many middle-class families confined their yard use
to the barbecue patio and the swimming pool. Even
children played outdoors less than formerly.
Impact McMansions remained part of the urban
and suburban housing stock. Their greater impact
may be in the features that have become expected in
any new middle-class dwelling: a master bedroom
suite, an open-plan kitchen-family room core, and
rooms wired for various electronic connections.
Further Reading
McGinn, Daniel.House Lust. New York: Doubleday,
2007.
McGuigan, Cathleen. “The McMansion Next Door.”
Newsweek, October 27, 2003, 85-86.
Emily Alward
See also Architecture; Sustainable design move-
ment.
McMillan, Terry
Identification African American novelist
Born October 18, 1951; Port Huron, Michigan
In novels that accurately describe the lives of upwardly mo-
bile African American women, McMillan provided a voice
for an important segment of the population.
Terry McMillan’s novels dramatize the plight of Afri-
can American professional women struggling with
relationships. Some of McMillan’s heroines have
never been married, others have been deserted by
their lovers, and still others are divorced. Those who
have never had children fear that they are growing
too old to establish a family. Others, rearing children
alone, desperately try to be good parents without
jeopardizing their careers. One of her goals in writ-
ing about the trials of these single mothers, Mc-
Millan has said, is to show how the structure of the
African American family has altered.
Like her earlier fiction, the novels that McMillan
wrote during the 1990’s reflect her own experiences.
ForWaiting to Exhale(1992), the author drew on
years of frustration in her continuing search for
someone with whom she could share her life. The
novel is about four African American women, all
of whom have trouble either finding or keeping a
good man. Although the book was extremely popu-
lar with women, African American men insisted that
the author had treated them unfairly, that the book
simply reflected her own prejudices. The tone of
McMillan’s next novel,How Stella Got Her Groove Back
(1996), was very different. Like McMillan herself,
the fictional Stella went on a Jamaican vacation, met
a local man half her age, and brought him to Califor-
nia, where at the end of the novel they expect to live
happily ever after. Unfortunately, McMillan’s own Ja-
maican romance ended in disillusionment and di-
vorce.
McMillan’s fiction is as authentic in style as it is in
content. Perhaps more than any other writer of the
decade, McMillan captured the rhythms of African
American conversation, complete with idiomatic ex-
pressions. Late in the 1990’s, book-length critical
studies of McMillan began to appear, indicating that
she was not just a popular writer but also a major fig-
ure in American literary history.540 McMillan, Terry The Nineties in America
Terry McMillan.(©Marion Ettlinger)