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A Novel
by Mia McKenzie
Book Reviewed by:In this vibrant, gratifying novel, a pious, small-town teenager travels to Atlanta to get an abortion and finds herself smack in the middle of the civil rights movement and the secret lives of queer Black people.
Where do you get an abortion in 1960 Georgia, especially if your small town's midwife goes to the same church as your parents? For seventeen-year-old Doris Steele, the answer is Atlanta, where her favorite teacher, Mrs. Lucas, calls upon her brash, wealthy childhood best friend, Sylvia, for help. While waiting to hear from the doctor who has agreed to do the procedure, Doris spends the weekend scandalized by, but drawn to, the people who move in and out of Sylvia's orbit: celebrities whom Doris has seen in the pages of Jet and Ebony, civil rights leaders such as Coretta Scott King and Diane Nash, women who dance close together, boys who flirt too hard and talk too much, atheists! And even more shocking? Mrs. Lucas seems right at home.
From the guests at a queer kickback to the student activists at a SNCC conference, Doris suddenly finds herself surrounded by so many people who seem to know exactly who or what they want. Doris knows she doesn't want a baby, but what does she want? Will this trip help her find out?
These Heathens is a funny, poignant story about Black women's obligations and ambitions, what we owe to ourselves, and the transformative power of leaving your bubble, even for just one chaotic weekend.
1
One thing needs clearing up right off: Reverend King was not the father. That was a rumor, started by crazy people and repeated by heathens. Reverend King had nothing to do with it. I only met the man once, and it wasn't that kind of meeting. Still, there's been so many insinuations, innuendos, and downright accusations over the last sixty years, I'm left with no choice but to tell the thing, the way it really happened. Which I don't appreciate. I'm old. I want to be lying in a hammock, drinking rum out a coffee mug, not setting records straight. But the Good Lord burdened me with a deep respect for the truth. So, let me say, officially: The father was nobody.
To set the story up right, I got to go back to the beginning.
I was fifteen when Ma got sick, and I had to quit school to help take care of her and Daddy and the boys. I aint want to quit, but nobody asked me what I wanted. I missed school something awful. For the first few months, I'd wonder what...
McKenzie offers compelling insight into the questions the movement, and integration specifically, raised for Black Americans at the time. For instance, Doris is lukewarm on the prospect of eating at a lunch counter beside white people who don't want her there, and Mrs. Broussard raises the question of whether there will be any Black teachers remaining once schools are integrated. It is a canny decision by McKenzie not to delve too deeply into Doris's backstory. The fact that the pregnancy is the result of an uncomplicated passing sexual desire rather than rape, incest, or even a loving star-crossed relationship means that the reader must accept Doris's desire for an abortion for its own sake, along with her sexual autonomy. McKenzie has a lot of fun with the fish-out-of-water motif, as Doris comes to know Mrs. Broussard's friends in Atlanta, who are unlike anyone Doris has ever met before...continued
Full Review
(831 words)
(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
Roxane Gay
Deliciously Black and queer...You will absolutely want to read this..jpg "Frederick Douglass High School, serving Collier Heights")
In These Heathens, set in 1960, 17-year-old Doris Steele visits a friend of her former teacher, who lives in the Collier Heights area in Atlanta, Georgia. Collier Heights was established in 1952 as an all-Black neighborhood, at a time when redlining meant that Black Georgians were significantly restricted in terms of housing. They were confined to certain "zones" and those who attempted to live outside of these designated spaces, in areas populated by whites, were targeted with threats and violence.
In the early 1950s, a Black housing developer named Robert Thompson, along with his team of colleagues, began scouting land for development with the goal of expanding the available options for Black residents of the Atlanta area. They ...
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