Mama , a first novel, tells of a proud black woman, Mildred Peacock, and her five children. After a violent fight, Mildred throws her drunken husband out of the house. On her own in the poor town of Point Haven, Michigan, Mildred scrimps and drinks, works and goes on welfare, struggling to raise her kids and keep her sanity. Mildred's closest bond is to her oldest daughter, Freda, and their lives parallel each other's progress from despair to hope.

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Great read, heartwarming and real! Especially for a first novel

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McMillian wrote Mama in 1987 while working as a word processor in Berkley and raising her son Soloman alone. It is a very good book. about a woman named Mildred Peacock she is tough, but so is life in fictional Point Haven. Laid off from a sucession of low wage jobs;abanded by her violent, week-willed husband,and left to feild offers from a battery of inopppropiate men etc.

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One of my favorite books, which I pull out and reread often! The character of Mildred Peacock is inspiring, funny, maddening, complex- definitely memorable! One of my favorite McMillan books ever.

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Mama, the mother of five, is a struggling black woman who's lived in near poverty her entire life. She is strong, opinionated, bossy, with a grit that only comes from living life the hard way, but also has the character to 'want a back yard', shine the windows and keep her babies polite, hard workers and knowin' they got some good in this life. All of that while she put up with thier Daddy, a boozer and abuser, who Mildred (Mama) finally cuts loose.

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Terry McMillan's first novel. I liked this as much as "Waiting To Exhale," which was the first of her novels that I've read.

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