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Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Terry McMillan is the award-winning, critically acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author of Waiting to Exhale, Getting to Happy, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, A Day Late and a Dollar Short, The Interruption of Everything, Who Asked You?, Mama, Disappearing Acts, I Almost Forgot About You, It's Not All Downhill From Here, and the editor of Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction. She lives in California.
Terry McMillan's website
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Unlike your recent fiction, your first novel, Mama, was about a
young mother struggling to keep her family together. Are there ways in which A
Day Late and A Dollar Short is a revisiting of the themes and issues in Mama?
How similar are Mildred and Viola?
I don't think the themes are similar in Mama and A Day Late
because in Mama, I was mainly concerned with the hardships one woman
endured in trying to raise five children, mostly alone, and how far she was
willing to go to give them a good life. In A Day Late, I think Viola, the
protagonist shares some of the strengths that Mildred showed in Mama, but
Viola is a tad more vulnerable in that she admits her weaknesses. Her concern
for her children is, of course, out of love but also because she really doesn't
have a life of her own. Further, the themes I tried to address in A Day Late
dealt more with missed opportunities, sibling rivalry, misconceptions parents
and children have about each other but perceive them as truths, as well as the
whole notion and role that birth order plays in a family.
Each of the six narrators possesses a distinct voice. Who was the easiest
person for you to "capture"? The most difficult? Who was your favorite
Price?
All of ...
Pearl Cleage is an Atlanta based writer whose work has won commercial acceptance and critical praise in several genres. An award winning playwright whose Flyin' West was the most produced new play in the country in 1994, ... (more)
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Eric Jerome Dickey is a New York Times best-selling American author best known for his novels about contemporary African-American life. He is also known for writing several crime novels involving grifters, ex cons, and ... (more)
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