In Her Shoes (novel)
In Her Shoes is a work of Jewish American literature by Jennifer Weiner. It tells the story of their estranged grandmother; the novel was a New York Times bestseller. The two sisters happen to wear the same size shoes - the only common ground that they have besides a mutual hatred of their step-mother. Rose and Maggie Feller are two young sisters. Rose is the eldest and has been watching after Maggie since they were young children and their mother Caroline died in a car accident, they were raised by stepmother Sydelle. Rose is a thirty-year-old single, successful lawyer who struggles with her weight, who resents her younger sister's beauty and sexual attractiveness and lack of stability. Rose feels responsible for her sister and is frustrated with how each attempt to help Maggie backfires on her. Maggie, a twenty-eight-year-old who uses her beauty and charming nature to hide the obstacles she faces due to dyslexia and related learning difficulties, resents Rose's academic success and consequent wealth.
Maggie is resentful of only holding a series of minimum wage jobs that leave her dependent on the charity of others her father and Rose. After middle school, standardized testing sets them on different paths in high school: Rose's success on the exams leads to Princeton University and University of Pennsylvania Law School, she is unable to hold unto any job for long and struggles to manage her money so much so that she is evicted from her flat. Rose offers to support Maggie. Both are nearing the age of their mother when she died and Maggie each feel as if there is a vacuum in their lives which they are unable to fill. After wearing out her welcome with Rose and being evicted from her father's home by her step mother, Maggie runs away, choosing to hide in Princeton University, which she had visited when Rose was a student. Finding shelter in a lower level of the library, Maggie fills her free time doing something that she had avoided her entire life: reading, she accepts a part-time position as a care-taker for a nearby elderly woman.
Maggie is surprised to find that when reading in her own way at her own pace, she enjoys the activity and begins to attend a poetry class. However, a boy discovers her belongings in the library. Realizing her charade at Princeton is over, Maggie runs away, she travels to find her long-lost grandmother, whose old letters she had discovered in her father's desk. Rose, leaves her career in law in order to avoid the boyfriend who betrayed her; as a result of this break she accidentally discovers. She begins to date Simon Stein a colleague at the law firm. Grandma Ella had been forced out of the lives of the girls by their father, he had blamed her for Caroline's death—she had been mentally ill and not taking her medication at the time of her death. Grandma Ella had tried to track the girls via the Internet is delighted to see Maggie and invites her to stay in her home. Maggie and Rose reconcile with each other, in the process come to terms with both the life and death of Caroline. Maggie finds her true calling—being a personal shopper to the old people in the community that Grandma Ella lives in.
She is successful enough to open her own shop. She shows Rose that she has become a better person and proves her love by making Rose's wedding dress for her; the novel is character driven and it follows each one - giving the reader a view of what is going on in their minds. In Her Shoes is a film directed by Curtis Hanson with an adapted screenplay by Susannah Grant, it stars Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette, Shirley MacLaine. List of artistic depictions of dyslexia Official website In Her Shoes @ Google Books Book review 1 Book review 2
Women's writing (literary category)
The academic discipline of Women's Writing as a discrete area of literary studies is based on the notion that the experience of women has been shaped by their gender, so women writers by definition are a group worthy of separate study: "Their texts emerge from and intervene in conditions very different from those which produced most writing by men." It is not a question of the subject matter or political stance of a particular author, but of her gender, i.e. her position as a woman within the literary world. Women's writing, as a discrete area of literary studies and practice, is recognized explicitly by the numbers of dedicated journals, organizations and conferences which focus or on texts produced by women. Women's writing as an area of study has been developing since the 1970s; the majority of English and American literature programmes offer courses on specific aspects of literature by women, women's writing is considered an area of specialization in its own right. The broader discussion women's cultural contributions as a separate category has a long history, but the specific study of women's writing as a distinct category of scholarly interest is recent.
