Caitlin Emma Photo
Zania Collier argues her point.
The Divas Club came to the consensus that this wasn’t Terry McMillan’s best book. But the group divided on another issue: is Savannah Jackson a “ho”?
“I have a problem with Savannah Jackson,” said Zania Collier. “I just thought she was very shallow.”
“No, she wasn’t!” replied Sharon Brooks.
“Yes, she was,” Collier said. “She spent the entire first book being a ho.”
And that launched Wednesday night’s book club meeting of 11 women into a greater discussion on what it means to live a single life and what it means to cultivate a happy marriage.
They were wrapping up their discussion of Terry McMillan’s Getting to Happy, the author’s sequel to the popular novel, Waiting to Exhale.
“I think from the title, you could just kind of get that someone wasn’t going to be happy at some point,” said Sunasha Nixon, who came to the meeting even though she’s just two days shy of her due date for a new baby girl. “I don’t plan on giving a man so much of me. You need to take care of yourself. You can’t give all of you to a man like that.”
Diva’s Digest Book Club formed in July 2011 with the express purpose of reading Kathryn Stockett’s The Help before the movie came out. The women meet about three times a month at the Dixwell’s Stetson public library branch.
Sharon Brooks.
“Attempts to meet less frequently are repeatedly and loudly protested,” Brooks said.
The members range from “newbies” to “veterans.” Total, the group has about 22 women, Brooks said. They range in age from 20s to 50s. Many of the members work for AT&T in New Haven.
Each member selects a book; the entire club focuses on it for a month. Brooks said the reading schedule is booked through 2013. Diane Brown, the library’s branch manager, works with the women to order the books they want in bulk.
Each member Wednesday evening seemed ready to move on to the next selection, Bring on the Blessings by Beverly Jenkins. But the four main characters of Getting to Happy and their obsessions with love and finding a husband dominated the first part of the group’s discussion.
Hilda Austin.
“I think they were all in love with the idea of being in love,” said Hilda Austin. “And they expended so much energy on the idea of finding a husband.”
“It was very good in the beginning, but then it just kind of fell off,” said Quiona Brooks, Sharon’s daughter.
The four female main characters of Getting to Happy have rocky love lives. Savannah Jackson, played by Whitney Houston in the movie modeled after the book, keeps holding on to the idea that her married lover will leave his wife for her. Another character, Robin Stokes, is a businesswoman who is also the longtime mistress of a man she eventually leaves. Character Bernadine Harris’s husband leaves her for a white woman; Gloria Matthews finds new love after finding out her ex-husband is gay.
Through it all, the characters maintain solid friendships with each other.
“I liked the emphasis on black women and friendship, because a lot of the time, we’re not friends with each other,” said Robin James.
From left: Bev Rawls, Quiona Brooks and Chanti Brooks.
Sharon Brooks admired the idea of having a really close-knit group of friends, as the women do in the book. She said Diva club member Beverly Rawls has that with her friends in real life.
“Bev’s five friends, they call themselves ‘the divas,’” Brooks said. “They celebrate every monumental thing in their lives. It’s just a thing of wonder.”
The book group mirrors the characters in the books — not in the sense that they have scandalous love lives, but in that the members are close.
They bring in books to swap with each other, in addition to that month’s selection. Gifts and plates of food change hands at the beginning of each meeting. They brainstorm names for Nixon’s new baby girl and applaud L’Tanya Granger for finally buying herself an e‑reader.
“You have to treat yourself!” Nixon said.
A few of the women planned on going out for drinks afterward.
“I love Wednesdays,” Rawls said.
The Divas aren’t meeting again until March 14.
“Ugh, that long from now?” Quiona Brooks grumbled.
“Don’t say that. We’ll probably have to read 500 pages,” said Chanti, Quiona’s sister.
Five hundred pages is probably pretty close: 10 chapters are due before the next meeting.