SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
If one of your resolutions for the New Year includes more books, this next one's for you. NPR's Andrew Limbong and B.A. Parker have been revisiting classic reads for a podcast series called Books We've Loved. In the latest episode, they dig into Terry McMillan's "Waiting To Exhale," the 1992 novel about four women looking for love and mostly failing. Here's Andrew and Parker talking about the book with NPR's Brittany Luse.
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ANDREW LIMBONG: The book we are going to be talking about today is Terry McMillan's "Waiting To Exhale."
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BRITTANY LUSE: Woo.
B A PARKER: Woo-hoo.
LIMBONG: I mean, I started doing the applause.
PARKER: OK. Shoop, shoop, shoop-a-doo.
LIMBONG: It's a pretty big book. It's a pretty - it's a pretty icon - I don't want to...
PARKER: Oh.
LIMBONG: ...Overuse the word iconic, but I think it's fair here.
LUSE: Totally fair. Totally fair.
PARKER: In my house, it's iconic (laughter).
LUSE: Yeah. I was like, yeah.
LIMBONG: All right. Before we get to that, I'm just going to do a quick synopsis for anybody who hasn't read it. This book follows four friends. We got Savannah, Bernadine, Robin, Gloria. They're all in their mid-30s. They're all a mess in some way, and they're all, like, looking for love. Each of them have their ups and downs with men, which for listeners out there, just a heads up, we will be talking about sex in this conversation. But at the end of the day, I don't think it's a spoiler to say that what's at the core of this book is the friendship between the four of them. I think that's fair enough to start.
PARKER: Yeah.
LIMBONG: That's a fair...
PARKER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
LIMBONG: ...Enough place to start.
PARKER: Yeah.
LIMBONG: Parker, you said you grew up with this book.
PARKER: I saw it every day of my childhood on my mom's bookshelf. I mean, from that to the movie to the soundtrack, like, my entire childhood is, like, wrapped up in "Waiting To Exhale," even though I've never read the book until today for the show.
LUSE: (Sigh).
PARKER: I'm sorry.
LUSE: Parker.
PARKER: I...
LUSE: That's a foundational - I mean, I read this book when I was like, 12 (laughter).
LIMBONG: Twelve? Twelve's crazy.
LUSE: Yeah, I mean, like, I couldn't follow or didn't care about a lot of details that were in the book. Like, marriage, divorce, husband - those things were not very relevant to my daily life...
PARKER: So far away.
LUSE: ...But it felt like the epitome of grown folks' business.
LIMBONG: Well, I think this book is a culmination of everything...
PARKER: Yeah.
LIMBONG: ...Of some of the stuff we've been talking about this season - right? - when we're talking about this extra burden certain people have when it comes to the criticisms of their book. Kind of like in-house family fighting, where it's like, you're making us...
PARKER: Yeah.
LIMBONG: ...Look bad. I think she's just being honest and truthful. It's a funny criticism that I don't think we're quite over yet to this day.
PARKER: It's a real, like, intracultural conversations that are being had. You'll have something like "Joy Luck Club," where it's like Amy Tan's trying to exercise these feelings she has about her family and her mother's past and all these things through all these separate women, or whether it's "Their Eyes Were Watching God," where she's also having an intercultural conversation. Critics may not have felt that way at the time. But Terry McMillan is writing about what she knows and what she has experienced and what she's lived. And it's that thing where, like, the specific becomes universal. So it's why when I was reading "Waiting To Exhale," I could see tinges of, like, "Pride And Prejudice"...
LUSE: Absolutely.
PARKER: ...In it of just like...
LUSE: Absolutely.
PARKER: I was like, oh, my God, I have to find a husband...
LUSE: That was like...
PARKER: ...Right now, or I'll die.
LUSE: ...The top book that came to mind reading "Waiting To Exhale." There was so much talk about money, finances, caring for parents, caring for children, salary, selling your house, selling your condo, paying off your student loans. Like...
LIMBONG: Yeah.
LUSE: ...How much does a guy make? What does that mean? I was like, oh, my God, Mother Bennet, are you with us (laughter)?
LIMBONG: Right. Yeah.
