Waiting to Exhale (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
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
- 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
Characters Discussed
Bernadine Harris, one of the four protagonists. She is thirty-six years old, black, and college educated. After a marriage of eleven years, her husband, John, leaves her for his white, twenty-four-year-old secretary. John tries to steal all of their community assets. She spends most of 1990 trying to pull herself together after the divorce and its resulting emotional drain. She accepts the lifestyle of upper-class suburbia, with its attention to material possessions, even when it gives her no personal satisfaction.
Savannah Jackson, one of the...
[The entire page is 1489 words long]
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