Waiting to Exhale (Masterplots II: African American Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Terry McMillan
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: 1990
- Setting: Phoenix, Arizona, and Denver, Colorado
- Principal Characters: Bernadine Harris, Savannah Jackson, Robin Stokes, Gloria Matthews, Russell, Michael King, Marvin King, John Harris
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: African Americans, North America or North Americans, United States or Americans, Blacks, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Sex or sexuality, Friendship, West, U.S., Women’s issues, Single parents or single-parent families, Women, Single people, Arizona, Colorado, Southwest, 1990’s, AIDS
- Locales: Phoenix, AZ, Denver, CO
The Novel
Waiting to Exhale tells the story of four college-educated, middle-class black women who rely on one another to overcome a number of personal and professional crises. As a record of a year in these women’s lives, the novel goes back and forth in time to chart the paths that have led each woman to Phoenix and to become the sort of woman each is. In addition to telling the story of the women, the novel explores the social and cultural contexts of African American life in the 1990’s. McMillan focuses on a number of political and social issues that are in the...
[The entire page is 3227 words long]
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