And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Ing bestsell author Terry Mcmillan has been credited with featuring the en. Es of black wom she is credited with helping other writers who want to take a look at american life. Is who asked you . Always good to have you. You look good. Thank you. I cover up well. I always love your covers, the book covers. I like that. Tavis i love this cover. What do you like about it . Well, it is what people like to run their mouth. So that is pretty representative. Tavis how did you settle on the title . I have a big mouth and tavis i did not say that. I have a big mouth and over the years as the oldest of five, i had a tendency to speak when no one really cared. That anddecided to use ways to try to help myself learn when to keep my mouth shut. It has not worked. [laughter] tavis i was about to ask them how is that project coming along . Since you went there do you find that older, i grandmother used the phrase chronologically gifted. Do you find that you care you care more or less about that . About what . Rex about what you say and how people feel about what you say. I do care. Is oney reason that of the reasons i write because i would like to fix things that appear to be broken. One assaulted be happy be happy and thrive. Usetimes it seems i want all to be happy and thrive. Know, i write to explore it and try to understand it because i can be very judgmental. Tavis i was in a conversation the other day with a group of other Older Persons and they were giving me some of the good things about getting older. You can speak your mind. You have paid your dues. You do not care what people have to say. You do not have to be so circumspect. It depends on who is saying it. That makes a big difference. Some folks i really do not care but when it comes to family, i do care. I feel like i have the right because we are blood and who else is going to tell you when you are making a full of yourself . Fool of yourself . Tavis it can get funky. I dont care. You are right. Tavis there it is. I know i talk to you long care was going to get out at some point. I am happy. You mentioned you write because you want to fix things that are broken. What is broken that you want to try to fix in who asked you . It is not so much that i am trying to fix and this book in this book i have always been concerned, grandparents or have to raise who have to raise their grandchildren and there is usually drugs involved. Outally wanted to figure what it is like when you are two thirds of the way through your life and youre ready to retire and all this and then you get what they call the second shift. A lot of grandparents, i am going to a grandparents as parents, some kind of a conference next saturday in los angeles which i had never i did not even know. A friend of mine asked me if i would go. It is very complicated. But also in this case, i write from 15 different characters points of view. Tavis i want to come to that in a second. A lot of times evil have opinions and in this case there are some people who thinks, let the grandkids go to foster care. Throughanted to work what it is like when you have children and they do not turn out the way that you had hoped. And how much responsibility do you accept for it. My queries. Of because good parents have children who do terrible things and vice versa. All kinds of, things can happen in the wrong place at the wrong time, associating with people, a lot of times parents are surprised but sometimes it is environmental, it is geographic, and you do not know who is influencing your children. Sometimes they may have more influence than you as a parent. Tavis just one statement by you has raised eight questions in my head and i cannot get to all of them fast enough. Let me start with the statement before i get to these other questions. I read the introduction about and it is true how you have opened the door for other writers and you are the penultimate when it comes to giving black women, smart, sassy, educated, brilliant black women voices. You have done all of that. I was reading that and thinking, my read on the book is, this is my pointng, this is of view and it does not make it right. You may disagree. My read on this is that this is perhaps your most universal text. By universal i say when you talk about grandparents raising their kids, that is second that not justift, that is a black thing. That is all across the country. 6 million. Tavis this is a book that deals with it. There are more caucasians and other ethnicities. Particular. S in it is mostly grandmothers. Tavis bjs story is universal. Which leads me to this question. How did you go about researching for this text . There are a lot of people who did dissertations on this whole topic and how difficult it is and what you have to go through. There are a couple of oaks that i read books that i read and i interviewed grandparents who had to go through a lot, more than i ever dreamed. So i interviewed people, i read a lot about, just the legal problems they face, and their rights, what they do not have the right to do. If your grandkid gets sick and you do not have legal custody. You might not be able to take them to the hospital. Even though you are raising them. They have no help from the state, because the legal battle is too