Terry McMillan - Mama

Rookie Season: Debuts | Week 7º

Dec 19, 2024

Extra seasoning for your everyday food for thought

Genre: American Literature, Domestic Fiction

“Bottom line is that we all are the same. It’s always some kind of struggle. Sometimes, it’s based on your sex, your ethnicity, your sexual persuasion—all of it. We have familial issues, you know, sibling issues, job issues, whatever. There’s something we want and can’t quite get. And that’s the beauty.”
— Terry McMillan

“If I read a book by a white author, which I do, I don’t think, ‘Gee whiz, this book is only for white people.’ It just so happens that my characters are African-Americans, and I hope that women of other ethnicities read my books.”
— Terry McMillan

Back Cover (New American Library):

“Mildred Peacock is the tough, funny, feisty heroine of Mama, a survivor who’ll do anything to keep her family together. In Mildred’s world, men come and go as quickly as her paychecks, but her five children are her dream, her hope, and her future. Not since Alice Walker’s The Color Purple has a black woman’s story been portrayed with such rich power, honesty, and love.”

Mama, the 1987 debut by best-selling author Terry McMillan, is a vivid portrayal of Black motherhood: the trials and tribulations, joy and sorrows, and the bittersweet symphonies that compose a life.

But, truth be told, the name Terry McMillan, know for blockbuster hits: Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, wasn’t always a household name that rang so sweet.

When Mama first published (in 1987), frustrated by the minimal efforts put into the novel’s promotion by a then relatively unknown author, Terry McMillan took matters into her own hands. She wrote and sent over 3,000 letters to bookstores, colleges, chain stores, African-American groups, and others imploring them to stock and/or promote her book, while offering to perform live readings whenever and wherever.

The response was overwhelmingly positive, resulting in her own 39-city book tour, rave reviews, and two re-printings within six weeks.1

Once asked in interview: What professional achievement are you especially proud of? Terry McMillan responded:

“It would have to be the publication of my first novel, Mama. I didn’t really know that I was writing a novel, at the time—I was writing poetry and then the poetry became sentences and . . . I just couldn’t stop. But when the novel was published, and I realized I could call myself an author,2 it opened up a completely new future for me.”

“People always coming up with excuses about why they can’t do this and why they can’t do that. You can do anything you want to do.”
— Terry McMillan, Mama

Did You Know?

Did you know that Terry McMillan’s 1996 best-selling novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back—which explored a May-December romance—was actually more fact than fiction?

Terry McMillan’s 1996 book was adapted for the screen in 1998 and directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan. The film stars Angela Bassett, Taye Diggs (in his film debut), Whoopi Goldberg and Regina King.

Tell Me More . . .

The novel, about a 40-something stockbroker who takes a Jamaican vacation and falls in love with a man half her age, was based on McMillan’s own experience with her former husband, Jonathan Plummer, whom she married in 1998 when she was 47 and he was 24.

Six years after their wedding, Plummer revealed to McMillan that he was gay.

In 2005, Terry McMillan and Jonathan Plummer divorced, but the divorce proceedings took a contentious turn when McMillan alleged that their marriage was “based on deceit” and accused Plummer of marrying her for financial gain and U.S. citizenship. Plummer disputed those allegations.

The pair swiftly entered into a hotly-debated, public squabble, eventually appearing together on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2005.3

After the show, Terry McMillan slapped Plummer with a $40 million lawsuit for emotional distress and damage to her reputation, winning a judgment for “intentional infliction of emotional distress” but, ultimately, ended up withdrawing the suit before the case went to trial.4