me and my sisters would Go and spend the night with them sometimes and, like, talk to them about who they were dating and what it was like when they went out on the town. And so I really sort of looked up to those kind of women, so I was excited to, like, get a peek into their life.
- [34:08]
B
Did it feel salacious in any way? I imagine, like, at 16, there's a decent amount of sex in this book and you're like, that's what they're getting up to. That's what they're doing.
- [34:18]
H
Well, for this 16 year old. No, because I, you know.
- [34:22]
D
You knew.
- [34:23]
B
You knew.
- [34:23]
H
Yeah. I was a total puritan in my life, but I had been reading pretty sexed up stuff for a while and, you know.
- [34:33]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [34:34]
H
And also the sex in Waiting to Exhale isn't sexy sex. It's sex that's signifying to us how rough it is out here dating for black women.
- [34:45]
B
Is it a book that you've revisited? Like, when the movie came out, did you reread it or did you read it as you became. As you reach the age of the women in the book?
- [34:53]
H
Yeah, so the book came out when I was in 11th grade. The movie came out when I was a junior in college, so exactly four years later. But it wasn't a book that I read and just put down because it changed the culture. We hadn't seen these stories about professional suburban black women before. We just hadn't. And Terry McMillan did this magic trick of creating an extremely black story, but having it also be mainstream and palatable for everyone. And I'm saying magic trick because she was in no way pandering.
- [35:34]
B
It's like other people can be sexually frustrated, too. Wow, look at that. Yeah.
- [35:37]
H
Other people have humanity.
- [35:39]
B
Do you see any of macmillan's fingerprints in your own writing, in your own work? Like, when you started writing, were you thinking maybe not even actively about macmillan or. It's like looking back on some of your earlier stuff now, it's like, oh, I can see how. I can see some of the DNA.
- [35:55]
H
Oh, yeah. I mean, she's mother. Would I be here?
- [35:58]
A
No.
- [35:58]
H
Would any black romance writer, contemporary women's fiction writer? We wouldn't be here. She gave birth to all of us. Like, her fingerprints are all over my stuff. I mean, I wrote a book called the Perfect Find, which is a movie on Netflix starring Gabrielle Union, which I still can't believe. But that was born of how Stellar got her groove back. You know, it's an age gap romance with a woman in her 40s hooking up with this Young guy and the drama that that brings. And, yeah, like, I wouldn't know the path had she not forged it.
- [36:35]
B
I know we were talking about, like, sort of its influence on a broader scale. Right. That, like, you wouldn't be around. You might not even have gotten, like, a book deal if not for her.
- [36:43]
A
Right.
- [36:43]
B
And all of that, all this stuff. But is there anything that you take from her from, like, a craft perspective? Like, when you're. When you're thinking about structuring your characters or structuring your stories, is there anything, even to this day, like, rereading it? You're like, oh, yeah, the amount of.
- [37:00]
H
Times I put down the book and just like, stared off into the horizon. Yeah, Just the immediacy of her writing. There isn't a lot of, like, setting the physical scene. Like, she just jumps right into what is going on in these characters lives and how they're feeling and what they're thinking. Like, the sex scenes, I tend to leave out the more unattractive parts about sex.
- [37:28]
B
Sex.
- [37:29]
H
I wouldn't even dare have a sex scene with a woman that she wasn't attracted to because ew. But the idea that she jumps feet first into these scenes and just kind of writing them in a way that, like, that's more realistic in that not all sex is good. Most sex isn't. And these scenes can also be thought of as character illuminating without necessarily having to be titillating. That was very interesting to me because I'm so not in that. The women that read my books want to feel a tingle. They want some escapism. They want it to be better than it is in real life. But she wants you to feel how bad it is, how dire it is. You know, she wants to build a case for why these women are choosing themselves. And, yeah, it was a masterclass in how you reflect truth in uncomfortable ways. We're all adults. Why not talk about this?
- [38:40]
B
Well, Tia, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.
- [38:43]
H
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
- [38:45]
B
And be sure to check out her latest young adult novel, Audra and Bash are Just Friends, which is out now. And that's it. That's the season. This episode was produced by Cher Vincent and edited by Megan Sullivan.
- [38:56]
C
Engineering support by Robert Rodriguez. And our executive producer is Jalanda Steven.
- [39:01]
B
Thank you for listening to books we've loved from NPR and we hope to read with you all soon.
- [39:12]
F
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