Using What You Got : A Novel [Hardcover]

Karen E. Quinones Miller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 2003

In Using What You Got, Karen E. Quinones Miller returns to her beloved Harlem to spin a dynamic tale that sparkles with the blush of first love and the hard-won lessons that endure.

Eighteen-year-old college student Tiara Bynum is as pretty as a princess and just as spoiled. Her castle is the Harlem housing project where she lives with her younger sister, Jo-Jo, and her doting father, Reggie. Her fiefdom is the legion of men at her beck and call every time she snaps her perfectly manicured fingers. She has no qualms about flaunting her charms to get what she wants because she's "got it like that."

Reggie -- a former professional gambler who was abandoned by his wife -- would do anything for his daughters, even if it means jeopardizing the family finances in favor of his girls' material happiness. Though Reggie's sister, Charlene -- a woman embittered by a disfiguring car accident -- pleads for restraint, her Thursday "family nights" pale in comparison to Reggie's Knicks tickets and shopping sprees.

Blissfully unaware of the recklessness of her father's splurges, Tiara believes she's the toast of the world. Her greatest goal is to find a rich, handsome man who will spoil her just as much as he does -- or maybe even more. Go for the glitter, she urges herself. Who cares if it's gold? When two suitors arrive on the scene, Tiara prepares to be smitten. But when the one she secretly adores doesn't like her attitude, Tiara's trademark confidence frays into embarrassment, shame, and confusion.

Blindly determined to strike out on her own at any cost, Tiara lashes out against those who love her most. Yet the choices she makes, based on the way she's been raised, threaten to destroy not only Tiara, but her entire family.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This third novel for Miller (Satin Doll) revisits the Harlem projects, where Reggie Bynum, a former poker player and boxer who now works for the New York City Department of Sanitation, is raising two daughters alone. His wife abandoned the family when the girls-now 12 and 18-were very young, and Reggie, haunted by the memory of his own deadbeat father, dotes on his daughters, sometimes to a fault. His sister, Charlene (Aunt Charley), drinks Johnny Walker Red and hangs around his apartment, supposedly to "help out," but really to stave off her own loneliness. Reggie's younger daughter, Jo-Jo, is a tomboy and talented basketball player, while his older one, the shallow and self-absorbed Tiara, is obsessed with finding a rich guy to rescue her from the projects. She meets Lionel, noticing his black Porsche, his Versace loafers-and nothing else about him. Both she and her father are dazzled by his money and his claim that he is a business major at NYU. At the same time, Tiara meets Rashad, a cab driver who volunteers at the local community center. His apparent nonchalance drives Tiara crazy, but his depth and kindness draw her to him. Tiara's sudden transformation at the end is hard to swallow, supporting characters are even less developed and the plot is predictable. But Miller's prose has a kinetic energy and she includes enough saucy dialogue to make this a decently entertaining read.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Zane Miller is an excellent storyteller who draws you in from page one. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (July 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743246144
• ISBN-13: 978-0743246149
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,051,805 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Essence best selling and NAACP Literary Award Nominee, Karen E. Quinones Miller was born and raised in Harlem in 1958. Miller dropped out of school during the eighth grade, and spent the majority of her teenage years experiencing street life first-hand. After getting a job as a police attendant in New York City's Midtown North police precinct, Miller became friends with a number of police officers who persuaded her that the life she was living could lead to an early death.

So at age 22, Miller joined the Navy and after spending five years in the Navy, Miller married, had a child and divorced all within a two-year period. At age 29, she got a secretarial job with The Philadelphia Daily News, but after three years complaining about the paper's coverage of people living below the poverty level she quit and started taking journalism classes at Temple University.

After graduation she became a newspaper reporter, and worked for the Associated Press, The Norfolk Virginian Pilot, and lastly for The Philadelphia Inquirer where she was employed for nine years. She also worked as a correspondent for People Magazine from 1996 to 1999.
Miller wrote Satin Doll in 1999, and after many unsuccessful attempts at finding a publisher, decided to publish it herself. She sold 28,000 copies on her own, and Satin Doll wound up on the Essence Bestseller's List for two months. Publishing rights were sold to Simon & Schuster (via auction) for six figures.

Miller went on to write five other Essence Bestselling novels for Simon & Schuster, Warner Books, and Grand Central Books: I'm Telling, Using What You Got (both were main selections for Black Expressions Book Club), Ida B. (which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Fiction.), Satin Nights and Passin'.

