If it weren't for her jabs at American pop culture, her often unbridled twit-icisms on all aspects of life, and her occasional spats with followers, which have brought her seemingly closer to us in all her entertaining complexities that guest spots on Oprah only hinted at, I probably would not have bought Terry McMillan's new book, Getting to Happy.
Though I was very much one of the many McMillan fans who read her voraciously (before and up to Waiting to Exhale) and even defended her right to be included among must-read American writers when my snobby college classmates were upset that she was out-selling writers like Toni Morrison, and though I (like many young Black women at the time) wanted to drink at her feet for the truth and wisdom she gave us in Waiting to Exhale--all of which was successfully transferred from book page to film, by the way--I felt I'd put all that anger and confusion and impracticality about love and relationships to rest when I got married in 2000. So although I would have been happy to know that she's still around doing her thing, I probably would have passed on the new McMillan.
But then she appeared on Twitter and pulled me right back in to that place where she had taken me and many others years ago. It's that place where you feel you can talk to other women and share your pains and frustrations and joys with them. It's that place where you feel freedom is as much about acknowledging your vulnerabilities as it is about asserting your convictions. It's that place where love may rule your heart but not your head. And she has made me curious about this book that is a sequel to Waiting to Exhale.
All that to say, I bought the book, along with the cool-aid (and the champagne), and several boxes of tissue, and I loaded up on the Motrin and the Tums that are sure to be necessary after taking it all in... again. Join me if you feel like it. And oh yes, the movie's coming soon too.
In a September 14 interview with The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), McMillan talked about some of the inspiration behind Getting to Happy:
I can't tell you how many women I see who are 55 and you'd swear they were 88. They say, 'I don't care if I never have sex again,' and I think 'What is wrong with this picture?'Sounds just about right, ain't it?