There are examples in the 18th century of catalogues of women writers, including George Ballard's Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain Who Have Been Celebrated for their Writing or Skill in the Learned Languages and Sciences. Women have been treated as a distinct category by various misogynist writings best exemplified by Richard Polwhele's The Unsex'd Females, a critique in verse of women writers at the end of the 18th century with a particular focus on Mary Wollstonecraft and her circle. Earlier discussion of women's broader cultural contributions can be found as far back as the 8th century BC, when Hesiod compiled Catalogue of Women, a list of heroines and goddesses. Plutarch listed artistic women in his Moralia. In the medieval period, Boccaccio used mythic and biblical women as moral exemplars in De mulieribus claris, directly inspiring Christine de Pisan to write The Book of the City of Ladies. Women writers themselves have long been interested in tracing a "woman's tradition" in writing.
Mary Scott's The Female Advocate: A Poem Occasioned by Reading Mr Duncombe's Feminead is one of the best known such works in the 18th century, a period that saw a burgeoning of women writers being published. In 1803, Mary Hays published the six volume Female Biography. And, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own exemplifies the impulse in the modern period to explore a tradition of women's writing. Woolf, sought to explain what she perceived as an absence. There were many to reclaim: it is common for the editors of dictionaries or anthologies of women's writing to refer to the difficulty in choosing from all the available material. Trade publishers have focused on women's writing recently: since the 1970s there have been a number of literary periodicals which are dedicated to publishing the creative work of women writers, there are a number of dedicated presses as well, such as the Second Story Press and the Women's Press. In addition and anthologies of women's writing continue to be published by both trade and academic presses.
The question of whether or not there is a "women's tradition". Further, women writers cannot be considered apart from their male contemporaries and the larger literary tradition. Recent scholarship on race and sexuality in literature further complicate the issue and militate against the impulse to posit one "women's tradition." Some scholars, such as Roger Lonsdale, maintain that something of a commonality exists and that "it is not unreasonable to consider" women writers "in some aspects as a special case, given their educational insecurities and the constricted notions of the properly'feminine' in social and literary behaviour they faced.". Using the term "women's writing" implies the belief that women in some sense constitute a group, however diverse, who share a position of difference based on gender. In the West, the second wave of feminism prompted a general revelation of women's historical contributions, various academic sub-disciplines, such as women's history and women's writing, developed in response to the belief that women's lives and contributions have been underrepresented as areas of scholarly interest.
Much of this early period of feminist literary scholarship was given over to the rediscovery and reclamation of texts written by women. Studies like Dale Spender's Mothers of the Novel and Jane Spencer's The Rise of the Woman Novelist were ground-breaking in their insistence that women have always been writing. Commensurate with this growth in scholarly interest, various presses began the task of reissuing long-out-of-print texts. Virago Press began to publish its large list of
Kolkata
Kolkata is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River 75 kilometres west of the border with Bangladesh, it is the principal commercial and educational centre of East India, while the Port of Kolkata is India's oldest operating port and its sole major riverine port; the city is regarded as the "cultural capital" of India, is nicknamed the "City of Joy". According to the 2011 Indian census, it is the seventh most populous city. Recent estimates of Kolkata Metropolitan Area's economy have ranged from $60 to $150 billion making it third most-productive metropolitan area in India, after Mumbai and Delhi. In the late 17th century, the three villages that predated Calcutta were ruled by the Nawab of Bengal under Mughal suzerainty. After the Nawab granted the East India Company a trading licence in 1690, the area was developed by the Company into an fortified trading post. Nawab Siraj ud-Daulah occupied Calcutta in 1756, the East India Company retook it the following year.
In 1793 the East India company was strong enough to abolish Nizamat, assumed full sovereignty of the region. Under the company rule, under the British Raj, Calcutta served as the capital of British-held territories in India until 1911, when its perceived geographical disadvantages, combined with growing nationalism in Bengal, led to a shift of the capital to New Delhi. Calcutta was the centre for the Indian independence movement. Following Indian independence in 1947, once the centre of modern Indian education, science and politics, suffered several decades of economic stagnation; as a nucleus of the 19th- and early 20th-century Bengal Renaissance and a religiously and ethnically diverse centre of culture in Bengal and India, Kolkata has local traditions in drama, film and literature. Many people from Kolkata—among them several Nobel laureates—have contributed to the arts, the sciences, other areas. Kolkata culture features idiosyncrasies that include distinctively close-knit neighbourhoods and freestyle intellectual exchanges.
