These Heathens: a Novel by Mia McKenzie

 

Author Mia McKenzie

Thirteen of us met on Saturday, March 28th to discuss Mia McKenzie’s These Heathens. This 2025 novel features a young girl from rural Georgia going to Atlanta to seek an abortion in 1960. The point of view is the protagonist in 2020, looking back on the events of that weekend. Aside from the theme of abortion, the novel examines themes like classism among African Americans, non-violence vs. armed resistance, segregation vs. Integration, female caregivers, female leadership, the LGBTQ2+ community back in 1960, and religion. The real-life characters in the book include Malcolm X, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, and others.  

Robin, who started off our discussion, was very surprised that there were armed Black men who were in the background guarding the non-violence leaning activists. She had us turn to page 115 when a group of armed men explained to Doris:  

“And we ain’t the only ones, neither,” said Charlie. “They got men in Nashville doing the same. Mississippi, too. If it’s kids doing nonviolent protests anywhere in the South, it’s a bunch of guys like us standing off to the side, making sure they safe, whether they know it or not. You can turn all the cheeks you want. But don’t make no mistake, little lady: If you aint got nobody looking out for you, gun loaded and ready to blow a cracker’s brains out if need be, this nonviolent shit will get you killed.” 

Shelara then reminded us that we had discussed Robert F. Williams, who was a NAACP leader in Monroe, NC during another book discussion. Williams formed the Black Armed Guard, to protect his community from the Ku Klux Klan. He was eventually ousted from the NAACP and ended up leaving the United States. Shelara further reminded us that there were groups like the Deacons for Defense and Justice, in 1964 Louisiana. Dr. King was a true pacifist, but there were others who considered nonviolence as a strategy, but not the only strategy. 

As to religion, Robin pointed out that Doris is saying that she’s a believer and maybe you think that underneath she really doesn’t believe. But Doris talks throughout the book about being a Christian, she absolutely evolves in this book.  

Bonnie said that what she found so touching in this book that Doris, a good student, who was going to school and then her mother became ill, and she had to give everything up, yet she was very gracious about it and uncomplaining.  

Barb M. said that’s how women are bred though. One thing about Doris evolving, is she evolved to the point where she thought she might have the opportunity to choose her own life, but it was her duty to quit school to take care of her mother.  

 

Bonnie insisted, “But she did it without complaining. Other teenagers may have done it because it was their duty but they would complain about it, and she wasn’t that way, she was totally accepting.  

Barb L. reminded us that Doris had said, “I don’t have any time to myself except when I’m in the outhouse and not even then.’”  

Carolina explained that the oldest child, especially if the oldest is a daughter, is expected to take responsibility for the younger siblings in a household.  

Barb M.  Offered, "I think that she was bred to not have any choices. She’s a female. Her responsibilities are cut right out for her. She knows nothing else besides her Christian upbringing and for her, to be able to make choices over that weekend felt like a miracle, she now was beginning to think that her life was her own."

Kathleen suggested, "Some of those choices though, might have been going overboard. She decided to leave for the weekend and not even tell her family."

Marian ventured, "When you have the obligation to care for your mom, dad, and two little brothers without complaining, it's easier if you know your family loves you. If she had been in a household where that love was absent, she would still have to do her duty, but she wouldn’t do it without complaining. She did it knowing she was included in the sum total of the family unit, and there’s love there."

Bonnie pushed back, saying, "But I think there are a lot of teenagers, even in a loving household, who would complain. But about the classism among African Americans, the Jews have the same thing. There’s a book called Our Crowd about the Sephardic Jews settling in New York and doing very well and then came the Ashkenazi from Eastern Europe and the Jews who were already established were ashamed of the newcomers."

Barb M. insisted on revisiting the idea of a daughter's duty, saying, "I want to go back to the woman’s theme. I’m a little angry here. The love that you say they have doesn’t include the woman. It's terrible to say, 'I’m tired of taking care of my sick mother who I love dearly and my two little brothers who I love dearly,' but it’s taking up her whole existence." 

Ann gave us, "I thought it was a brilliant book and what I thought was especially meaningful was the diversity of points of view and that she was always kind of questioning things. The other people were kind of thinking that way too. I thought it was incredibly sophisticated to show that people had many different points of view and at the end, hearing those different points of view, she was able to liberate herself from any guilt for the abortion." 

Robin mentioned, "She had this best friend, Lena, and you’d keep hearing them in conversation, and Lena clearly wanted to get married and do the traditional thing, and there was this way in which Doris differed from Lena. Doris absolutely didn’t want to get married. This is how this devout Christian was willing to have an abortion, because she knew that she did not want that life. Then when she went away that weekend, she sees all these people with lives that she didn’t even know were possible: the college women, the wealthy women, the actors. She thought, "Let me get away and have a little time for myself. Maybe I’ll get married in the future.’” 

Marian commented,  "Kathleen and I talked about it a little bit before the discussion today and I said ‘If I was waiting for a doctor to call me back, you could best believe that I would sit right there near the phone. But everybody who came along and said, ‘I’m going to the non-violence workshop, why don’t you come with me?’ or ‘I’m going out to the Greens, why don’t you come with me?’ She got right in the car and went with them.” 