PARKER: But it's the thing in this book that I think, also probably of its time, but, like, as an adult now, like a Black woman in her 30s, professional, single, out in the world. There's a level of desperation in the book of, like, you can't make it through this world alone.
LUSE: Moms still talk like that now.
PARKER: I know.
LUSE: They sometimes will still talk like that after you get married.
(LAUGHTER)
PARKER: Golly. It is...
LIMBONG: It doesn't stop.
LUSE: It doesn't stop.
PARKER: It's 2025. But, yeah, and then it was like, I feel like we've progressed.
LIMBONG: OK. The thing about reading this book and watching the movie is that, like - I think more so reading this book - it feels like I'm listening to a podcast. All the action happens in conversation, right? A lot of it is, like, hey, you don't believe this date I just went on. Hey, you don't believe, like, I went on a road trip with this guy, and it went awry, and dah, dah, dah, dah. I do think it's fair to say that without this book, you don't get "Sex And The City," right?
LUSE: Absolutely not.
PARKER: True.
LUSE: A hundred percent agree.
PARKER: Yeah.
LIMBONG: Like, this sort of paves the way for mass market, here's a conversation women are having. White - in "Sex And The City" is very white women, very, like, upper - a certain class of white women are having. But they were talking very openly about sex and, like, men who are bad at it, and - (laughter), right?
LUSE: (Laughter).
PARKER: Yeah. True.
LIMBONG: Which then - I think, then I'm jumping off that's how you get to sort of, like, the media landscape we're in now, where it's like, talking openly about sex in podcast form or whatever is this iteration of, like, feminism - right? - is this sort of the natural evolution of things?
LUSE: Well, yeah. All these...
PARKER: Yeah.
LUSE: ...Books, podcasts, movies, TV shows...
PARKER: Are her kids.
LUSE: ...Are her sons. That's a really good point. I mean, "Sex And The City" absolutely jumped to mind for me when I was reading this book, not just because it's, like, four women with different personalities or whatever, but you could actually really see the craft on the page, as far as the dialogue and the storytelling is concerned.
LIMBONG: The chapters are, like, short, and like, they're all, like, specifically to, like, one character, and sort of meant to - it's, like, the perfect, like, commuter novel, where it's...
LUSE: Yes.
LIMBONG: ...Like, you pick it up, you read one chapter or two chapters, and they're like, tight little vignettes. Like...
LUSE: I mean...
LIMBONG: ...Right where the part we're at...
LUSE: ...Is this Dickens?
LIMBONG: ...It's just, like really chill - yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
PARKER: Yeah.
LIMBONG: Boom, boom, boom. And then you can, like, pick it up whenever, right?
PARKER: Yeah.
LIMBONG: Yeah.
PARKER: I mean, I will say, particularly about the book, about the movie, because it felt like it was part of, like, the monoculture at some point, there was this feeling or expectation that more would come of that, I think. There's - I mean, like, after this was "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," which also became a film. But the thing is, like, there was a whole discussion in the mid-2000s of, like, where did all, like, the Black films go?
LUSE: Yeah.
PARKER: And, like, the fact that, like, Tyler Perry took up a lot of real estate with a very particular kind of film. But a lot of it grabs from, like, the problematic man and, like, the independent woman, but with a more, like, moralistic viewpoint towards it, but not like the fun of being footloose and fancy-free in Phoenix and the power of friendship. Like, it'll be 30 years this year since the movie...
LIMBONG: Since the movie came out. Yeah.
LUSE: It is 30 years...
PARKER: ...Since the movie came out.
LUSE: ...Since the movie came out.
PARKER: But yeah. So because it feels like such a very specific moment in time, that there's like a nostalgia for it.
LUSE: I agree with you, Parker. I mean, I know you didn't love the book (laughter), Parker.
PARKER: I...
LUSE: But I do feel like I agree with you, though, that like the film and even just, like, the place that the book holds in our culture, there isn't really anything I can think of that replaces it on the same level at all.
DETROW: That was NPR's Brittany Luse speaking with B.A. Parker and Andrew Limbong, talking about the book "Waiting To Exhale." You can check out the full episode on the Book of the Day podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts.
(SOUNDBITE OF WHITNEY HOUSTON SONG, "EXHALE "SHOOP SHOOP)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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