complex and complicated. You almost have to beg for help and a lot of times they do treat the grandparents, theyve land blame the grandparents for not being a good parent. Sometimes they think the grandmother is trying to scam them. Choose to explore 15 characters, i am glad you did but that is a lot. Fix because i did not choose to do it. The story usually dictates the structure and because i knew that this woman was facing sort of an uphill battle, maybe or maybe not, i did not know. And people always have something to say about what youre doing in how you are doing it. Sometimes peoples comments can affect your decisions. I wanted to be able to show how other people saw what it was that eddie jean was going ,hrough. And more than anything people can sometimes be supportive and sometimes a fake it. I was curious about the children , what does it feel like to be abandoned, i mean really. What does that feel like . What does it feel like to know that your mother is a crackhead. I did not know. There are a lot of characters, siblings but i just wanted to know what gives some people or makes them feel like they are authorities on other peoples lives and especially when they do not look at their own. So that was the point. In order to do that i had to write it from the various view whosepoints of lives impacted betty jean and vice versa. Tavis speaking of Vantage Point from which you had to write since there are so many characters here. I am curious as to your process. How do you take what is a very and deliver itue in a narrative that is poignant, that is funny at times, that is not proselytizing. That is a serious issue and you take it and how do you turn it into a novel . Rex is a dramatize it. Because i dramatize it. I love writing in first person more than third. I have to basically suspend my own world. I dont exist. I am just a conduit. So i can be a years old eight years old, i can be the mother of a kid and you find out certain things, i am not going to say. And i take what people feel and think, especially when it is different and i find it liberating, to be honest with you. I empathize with the young man who was in prison but i see a lot of letters from for his nurse. They used to get my nerves, especially family members. Everybody is innocent. I know differently. It is how you how i am able to empathize. With them. I let them do the talking. I let them tell me what to say. I just write it. And so it is not i am not trying to teach a lesson. Usually i write about people very harshly. E in order to not have to put myself in their shoes and that is what i did. I tried. Tavis you have piqued my curiosity about the letters you have gotten from prisoners. Abi should not be surprised that you get letters from prisoners but what are prisoners doing reading Terry Mcmillan stuff and what are they saying . I have not gotten any letters to the email. They get a library. Books when you could. Some of them you cannot mail the book strictly, rightly, the bookstore has to. I send money orders. I still send a few money orders. I have paid legal fees. I have heard stories. Some cases i do not. Some folks i know are just lying. At first, i wanted to write years ago, i wanted to write a story about two brothers, one of whom went to oxford and the other went to prison. Widerman beat me to it. His was true. I am talking like the 1980s. I had a plastic file. Even before i thought about the letters were often heartbreaking, and especially how they saw themselves. On saturdays. Kup i dont know how you do it. It tears me apart. Day, 40aw one the other years, eight years, i am thinking, wow, there are brothers who got convicted for raping and killing a young girl and they did not even do it. They were in prison for 20 years. Tavis do you think you might write a book that has that as a backdrop because there are so many stories to tell. He wrote a good book but there are so many other stories. Writing a book that is predictable and i cannot say too much, but most people all claim to be innocent. In a lot of cases, they are. And also in some cases, people deserve a second chance. If you did not do i do not know. Yet, but i for one know i do not like being accused of something i did not do. In general. Cannot even imagine being in that position. I may visit it but i do not know. I do not want it to be predictable. Ado not want it to be, heres guy who did not commit this crime and he has been incarcerated for years and now he is free. That is it. There has got to be more than that. Tavis you may or may not have been following this. I am curious if you have. Have you been following the story about the california prisons, what do you make of this mess . This mess . Tavis overcrowding. There is this is true everywhere. Wherever there is a prison, especially where there is black people, it is overcrowded. I do not know who really gets out. I have heard, i have read some of the stuff, but i think the reasons why they are doing it are ridiculous. I mean, why did they not think about this years ago . Half of them should not be in there. Especially for the length of time they have been there. They make it seem as though they are doing these prisoners a itor when the real word for is called justice. I do not like the reasons why they are doing it and it is all about