Shelara  retorted. “You’re saying that from the point of view of a grown up. She’s a seventeen-year-old who never had a chance to go anywhere. She worked from sun-up to sun-down basically like a housewife, not having a chance to ever be out with her friends. Her moves were that of a young girl who was very sheltered.” 

Kathleen said, "I guess that I get that, and I get her being a teenager, but I think what I wanted from the book was a little bit more of the tug of war in her mind."

Barb L. reminded us that, "The first indication that she was different from what was expected of her was revealed when she went into Mrs. Lucas’s classroom and said, ‘I’m pregnant’ then went on to say ‘Remember that notebook you gave me, I filled it up and I’ve been filling up notebooks ever since then. It’s her scratching out a little bit of the vision that at the very end when she tells us she’s living in Atlanta and there was this recurrent rumor about her abortion was the result of an affair with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She talked about writing songs. At the beginning she gave us a little place where she had started to explore where her mind could take her."

Shelara said, “And the fact that she got pregnant. That was the first notion to me that she’s not following the script. She’s having premarital sex obviously now she’s having this situation. And her first thought was ‘let me go to my former teacher.’” 

Caroline interjected, “We could have a whole talk about that. How this community of women supported her.” 

 Shelara continued, “And I absolutely love the fact that Coretta Scott King is the one who finally gives her the name of the Granny-Midwife.”  

Barb L. pointed out that we had no background on the relationship that resulted in this pregnancy.  

Maria said, "I read it so fast. I loved her humor. I loved her way of writing the clever things down in her book. I enjoyed her as a human being. I had forgotten the plot of the book; I had to start it over again."

Barb M. commented, "I liked the way she writes."

Barb shared, "One of the parts that I thought was funny was when she said,  

p. 58 ‘Mrs. Broussard didn’t strike me as ‘a be grateful for what you got and don’t be greedy type of person. So, I was surprised to hear her talk about the sit-ins the same way Daddy did. To tell you the truth I knew older Negroes liked to move slow. It was a known fact in 1960 that eighty percent over Negroes over thirty thought molasses ran too quick.’” 

Marian added “I laughed out loud at the part about the little boy reading in the classroom, and his book report was so bad. P. 10 ‘One time sophomore year, while Marvin was giving a book report so middling that a dog could’ve thought it up while sniffling another dog’s ass, Mrs. Lucas had burst into tears. In Marvin’s defense, her husband had recently been killed in a car crash, so it wasn’t all on account of his shitty schoolwork.’” 

Robin told us, "One of the ways I think this book is just so lovely and optimistic is because here is this young lady who was very sheltered and the minute she’s exposed to so many different ideas over one weekend, she just soaks it up."

Robin also added, "I thought Mrs. Lucas’s relationship with Julia was interesting, they were in love, but Julia couldn’t commit to being with just one person. Was she (Doris? The author?) implying that maybe some people loved multiple people and that that was okay?'

Shelara pointed out that, "Doris kissed Erik and then later that weekend she kissed Dexter. She reasoned that she didn’t have to fool around with just one boy. '

Barbara M. commented, "I think that reflected that decade."

Laura gave us, "I just loved this book. I loved her voice and some things she said were so funny. This character was so real to me." 

Caroline reminded us that on p.240, it's explained that the nephew (Dexter) stole from his aunt and uncle to support the civil rights movement.

Barb.L. noted what a complex woman Mrs. Broussard turned out to be, mentioning the complex relationship between her and Mrs. Lucas as well as the complex relationship between her and husband. 

Shelara pointed out the passage on page 163: “She hugged me. I wrapped my arms around her waist and held on. I wished she was my ma. Shamed as I am to admit it, because it’s disrespectful to my real ma. But Mrs. Lucas seemed to know, better than anyone I’d ever met, how to love people. How to see them exactly as they were and love them that way. I wanted to love her back the same.” 

Robin added, “I also think that the whole gay piece of it showed us that these people were already outside, they didn’t really fit in society, and I think that gave them the permission to be more daring." 

Maria reminded us that when Doris went to the nonviolence training and she overheard the two girls in the restroom complaining that they had organized the whole thing and the men were taking all the credit, one of the girls was Diane Nash.  

Barb added, "I thought she had just went back to Millen and fell into what had been before, but she had actually moved to Atlanta and just like she never divulged about who the father of her baby was, she also never divulged the names of the people who helped her. In 1992, when the Supreme Court upheld Roe, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, another reporter showed up at her house. She told the reporter:  

p.255 “I wanted to tell her that, yes, I’d had an abortion, and that there were women who helped me, and that those women had given me a gift. That every good thing in my life – every song I’d written, every trip I’d taken, every love I’d chosen – was possible because of that gift. But out of respect for those women, and the secrets I’d promised to keep, All I told her was that I never had a relationship with Dr. King. And that I was glad girls weren’t being forced to have babies they didn’t want anymore.”