West Bengal's share of the Bengali film industry is based in the city, which hosts venerable cultural institutions of national importance, such as the Academy of Fine Arts, the Victoria Memorial, the Asiatic Society, the Indian Museum and the National Library of India. Among professional scientific institutions, Kolkata hosts the Agri Horticultural Society of India, the Geological Survey of India, the Botanical Survey of India, the Calcutta Mathematical Society, the Indian Science Congress Association, the Zoological Survey of India, the Institution of Engineers, the Anthropological Survey of India and the Indian Public Health Association. Though home to major cricketing venues and franchises, Kolkata differs from other Indian cities by giving importance to association football and other sports; the word Kolkata derives from the Bengali term Kôlikata, the name of one of three villages that predated the arrival of the British, in the area where the city was to be established. There are several explanations about the etymology of this name: The term Kolikata is thought to be a variation of Kalikkhetrô, meaning "Field of Kali".
It can be a variation of'Kalikshetra'. Another theory is. Alternatively, the name may have been derived from the Bengali term kilkila, or "flat area"; the name may have its origin in the words khal meaning "canal", followed by kaṭa, which may mean "dug". According to another theory, the area specialised in the production of quicklime or koli chun and coir or kata. Although the city's name has always been pronounced Kolkata or Kôlikata in Bengali, the anglicised form Calcutta was the official name until 2001, when it was changed to Kolkata in order to match Bengali pronunciation; the discovery and archaeological study of Chandraketugarh, 35 kilometres north of Kolkata, provide evidence that the region in which the city stands has been inhabited for over two millennia. Kolkata's recorded history began in 1690 with the arrival of the English East India Company, consolidating its trade business in Bengal. Job Charnock, an administrator who worked for the company, was credited as the founder of the city.
The area occupied by the present-day city encompassed three villages: Kalikata and Sutanuti. Kalikata was a fishing village, they were part of an estate belonging to the Mughal emperor. These rights were transferred to the East India Company in 1698. In 1712, the British completed the cons
Sara Nelson
Sara Nelson is an American publishing industry figure, an editor and book reviewer and consultant and columnist, is the editorial director at Amazon.com. Nelson is notable for having been editor in chief at the book industry's chief trade publication Publishers Weekly from 2005–2009 during a time of wrenching restructuring and industry downsizing. After that, she was book editor at Oprah's O Magazine, her book So Many Books, So Little Time was published in 2003. Her views have been reported in numerous publications such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, she has appeared on television broadcasts including CBS's The Early Show, she has written for the Wall Street Journal and the Huffington Post about publishing industry trends and has been described as a "lively presence within the book publishing industry." She is an extensive reader and has been described as a "lover of books." Nelson graduated from Yale in 1978 and Phillips Academy in Andover in 1974. She wrote about books and publishing at the New York Post, the New York Observer, Glamour magazine, held editorial positions at Self, Inside.com, Book Publishing Report.
Nelson had a child and is a fierce advocate for respect for working mothers. Women struggled with ways to juggle careers and families, stay-at-home moms and working mothers jostled over women's roles in the home, sometimes termed in the media as the Mommy Wars. Nelson wrote: Nelson, based on a New Year's plan, embarked on an ambitious project to read one book each week and write about it, the effort morphed into a book entitled So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading, published by Putnam in 2003. While her initial book–a–week plan fell apart immediately, according to New York Times book reviewer Ihsan Taylor, the effort was fruitful since the book was seen as a commentary on the "nature of reading itself." Nelson's future employer, Publishers Weekly, reported that her book revealed her "infectious enthusiasm for literature in general." Writer Augusten Burroughs said Nelson's book was a "smart, utterly original memoir about how every book becomes a part of us."Nelson has been a consistent heavy reader throughout her life, at one point, in a YouTube interview, said that she reads about 50 books cover–to–cover per year regardless of her self-imposed commitment.
