Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan
"Waiting to Exhale" is Terry McMillan's acclaimed third novel, published in 1992, which explores the lives of four African American women navigating the complexities of love, identity, and friendship. The story is set in Phoenix and follows Savannah, Bernadine, Robin, and Gloria, each embodying different coping strategies as they face personal and societal pressures. The narrative addresses themes of cultural acceptance, familial expectations, and the desire for authentic relationships while highlighting the tension in the characters' lives through the metaphor of "waiting to exhale."
As they confront the alienation and anxiety stemming from their experiences, the protagonists develop a supportive friendship that encourages resilience against unhealthy relationships. McMillan's portrayal of these women's struggles resonates with the concerns of black feminism, reflecting the aspirations of a growing middle-class African American community in the 1990s. Although the setting implies potential for rebirth, the characters ultimately seek integration and a new sense of identity through their interconnected lives, revealing the challenges and triumphs they face as they strive for personal fulfillment. The novel is celebrated for its honest character portrayals and the relatability of its themes, making it a significant work in contemporary literature.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan
First published: 1992
The Work
Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan’s third novel, was an instant popular success when it was first published in 1992. The book found wide acceptance, both critical and public, largely because of the honesty of its character portrayals and the timeliness of its themes. All four main characters in Waiting To Exhale are seeking the acceptance of culture and family but are also determined to escape their limiting influences. The conflicts that arise in the lives of the characters reflect the concerns of black feminist writers in general, and critics generally regard McMillan as having a finger on the pulse of 1990’s educated black women. The novel’s popularity is a reflection of the growing number of middle-class young African Americans who wish to participate in black cultural life and preserve its heritage.
The title of Waiting To Exhale is a metaphor for the tension in each of the novel’s four protagonists’s lives. All are waiting breathlessly to find the right man, and are figuratively holding their breath until he comes along. Each protagonist’s story delineates a different type of coping strategy for the alienation and anxiety each suffers. In the face of criticism from their families, their culture, and themselves, the four women develop a friendship that enables them to stand fast against the many temptations to “settle” for an unhealthy relationship. The novel’s setting, Phoenix, implies the possibility of glorious rebirth, but the symbolic implications are muted and ultimately unfulfilled; still, the characters achieve integration and a new sense of identity through their relationships with one another.
Savannah takes a cut in pay to move to Phoenix, where her old roommate from college, Bernadine, is living the perfect life. By the time Savannah completes the move, Bernadine’s marriage is in shambles, her husband and the father of their two children having deserted her with his young blonde bookkeeper. Robin, a mutual friend, is frustrated, self-conscious, and anxious, looking for self-esteem through the eyes of the men she meets. Gloria, their hairdresser, is the single mother of a sixteen-year-old son, whose emerging sexuality creates fear in her and hostility in him. Savannah moves, Bernadine spends, Robin casts horoscopes, and Gloria eats; ultimately all their defense mechanisms crumble under one anothers’ affectionate but witheringly, relentlessly honest scrutiny.
Bibliography
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., ed. Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology. New York: Meridian Books, 1990. Several essays in this important collection address ways of responding to black women’s literature.
Henderson, Mae Gwendolyn. “Speaking in Tongues: Dialogics, Dialectics, and the Black Woman’s Literary Tradition.” In Reading Black, Reading Feminist, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Meridian Books, 1990. Emphasizes how black female subjectivity helps to structure many texts in the black women’s literary tradition.
Johnston, Tracy. Review of Waiting to Exhale, by Terry McMillan. Whole Earth Review 78 (Spring, 1993): 84. Johnson praises Waiting to Exhale as a “wonderful mix of black, urban, female voices”; however, she finds McMillan’s portrayal of the book’s “good men” somewhat unconvincing.
Marshall, Carmen Rose. Black Professional Women in Recent American Fiction. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004. Includes a chapter that reads Waiting to Exhale as an attempt to rethink African American female agency.
Smith, Wendy. “Terry McMillan.” Publishers Weekly 239, no. 22 (May 11, 1992): 50-51. An incisive overview of McMillan’s career, written on the eve of Waiting to Exhale’s publication. Largely based on an interview with the author, who energetically defends her book’s depiction of black men.
Wall, Cheryl A., ed. Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989. Major black feminist critics analyze the black woman’s literary tradition.
Willis, Susan. Specifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987. Considers the many alternative creative visions black women writers contribute to American literature, African American literature, black women’s literature, and women’s literature.