Although Terry McMillan's novels have been huge successes, reaching a broad readership, her fiction has practically gone unnoticed in the EFL classroom. McMillan's short stories are not only accessible to non-narrative speakers of English but can be used as a springboard to further literary competence and cross-cultural comparison. This paper analyses McMillan's conception of aesthetics, and offers practical suggestions for the teaching of 'Ma'Dear' and 'Quilting on the Rebound' to EFL students at the post-secondary level.