trailblazer – She Lit

Today is the 25th anniversary of Waiting to Exhale‘s cinematic debut, a film that brought a never-before-seen look into the ’90s grown Black female experience. The timing coincides with author sisters Attica and Tembi Locke embarking on a project to bring Terry McMillan’s best-selling novel to TV. Currently in pre-production, the series is following in the footsteps of the 1995 film and adding the TV binge element to screen.

Mystery novelist and Empire screenwriter Attica Locke and her sister, memoirist and actress Tembi Locke, are under a script commitment with ABC and Empire creator Lee Daniels to bring the story to TV, according to Deadline. The entertainment website also noted in November that Terry McMillan will serve as a consulting producer. It’s been 25 years since Waiting to Exhale sparked a cultural phenomenon among Black female viewers who wanted to see their stories onscreen.

The film Waiting to Exhale starred the late singer Whitney Houston as Savannah, a TV producer who longs for a married man; Angela Bassett as Bernadine, a mother of two whose husband is leaving her for a White woman; Loretta Devine as Gloria, an overweight single mother who owns a hair salon; and Lela Rochon as Robin, an executive trying to elevate from mistress to wife. The story and film is set in Phoenix, Arizona, a city known for a low Black population but symbolically represents a phoenix rising from the ashes and starting over.

In Dorothy Butler Gilliam’s 2019 memoir Trailblazer: A Pioneering Journalist’s Fight to Make the Media Look More Like America about being the first Black female reporter at The Washington Post, she discusses the cultural impact of the film that opened in theaters on Dec. 22, 1995. She recounts the moment with her friend and Post executive, Joyce Richardson, and quotes her saying:

“‘Just like the friendship of the characters Gloria, Robin, Savannah, and Bernadine, our get-togethers lifted us up when we were down, helped us network, gave us shoulders to lean on, advice when we needed it, and a safe place to share the good and bad times,” she said. “Each of us could connect with the issues that these women had in one way or another.'”

The novel became a No. 1 best-seller and the film hit No. 1 on Christmas weekend 1995, dominating over Disney and Pixar’s first computer-animated venture Toy Story, Jumanji, and Grumpier Old Men.

The book’s characters are trying to figure out their relationships with men, which impact family, faith, and career, but it brings them closer as a way to de-stress. Friendship between women over men troubles is a common theme in works, but Waiting to Exhale incorporates the Black female perspective, which in 1992 was rare in contemporary literature.

With the 2000s HBO series Sex and the City still in reruns based on a novel by Candace Bushnell, the stories don’t age with time. But with Black women as the stars during a time when 47% of Black adults are single in a dating-app world, according to recent data from the Pew Research Center, the new show could resonate on a higher level than it did 25 years ago.

How the new version of Waiting to Exhale will be perceived in the #MeToo era, where women are looking for female friendships but may not be bonding over men trouble, has yet to be seen.

Amid the #BlackStoriesMatter movement sparked by the George Floyd protests, Terry McMillan tweeted earlier this year that she wasn’t getting the same amount of interest for her 2020 novel, It’s Not All Downhill From Here.

Attica Locke released her latest book, Heaven, My Home, last year. She’s also worked on the Netflix miniseries When They See Us about the Black men formerly known as the Central Park Five. Her sister, Tembi Locke, is an actress and wrote a grief memoir, From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home, about moving forward without her late husband. The memoir, a former Reese’s Book Club pick, is on track to become a film on Netflix with the aid of Hollywood bookwoman Reese Witherspoon.

Trailblazer: A Pioneering Journalist’s Fight to Make the Media Look More Like America by Dorothy Butler Gilliam is a fascinating memoir of the first African American woman reporter at the Washington Post. Though parts of her story fall into history retelling, she still refocuses on her life and what she’s learned from her journalism career especially supporting diversity and inclusion in the field.

Born in 1936, Dorothy overcame poverty and racism in Louisville, Kentucky to win a scholarship at a Catholic women’s college and study to become a journalist. She eventually goes on to Columbia University for her master’s degree in journalism. Her first gig is at the black newspaper in Memphis where she covers the Little Rock Nine, the nine black children who integrated a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Her second gig is at the illustrious Washington Post, an opportunity she earns after taking a trip throughout Africa and reporting there. This puts her at the center of the civil rights movement. Later in the 1990s, she covers Nelson Mandela’s U.S. visit during his historic presidency to black women reacting to the cinematic success of Waiting to Exhale. She also serves as the president of the National Association of Black Journalists, the largest trade organization for journalists of color.

The best parts of her memoir is focusing on her contributions and her family. Her book tends to lean in to adding so much research and history almost from a perspective that she didn’t experience it as if she’s just taking it from historical records. The most details she gives about herself is when she talks about her upbringing with losing her father at a young age and becoming an obese teen to getting married and starting a family while starting a career without role models who look like her.

Overall, it’s a good memoir about a trailblazing black female journalist who wants to use her legacy to diversify the mostly white male industry. Companion to the book, the 83-year-old journalist now is active on Twitter saluting other lesser-known trailblazing black female journalists and praising current ones trying to pave their own paths.