She will only write about a book after she's read it according to Nelson in the interview. Further, she reads portions of many books which are sent to her or recommended by others, sometimes only the first ten pages, she favors fiction over non-fiction occasionally reading classics overlooked during her college years, some non-fiction works such as David McCullough's treatment of American president John Adams. Nelson became editor–in–chief of the trade magazine Publishers Weekly in January 2005, it was a powerful position since the magazine is traditionally regarded as a standard bearer for mainstream critical opinion regarding books. A positive review from Publishers Weekly can bring a big sales boost to an unknown title, the editor–in–chief's opinion about new books has considerable weight in the publishing industry. New York Times reporter Edward Wyatt suggested that the top job at Publishers Weekly in 2005 involved facing "many challenges". In her new position, Nelson added, she permitted greater variety in the length of reviews, considered bylines to reviews, changes to the magazine's cover format.
She hired graphic designer Jean-Claude Suares, added color using so-called drop down shadows behind color book covers, wrote an editorial each week. She switched the magazine's logo to use the two letters PW since the abbreviation was well understood within the publishing world, she developed a nominating board of several thousand booksellers and librarians to nominate books for prizes in nineteen different categories. There was increased use of a foldout advertisement on the front cover, with the theme repeated inside the table of contents page; the first decade of the new century was marked by turbulence within the industry as well as a continuing trend away from serious writing and towards pop culture. Publishers Weekly had enjoyed a "near monopoly" over the past decades but was getting vigorous competition from Internet sites, e-mail newsletters and daily newspapers; the industry was consolidating. Many independent booksellers—a mainstay of Publishers Weekly clientele—were going out of business.
Paid circulation dropped by 3,000 to 25,000 in the mid 2000s. Nelson pushed for significant changes towards modernization, greater use of the Web, more focus on analytical reporting. Nelson commented in an interview about how she saw PW evolving: Nelson, looking at business practices within the book publishing industry, saw problems, she speculated that the industry practice of printing too many books to "kind of create a buzz" and having to ship books back from bookstores was inefficient. She saw a trend favoring so-called big books at the expense of lesser known writers: In 2008, Nelson commented on the intersection of political candidates and television celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, not knowing that the talk show celebrity would be her employer within a year. There were several dozen books about then-candidate Obama. Nelson was interviewed on National Public Radio on Winfrey's influence, similar to that of radio personality Imus, in the publishing arena, she described Oprah: After a profound economic downturn beginning in 2007 and lasting for the next few years, the publishing industry slumped significantly.
Nelson commented in 2008 how layoffs an
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Marie Steinem is an American feminist and social political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader and a spokeswoman for the American feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Steinem was a columnist for New York magazine, a co-founder of Ms. magazine. In 1969, Steinem published an article, "After Black Power, Women's Liberation", which brought her to national fame as a feminist leader. In 2005, Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan co-founded the Women's Media Center, an organization that works "to make women visible and powerful in the media"; as of May 2018, Steinem travels internationally as an organizer and lecturer, is a media spokeswoman on issues of equality. Steinem was born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, the daughter of Ruth and Leo Steinem, her mother was Presbyterian of German and some Scottish descent. Her father was Jewish, the son of immigrants from Württemberg and Radziejów, Poland, her paternal grandmother, Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, was chairwoman of the educational committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association, a delegate to the 1908 International Council of Women, the first woman to be elected to the Toledo Board of Education, as well as a leader in the movement for vocational education.