money. That is all it is. Tavis to go back to something you said earlier, to some degree, sometimes people, sometimes we as a society do the right things for the wrong reasons. America. Tavis it may be the right thing but money should not be the reason. I worry about these young men likeomen, because, sort of what you wish for comes true and a lot of them are not psychologically, emotionally prepared and this is how they end up there in the first place. That is why the rate of recidivism is so high. What kind of skills did you get while you were there, what did you learn beside patience and tolerance . Theml sorry for a lot of because what kind of world are they going to . People with phds and masters degrees cannot find it job. I do with one component of that. Deal with one component of that. Do not get me started. Tavis this takes me back to the we are talking about the grandmothers who have to navigate this second shift raising grandkids. You talk about their concerns, bj and other persons like her. What about the children that she is raising, how will they turn out when they are raised by grandparents who oftentimes do not understand what they are up against, kids are slicker now, they are smarter, they have access to technology. These grandparents are raising thatwho live in a world they could not imagine. There are basic tavis right and wrong . Most of these children who have experienced some kind of emotional abuse, they know they are loved which every child anybody would want. Their grandparents, they show them the kind of affection and attention that they were not getting at home. Any fool would like that. I have always thought this, when you see the super bowl after the games, you often hear when they put the microphone up to the player, what about this play and he says, i want to say hi to my grandma. How many of them say their grandmother or their mother, really their wives rarely their wives but theyre always thinking their grandmother. That is a lot of them and i often wondered how did they get there . Hanked their grandparents because the get the kind of love and attention that apparently they did not get when they were younger. Tavis how do we as a society and how does Terry Mcmillan in , how do weyou . Indict those parents . I do not know how technically, the way i tell the story, this is my own sneaky way. The story to me is an indictment, sort of. Ut in that, if you do not pay happeningto what is in your life, if you do not stop and think, do i really need to get that pipe again hit that pipe again, i got kids at home. What impact my is my behavior going to have . They did not ask to be here. Of judging, all i try to do is show it. This is the outcome, this is the product of your ignorance or yourself is this your selfishness. That is it. I cannot preach. I know a drug addiction is. I know what he can do to. What it can do to you. Help, some dot not. There are people out here like grandmothers who know that these little children are innocent. There arent some people who need help from their parents to raise their kids because the economy and the lack of choices, the lack of options, you go to school and get an education, you still cannot find a job, youre back at your mamas house with your kids, how much of that is it all about the pipe . Let me just say this, too. I have a son graduated from stanford and he had to be a boomerang kid, came back home for nine months. But sometimes the grandparents are not doing so well. A lot of them struggle and those who are not for the most part, god bless them. There are some people do not need to be parents. Tavis amen to that. Some parents, parents can ruin children. Sometimes that is a learned behavior. Sometimes you cannot blame your parents for it, sometimes you can. I think to me, that is what the whole paradox is, is people who have children who do not know how to raise them and i do not want to get too personal, but i , somei have watched things that these young parents and mothers, i am like, are you serious . Are you serious . The boy cant talk. Tricking us that cup drinking a sippy when he is always 20 almost 20 . To bringer, you get attention to something without preaching. I do not believe in being didactic. If you dramatize something, you automatically bring attention to it. If people read it. Tavis and they will read it because anything Terry Mcmillan puts out they will read. Called who asked you . Nobody. Tavis that is our show for tonight. Thanks joining us. As always, heat the faith. Keep the faith. For more information on todays show, visit tavis smiley at pbs. Org. Tavis hi, im tavis smiley. Join me next time for a conversation with the founding members of the great band earth, wind fire. That is next time, we will see you then. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Be more. Be more. Pbs. Uncer theme music matt elmore welcome to imagemakers a weekly showcase featuring the best short films from around the world. Stay tuned and enjoy the filmmakers of tomorrow today on imagemakers. Imagemakers is made possible in part by a grant from celebrating the vitality and power of the moving image. And by the background talking jack so youre going to be like this all night . Lauren like what . Lauren, look . Just stop i dont. I dont want to talk about this here