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Author spotlight: Terry McMillan

Ebony, July, 2005

LOVE or hate her, Terry McMillan, the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of five previous novels, is back this month with the poignant, yet humorous, story of Marilyn Grimes in The Interruption of Everything (Viking, $25.95). Grimes, in her mid-40s, is a dutiful mother who made a career of deferring her dreams to build a suburban California home with her workaholic husband. But her life is suddenly turned upside down in a story that is sure to touch women facing the so-called "change" everywhere. Fifty-three-year-old McMillan took time out of her busy schedule (she's gearing up for a 12-city book tour) to answer questions exclusively for EBONY. Don't get too excited. She's not answering questions about her husband, Jonathan Plummet. She wants to give him distance from the publicity of her book tour, she says. (Their courtship was the basis for McMillan's fourth novel, How Stella Got Here Groove Back.)

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Q: How do you spend your free time?

A: I started painting and decorating lampshades, using just about everything I could to get the shade to scream or whisper something. It was so much fun. Last but not least, all last summer--I don't know how--I started dying sheets and towels, using professional dye and fabric. Now I paint and decorate with all kinds of weird stuff--old shoes, boots, jeans and hats. My son, Solomon, has proclaimed: 'If it doesn't move, my mom will paint it or dye it. So don't stand still for too long!'

Q: Your latest novel deals with the dilemmas of mid-life. Are there any common threads in your life?

A: Mid-life just gives you more of a past to reflect on and a future to think about in finite terms. It offers you an opportunity to reflect and make sense of what has happened to you so that you can accept responsibility for [the past] or blame someone else. But the bottom line is, we are all ultimately held accountable for what happens to us, including the quality of our lives. Some of us don't learn from our mistakes and some of us don't even acknowledge when we're making them. Some of us don't know that we empower ourselves. And when we don't, we allow ourselves to be raped on a lot of different levels. I don't identify with victims unless they try to get up from the grave someone pushed them in. I wrote this book in an attempt to respect everybody's personal struggles.

Q: Your characters are always such strong women, but Marilyn Grimes, the protagonist of The Interruption of Everything, seems to be a throwback to pre-feminist times. Why is that?

A: Most women who become parents sacrifice something, pre-feminist times or not. One of the reasons so many post-feminist women are opting to give up lucrative careers is because they have realized that they cannot have it all and do it all. Some of them have come to realize that children require attention, time and love. You can't give [those things] to them if you're never at home. Marilyn is a loving mother whose actions denote those of a loving and caring mother. Finding herself at her husband's mercy financially, at least, is partially what caused her alarm. But she was also alarmed by the fact that she had not devoted as much time and energy to her own dreams. Now she can. And she does. I don't see this as a throwback to pre-feminist times.

Q: Breathing comes up in several places in the novel. And it was represented in the title of your critically acclaimed novel, Waiting to Exhale. Why is that?

A: Because most of us are stressed out so much that we don't realize that we are not breathing. We hold our breath when we have to stop at a traffic light or when we're thinking intensely about something. Stress and anxiety rise when you don't breathe slowly. What may have caused months of worry can sometimes be resolved if we slowed down long enough to listen to what is going in and out of our lungs.

Q: Is it your hope that Interruption will become a screenplay like so many of your other novels?

A: I never hoped nor anticipated any of my books would be made into films, rye sold the rights to Interruption because, like my agent always says about Hollywood: "Think of it as free money and take it."

Q: How do you come up with new material? And is it a struggle?

A: I often write about people I don't sympathize or empathize with, and by getting inside of their skin, it gives me an opportunity to understand, and hopefully, feel more compassion [for them]. I see it as not being a selfish act, but gratuitious, even when I give my characters my own flaws and shortcomings, of which I have enough to go around!

Q: What do you think of the booming self-publishing industry?

A: I can't even answer that question. There is a backlash against Black writers now, but that stems from the overinflated advances young writers receive before getting their feet wet. These superficial [writers] thought that writing a few declarative sentences laced with pornography, thought to be erotic or sensual, but are in fact just sensational. They've made it hard for writers who have more to say about life than about how many different ways you can get laid.

Author spotlight: Terry McMillan

Ebony, July, 2005

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