Best selling author Kwan Foye has often publicly referred to Miller as "The Aretha Franklin of Black Publishing." Miller, who is included in the book Literary Divas: The Top 100+ Most Admired African-American Women In Literature, often gives publishing and self-publishing seminars in her home and Philadelphia, and is the CEO of Oshun Publishing Company. Miller has been often cited for her willingness to help aspiring authors, and Essence best selling authors Daaimah S. Poole, and Miasha are just two of the young writers who consider Miller their mentor.

Miller's new book, An Angry A** Black Woman, will be published by Karen Hunter Books in 2011.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I Am My Own Worst Enemy, July 21, 2003

By 

Dawn R Reeves "tamardi" (Harrisburg, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Using What You Got : A Novel (Hardcover)

Reggie Bynum has a long and hard road to toll; he is a single father raising two teenage daughters in Harlem. On top of this, his sister Charlene (Charlie) visits often to cook and offer her own brand of discipline and advice. The novel is prefaced with a brief story of Reggie and Charlie as teenagers and the responsibilities put upon them. We get a glimpse of Reggie and his interactions with women, which sets the stage for his adulthood relationships. Reggie promises himself that he will never leave his family, like his father did, and will always provide what he can for them. Because of this affirmation, Reggie, a former professional gambler, takes a job as a garbage collector; it is honest and steady work. Reggie's wife Sharon and the girls' mother, abandons the family because of this decision.

Nineteen-year-old Tiara Bynum is a beautiful and smart college student and she knows it. She uses her looks to get what she wants; it is all about Tiara and she damns anyone who gets in her way. Sister Josephine (Jo-Jo) is a basketball phenomenon suffering through the growing pains of adolescence. She is typically Tiara's punching bag. Tiara is caught in a dangerous game because she has her eyes set on two young men; one who is interested in her and one who could not care less. Rashad presents a challenge to Tiara because no man has ever resisted her charm. Rashad is a cab driver and film school student. Lionel presents a different challenge to Tiara; he is rich and able to provide her with any tangible item her little heart desires. Lionel has a dark side and the entire family is caught up in his web of deceit.

Using What You Got offers some life lessons that can be enjoyed by both teenagers and adults. Miller has offered a very realistic and engaging look into the trials and tribulations that many families can go through based on poor decision making; the meaning of family first and forgiveness.

Reviewed by Dawn R. Reeves
APOOO BookClub

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Didn't have it like that!!!, August 30, 2003

By 

Boop "caramelchocolate" (Aiken, South Carolina United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Using What You Got : A Novel (Hardcover)

I have to start this by saying that book definitely wasn't all that. It was very, very shallow or maybe I am getting it mixed up with her main character Tiara Bynum, who is definitely shallow. One thing I can say is that Karen E. Quinones Miller made Tiara so real that I couldn't stand her through out the whole book.

I think Karen E. Quinones Miller is colorstruck to some degree. She stresses the people that are light skin curly hair and light eyes. I'm sorry that doesn't make a person at all. She also makes is seem that since Tiara had hazel eyes made her the bomb diggity, which to me she was not; I felt she was a conceited witch. Ms. Miller mentioned in the book that Tiara wore a weave, well, that's telling me right there that she wasn't all that. When every situation went her way, she would say "cause I got it like that". She was very rude and nasty to mostly everyone around her except her father and that was only because he bought her nice things and gave her money when she wanted it.

I didn't like how Ms. Miller had so much physical fighting surrounding her story,it seemed that every situation, someone had to fight their way out of it, even her father a grown man and her aunt a grown woman was in the book fighting people. What type of example are they setting for Tiara and her little sister Jo-Jo.

In the book's acknowledgements, Ms. Miller thanked her daughter Camille and her daughter's friends for helping her right the story and keep her on point. Pleeeeeeeeeeze...its seemed like a bunch of immature girls wrote that story instead of a grown woman protraying a story of a young girl. I am just saying that it was a poor style of writing for her third book.

I don't mind when author's have similar story lines but the difference is how they tell their story, but Ms. Miller did a poor job at this one. Her first two books I love, but this one left a lot to be desired. I think she may have lost a fan.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Hated it!, December 1, 2003

By 

Trelisia SMith (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Using What You Got : A Novel (Hardcover)

This book was a total waste of time, all that went on in the book was Tiara and her friends arguing and talking to each other like dogs. She was also a spoiled brat that whined so much, I could've slapped her myself. I don't know what's going on with the author, but her books haven't been worth anything since Satin Doll.