Web Letters: Terry McMillan vs. Ghetto Lit

What people fail to realize is that hate mail or not, she has a right to her own opinion and we need to be proactive in edifying our own community. Don't applaud because our kids are reading, govern "what" they're reading. Fact is, Jonathan Plummer should have never inked a deal because he was married to Terry--which is the only reason they bankrolled him. It just shows you what this industry is all about. They'd rather get someone to co-author a book with him because he's not a writer than publish a career writer who has studied the craft.

Linda Dominique Grosvenor

Cliffwood Beach, NJ

Ghetto literature? I guess there is black ghetto lit and Hispanic barrio lit. But the largest slice of ghetto lit is Jewish American shlock. There is so much of that--because Jews buy more books than others. Philip Roth lost it after Portnoy's Complaint. But he still writes to everyone else's distraction. The public (as opposed to the Jewish public) is sick of Jewish American princesses, gay Jewish male schmeggies and Israeli propaganda. Give us a break.

Norman Ravitch

Savannah, GA

Amy Alexander's article led me to expect some kind of substantive letter from Terry McMillan. It is not: just a brief piece of hate mail, mostly concerned with her personal life. It makes no arguments, and pushes a few hot buttons ("Rosa Parks would be ashamed of you").

I fail to see how this is anything significant, except in a very gossipy sense. (Caring about literature, and about what books and genres are marketed to people, but not knowing who the players are without the crib sheet, I found it dull.) The most interesting remark comes from the user "Chrishayden," who writes: "Everything Terry said in her e-mail was said about her and 'Waiting to Exhale.' Indeed, people were asking how a college professor and the author of the excellent books she had put out could have stooped to doing gossip/style literature."

Simon DeDeo

Chicago, IL