Chapter 1: What nostalgic elements do Black women in their 30s relate to from the 90s?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. 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 have with my friends, but some aspects of them still feel true in ways.
You're listening to Books We've Loved from NPR.
The book show where we reread old favorites and tell you why they still matter today.
I'm Andrew Limbaugh. And I'm Bea Parker. I want to introduce our guest with us. We've got It's Been a Minute host, Brittany Luce. Brittany, what's up? How you doing?
I'm happy to be here today. I'm excited about this conversation.
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. I'm doing the applause. 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. Totally fair.
In my house, it's iconic.
All right, before we get to that, I'm just going to 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.
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Chapter 2: How does 'Waiting to Exhale' reflect the lives of single Black women today?
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.
You mean the movie about all the black women living in Arizona in their 30s was not for you?
Well, I was like, okay, I'll get there when I get there. That's fair. Yeah, but it's hard to disentangle this book from the movie, right? I think about, kind of similar to Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club, I do feel like I read this book through osmosis of seeing the trailer for the movie somehow. I sort of got the vibe of what it was about without ever having touched it.
So, Brittany, being the only one who read this then and reading it now, did you feel like you grew up into the book?
Oh, absolutely. Like, I am now the age of the characters in the book.
We are now the grown folks.
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, like, I very much lived a child's life. Still, like, 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, Taryn 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.
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Chapter 3: What themes of friendship are explored in 'Waiting to Exhale'?
He came up and said, this is too close to me.
Exactly. And I'm like, all the guys in here, for the most part, they suck really bad. And it's like, why would you voluntarily let people know?
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 women 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 because 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.
Don't put that on Terry. Do not put that on Terry McMillan.
Take it back. You can draw a line, right? You can draw the line.
Let's give that to like Erica Jong.
We don't need to claim that. 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 mean, it happens like every time. It happens with the bluest eye, color purple. I don't know what to tell you.
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Chapter 4: How did Terry McMillan's work influence modern media portrayals of women?
She's on edge. And she's like, because when Terry Gross asks about this criticism, Mick Millen goes like, are you saying that?
Terry's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm saying she does a journalism thing. Everybody involved needed to have this experience. This is healthy.
Oh my goodness, Terry on Terry crime. It's a real, like, intracultural conversations that are being had that happen to be mass marketed and, like, have this huge publishing deal. That's kind of 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 in it.
Absolutely.
I was like, oh, my God, I have to find a husband right now or I'll die.
That was, like, 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?
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.
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Chapter 5: What are the criticisms surrounding 'Waiting to Exhale'?
All the action happens in conversation, right? A lot of it is like, hey, you don't believe this date I just went on. Hey, you don't believe like, I went on a road trip with this guy, and it went awry, and da-da-da-da. Before we get to Call Her 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 and the City, right? Absolutely not. Sure.
100% agree. Yeah.
Like, this sort of paves the way for mass market, here's a conversation women are having. Sex and the City is very white women, 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 yeah um 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
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 shifts. 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 Macmillan 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 it 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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Chapter 6: How do the characters' experiences resonate with contemporary issues?
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? Yeah. And, like, the fact that, like, Tyler Perry took up a lot of real estate with a very particular kind of film, but a lot of it grabs from, like, the problematic man and, like, the independent woman, but with a more, like, moralistic viewpoint on
towards it but not like 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 since the movie came out it is 30 years since the movie came out but yeah so because it feels like such a very specific moment in time that there is like a nostalgia for it i agree with you parker i mean i know you didn't love the book
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.
We can get to my feelings on the book.
Right.
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.
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Chapter 7: What role does marriage play in the narratives of Black women in the book?
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 specific. She has snappy tendencies. Yeah. I don't think she specifically hates women. That's not what I got. That's not what I gathered from the book. Parker, speak your truth. What led you to this question?
I want to know why you think so. I want to get into this. As I was reading the book, Macmillan's writing style gave very much like that friend who is always mean. Yes. But when you call him out, they're like, I'm just being honest. And I'm 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 Macmillan likes these women. Okay.
I felt like, because, 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.
Yeah.
And 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 they're 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. Exactly. 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.
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Chapter 8: Why is 'Waiting to Exhale' still relevant for today's readers?
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 was, like, divorce, divorce, divorce. Divorce, divorce. It was, like, this unique thing.
Well, it's because they're cheating. Were people cheating like this in the 90s? But also, it's more exacerbated because they are only dating, like, the same four black men in Phoenix. Speak on it. They're bound to be married. Like, Savannah got to ship one in that's married to cheat. Like, there is, like, a whole... Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
I...
All of them except for Gloria is out here like with a married man doing stuff.
I mean, that's true. That's true. But I was a monthly reader of Essence Magazine. You probably were too, Parker. And I was a weekly reader of Jet.
Essence, Jet, Ebony, you do all the business.
A monthly reader of Ebony as well. 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. It's a real scarcity mindset.
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 B.B. Moore Campbell. Shout out to the late great B.B. Moore Campbell. A lot of these kinds of, 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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