Pauline rescued many members of her family from the Holocaust. The Steinems lived and traveled about in a trailer, from which Leo carried out his trade as a roaming antiques dealer. Before Steinem was born, her mother Ruth age 34, had a "nervous breakdown," which left her an invalid, trapped in delusional fantasies that turned violent, she changed "from an energetic, fun-loving, book-loving" woman into "someone, afraid to be alone, who could not hang on to reality long enough to hold a job, who could concentrate enough to read a book." Ruth spent long periods out of sanatoriums for the mentally ill. Steinem was 10 years old when her parents separated in 1944, her father went to California to find work, while she and her mother continued to live together in Toledo. While her parents divorced under the stress of her mother's illness, Steinem did not attribute it at all to chauvinism on the father's part — she claims to have "understood and never blamed him for the breakup." The impact of these events had a formative effect on her personality: while her father, a traveling salesman, had never provided much financial stability to the family, his exit aggravated their situation.
Steinem concluded that her mother's inability to hold on to a job was evidence of general hostility towards working women. She concluded that the general apathy of doctors towards her mother emerged from a similar anti-woman animus. Years Steinem described her mother's experience as pivotal to her understanding of social injustices; these perspectives convinced Steinem that women lacked political equality. Steinem attended Waite High School in Toledo and Western High School in Washington, D. C. graduating from the latter while living with her older sister Susanne Steinem Patch. She attended Smith College, an institution with which she continues to remain engaged, from which she graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In the late 1950s, Steinem spent two years in India as a Chester Bowles Asian Fellow, where she was associated with the Supreme Court of India as a Law Clerk to Mehr Chand Mahajan Chief Justice of India. After returning to the U. S. she served as director of the Independent Research Service, an organization funded in secret by a donor that turned out to be the CIA.
She worked to send non-Communist American students to the 1959 World Youth Festival. In 1960, she was hired by Warren Publishing as the first employee of Help! magazine. Esquire magazine features editor Clay Felker gave freelance writer Steinem what she called her first "serious assignment", regarding contraception, her resulting 1962 article about the way in which women are forced to choose between a career and marriage preceded Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique by one year. In 1963, while working on an article for Huntington Hartford's Show magazine, Steinem was employed as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club; the article, published in 1963 as "A Bunny's Tale", featured a photo of Steinem in Bunny uniform and detailed how women were treated at those clubs. Steinem has maintained that she is proud of the work she did publicizing the exploitative working conditions of the bunnies and the sexual demands made of them, which skirted the edge of the law. However, for a brief period after the article was published, Steinem was unable to land other assignments.
In 1965, she wrote for NBC-TV's weekly satirical revue, That Was The Week That Was, contributing a regular segment entitled "Surrealism in Everyday Life". Steinem landed a job at Felker's newly founded New York magazine in 1968. In 1969, she covered an abortion speak-out for New York Magazine, held in a church basement in Greenwich, New York. Steinem had had an abortion herself in London at the age of 22, she felt what she called a "big click" at the speak-out, said she didn't "begin my life as an active feminist" until that day. As she recalled, "It is supposed to make us a bad person, but I must say, I never felt that. I used trying to make myself feel guilty, but I never could! I think the person who said:'Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion wou
Feminism
Feminism is a range of political movements and social movements that share a common goal: to define and achieve the political, economic and social equality of the genders. This includes fighting gender stereotypes and seeking to establish educational and professional opportunities for women that are equal to those for men. Feminist movements have campaigned and continue to campaign for women's rights, including the right to vote, to hold public office, to work, to earn fair wages or equal pay, to own property, to receive education, to enter contracts, to have equal rights within marriage, to have maternity leave. Feminists have worked to ensure access to legal abortions and social integration, to protect women and girls from rape, sexual harassment, domestic violence. Changes in dress and acceptable physical activity have been part of feminist movements; some scholars consider feminist campaigns to be a main force behind major historical societal changes for women's rights in the West, where they are near-universally credited with achieving women's suffrage, gender neutrality in English, reproductive rights for women, the right to enter into contracts and own property.
