"I know what I try to accomplish in my work and I don't think it's stereotyped. People like to put labels on you," she says. "Sometimes, ignorant people, that's the only way they know to describe you."
McMillan says she doesn't worry whether readers agree with her, she'd never write if she paid attention to the complaints. Then she offers the other side: ''I've had some brothers say to me they are basically guilty of some of the . . . they've been reading. Some of them said, 'Thanks for helping me save my marriage.' "
Initial reactions to her book, from which she'll be reading at Borders Book Shop, 1727 Walnut St., at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow, threw her on the defensive. She said she was criticized for her depictions of black men, some of whom are loving and supportive, but others who cheat on their lovers, shun commitment and sometimes hustle women for money. "I was sort of made to be on the defensive about how the brothers were going to attack me and all this kind of stuff," she says. "But, you know, the tone of this book isn't angry, nor is it hostile, not to say that the characters don't get angry at the men.
"But the tone of my writing is not angry. . . . The bottom line is that if these sisters didn't care about these men, they wouldn't be tripping. They try, and we try sometimes too hard."
McMillan, 40, said she actually sees a positive transformation in black people's romantic relationships, although her book outlines the shortcomings she has sensed over the last several years. Now, she says, she sees an end to an era of "being scared" and "abusing each other. . . . But we don't comfort each other enough. We turn everywhere we can but to each other - drugs alcohol, crack, . . . BMWs, 6,000 square-foot houses.
