B.A. Parker

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 in it.

I was like, oh, my God, I have to find a husband right now or I'll die.

Right?

Yeah.

But it's the thing in this book that I think also probably of its time, but like as an adult now, like a black woman in her 30s, professional, single, out in the world, there's a level of desperation there.

In the book of, like, you can't make it through this world alone.

Moms still talk like that now.

I know.

They sometimes will still talk like that after you get married.

It doesn't stop.

It doesn't stop.

It's 2025.

But yeah, and it was like, I feel like we've progressed.

Yeah.

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, like, the black films go?