Although feminist advocacy is, has been focused on women's rights, some feminists, including bell hooks, argue for the inclusion of men's liberation within its aims because they believe that men are harmed by traditional gender roles. Feminist theory, which emerged from feminist movements, aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women's social roles and lived experience. Numerous feminist movements and ideologies have developed over the years and represent different viewpoints and aims; some forms of feminism have been criticized for taking into account only white, middle class, college-educated perspectives. This criticism led to the creation of ethnically specific or multicultural forms of feminism, including black feminism and intersectional feminism. Charles Fourier, a Utopian Socialist and French philosopher, is credited with having coined the word "féminisme" in 1837; the words "féminisme" and "féministe" first appeared in France and the Netherlands in 1872, Great Britain in the 1890s, the United States in 1910, the Oxford English Dictionary lists 1852 as the year of the first appearance of "feminist" and 1895 for "feminism".
Depending on the historical moment and country, feminists around the world have had different causes and goals. Most western feminist historians contend that all movements working to obtain women's rights should be considered feminist movements when they did not apply the term to themselves. Other historians assert that the term should be limited to the modern feminist movement and its descendants; those historians use the label "protofeminist" to describe earlier movements. The history of the modern western feminist movements is divided into three "waves"; each wave dealt with different aspects of the same feminist issues. The first wave comprised women's suffrage movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, promoting women's right to vote; the second wave was associated with the ideas and actions of the women's liberation movement beginning in the 1960s. The second wave campaigned for social equality for women; the third wave is a continuation of, a reaction to, the perceived failures of second-wave feminism, which began in the 1990s.
First-wave feminism was a period of activity during early twentieth century. In the UK and the US, it focused on the promotion of equal contract, marriage and property rights for women. By the end of the 19th century, a number of important steps had been made with the passing of legislation such as the UK Custody of Infants Act 1839 which introduced the Tender years doctrine for child custody arrangement and gave women the right of custody of their children for the first time. Other legislation such as the Married Women's Property Act 1870 in the UK and extended in the 1882 Act, these became models for similar legislation in other British territories. For example, Victoria passed legislation in 1884, New South Wales in 1889, the remaining Australian colonies passed similar legislation between 1890 and 1897. Therefore, with the turn of the 19th century activism had focused on gaining political power the right of women's suffrage, though some feminists were active in campaigning for women's sexual and economic rights as well.
Women's suffrage began in Britain's Australasian colonies at the close of the 19th century, with the self-governing colonies of New Zealand granting women the right to vote in 1893 and South Australia granting female suffrage in 1895. This was followed by Australia granting female suffrage in 1902. In Britain the Suffragettes and the Suffragists campaigned for the women's vote, in 1918 the Representation of the People Act was passed granting the vote to women over the age of 30 who owned property. In 1928 this was extended to all women over 21. Emmeline Pankhurst was the most notable activist in England, with Time naming her one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century stating: "she shaped an idea of women for our time. In the U. S. notable leaders of this movement included Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, who each campaigned for the abolition of slavery prior to championing women's right to vote; these women were influenced by the
Waiting to Exhale
Waiting to Exhale is a 1995 American romance film directed by Forest Whitaker and starring Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett. The film was adapted from the 1992 novel of the same name by Terry McMillan. Lela Rochon, Loretta Devine, Dennis Haysbert, Michael Beach, Gregory Hines, Donald Faison, Mykelti Williamson rounded out the rest of the cast; the original music score was composed by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds. The story centers on four women living in the Phoenix, Arizona area and their relationships with men and one another. All of them are "holding their breath" until the day they can feel comfortable in a committed relationship with a man. Waiting to Exhale is a story about four African-American women who are good friends: Savannah, Robin and Gloria; the four women get together to provide support, to listen to each other vent about life and love. They all want to be in a couple but they all have difficulties finding a good man. Savannah "'Vannah" Jackson is a successful television producer who believes that one day her married lover will leave his wife for her.
