Waiting to Exhale (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Terry McMillan
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: 1990
- Setting: Phoenix, Arizona
- Principal Characters: Savannah Jackson, Bernadine Harris, Robin Stokes, Gloria Matthews, Tarik
- 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
Form and Content
Terry McMillan has created four protagonists whose personalities represent aspects of contemporary middle-class African American women. The narrative structure of Waiting to Exhale is rather unusual, with alternating chapters told from different main characters’ perspectives. Savannah and Robin tell their own stories, while Gloria’s and Bernadine’s narratives are related in the third person. Taken together, McMillan’s four protagonists mirror the concerns, the joys, and the struggles of contemporary African American women. The problems these...
[The entire page is 2574 words long]
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