Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Famous for her no-nonsense writing, best-selling novelist and single mom Terry McMillan now plays guidance counselor in a book for freshly hatched high school grads.
In It's OK if You're Clueless and 23 More Tips for the College Bound, tip No. 3 is: "Don't listen to your parents. ... If for any reason they don't like the path you've chosen, tough nuggies."
As for her fellow baby boomer parents, she states emphatically in a phone interview, "Back off!"
The author who created the feisty black women characters in Waiting to Exhale based Clueless on a commencement speech she gave at her son Solomon's 2002 graduation from a Berkeley, Calif., Catholic high school.
McMillan's pride at her son's success -- he graduates from Stanford this spring -- is palpable. But she thinks boomers put too much pressure on their kids to succeed. "I'd hate to be 17 right now," says McMillan, 54. Instead of being things to avoid, mistakes are crucial to success, she says. "I wouldn't even be a writer today if I hadn't erred."
While her son always was a motivated student, his mother took a circuitous path to success. She slept through her 1969 Michigan high school graduation, then attended junior college before transferring to the University of California-Berkeley. She had to attend summer school after failing Spanish before she got her degree in 1976.
McMillan's book, out next Tuesday (Viking, $12.95), joins the graduation gift book genre. Dr. Seuss' 1990 Oh, The Places You'll Go! is a perennial best seller. Maria Shriver has published two best sellers in the category: 2000's Ten Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Went Out into the Real World and 2005's And One More Thing Before You Go ....
Clueless is McMillan's first foray into non-fiction. She plans to follow it up with a memoir titled Don't Pity the Fool, which will address the "whole ordeal" of her very public and extremely messy divorce from her Jamaican-born husband, Jonathan Plummer.
The seven-year marriage unraveled after McMillan discovered that Plummer, who is 23 years her junior, was gay. The revelation cast a new light on their romance, which was the basis of McMillan's hit 1996 novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back.
McMillan remains bitter about the divorce, which she says has cost her $363,000 in legal fees alone.
Contributing: Jacqueline Blais
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