She realizes he will never leave his wife, that she must find her own man who will love her for who she is. Bernadine "Bernie" Harris had abandoned her own career dream of having a catering business -- instead she raised a family and supported her husband, who announces he is leaving her for a white woman he works with. Robin Stokes is a high-powered executive, the long-time mistress of married Russell, she has problems finding someone suitable. Gloria "Glo" Matthews is a single mother, her ex-husband, the father of her son, tells her he was always bisexual and now realizes he is gay. Gloria falls in love with a new neighbor, Marvin King; the situations all resolve themselves for the better. Savannah ends up dumping her married lover for good. Bernadine gets a large divorce settlement from her ex-husband, she finds love with a widowed father, a civil rights attorney and who encourages Bernie to pursue her catering dream. Robin ends up pregnant by her married lover, but dumps him, chooses to raise the baby on her own.
Gloria learns not to be so overprotective to her son. She lets him go on an "Up With People" trip to Spain, she apologizes to her neighbor for snapping at him when he suggested that she should let her son grow up and experience the world, she finds love while learning to take care of herself rather than being overly self-sacrificing in her devotion to her son and her business. Whitney Houston as Savannah "Vannah" Jackson. Angela Bassett as Bernadine "Bernie" Harris. Savannah and Bernadine have been best friends since college, she vents her anger on John by burning his clothes and car and selling the remainder of his personal items for $1 apiece. Lela Rochon as Robin Stokes, she is the long-time mistress of Russell. After dumping him, she has problems finding a decent man of her own. Loretta Devine as a beauty salon owner and single mother. Gregory Hines as Marvin King, Gloria's neighbor with whom she falls in love. Dennis Haysbert as Kenneth Dawkins, Savannah's married lover Mykelti Williamson as Troy Michael Beach as John Harris Sr. Bernie's husband, who leaves her for a white woman.
Donald Adeosun Faison as Tarik Matthews, Gloria's teenage son. Leon as Russell. Wendell Pierce as Michael Davenport. Jeffrey D. Sams as Lionel. Jazz Raycole as Onika Harris. Brandon Hammond as John Harris Jr. Kenya Moore as Denise. Lamont Johnson as Joseph. Kelly Preston as Kathleen. Wesley Snipes as James Wheeler. Giancarlo Esposito as David Matthews, Gloria's ex-husband and father of Tarik. Parts of the film were shot at Monument Valley in Utah as well as Chandler, Fountain Hills and Paradise Valley in Arizona. Waiting to Exhale was a financial success, opening at number-one at the North American box office, grossing $14.1 million in its first weekend of release. In total, the film grossed $67.05 million in North America, $14.4 million internationally, for a total worldwide gross of $81.45 million. Its widest release was in just over 1,400 theatres and was the 26th highest-grossing film of 1995. Upon release, the film received mixed reviews from critics. Film critic Susan Stark from The Detroit News stated, "For all the pleasure there is in seeing effective, great-looking black women grappling with major life issues on screen, Waiting to Exhale is an uneven piece."
Reviewer Liam Lacey from The Daily Globe and Mail wrote of the film, " never escapes the queasy aura of Melrose Place: just another story about naive people with small problems." However, film critic Roger Ebert positively reviewed the film, stating that it is "an escapist fantasy that women in the audience can enjoy by musing,'I wish I had her problems'—and her car, wardrobe and men wrong men." The film is notable for having an all-African-American cast. The Los Angeles Times called it a "social phenomenon"; the film received a 56% approval rating at review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 27 reviews. In the book Is Marriage for White People? Writer and Stanford Law School professor Ralph Richard Banks states that the film is a perfect example of the problems African-American women have in finding serious relationships; the soundtrack to the film featured female African-American artists. The soundtrack included the number-one hit songs "Exhale", sung by the film's star, Whitney Houston, "Let It Flow" by Toni Braxton as well as "Not Gon' Cry" by Mary J. Blige, "Sittin' Up in My Room" by Brandy, "Count on Me" by Whitney Houston and CeCe Winans, all of which reached the top ten of Billboard's Hot 100 chart.
Int
