To her legions of fans, Terry McMillan, a writer who has been hailed by Time's John Skow as the "first wildly successful black pop novelist," speaks the truth about the middle-class black experience. Her characters are sharply drawn and funny and her writing crackles with high energy. If sales of her books are any indication, it is obvious that McMillan has tapped into the concerns of a generation of young, black African-American women.

In a review of the 1989 novel Disappearing Acts, Valerie Sayers of the New York Times Book Review predicted: "Terry McMillan has the power to be an important contemporary novelist." After the 1992 release of the phenomenally popular novel Waiting to Exhale, there was no loner any doubt that Sayer's prediction had come true. Although some critics remain wary about the literary merits of her writing--particularly her most recent novels--there's no denying the mass popularity of...