“A raw eye-opening look into the realities faced by homeless, pregnant teens.”
Pregnant teens and young mothers facing housing instability or homelessness encounter unique challenges that result in adverse health, educational, and employment consequences for young mothers and their children. Viola’s House commenced a decade ago with CEO Thana Hickman’s vision of opening a maternity home and has catapulted into an incomparable support system for mothers aged 18-24 and their children. Thana is an inimitable and passionate advocate who travels the nation underscoring the systemic issues surrounding Black maternal health for women of all ages and teen pregnancy.
Since its inception, Viola’s House has housed hundreds of teen moms. Can you imagine the poignant stories of these young mothers and the multifaceted challenges and cycles of hardships they face? After a decade of operating and gaining valuable insights, Thana has penned an astonishing new book shedding light on the social determinants affecting the pregnant teens they have served. Southern Dallas Magazine is thrilled to sit down with Thana and discuss her newly released book, “No Place To Belong: Social Determinants of Teen Pregnancy and Homelessness”, which sold 200 copies in the first local book signing on May 4th!
SDM: You have excelled at providing housing strategies integrated with top-notch programming services. You have traveled to the White House advocating for Black maternal health, addressed health access with the opening of a clinic and you are opening a second maternity home in Baltimore. What was your inspiration to pen a book?
Thana Hickman: My inspiration for this book was to tell real life stories, to educate people and to bring awareness to an issue that is really a crisis. These things are really happening, and it is my lived experiences. I connect the lived experiences to research so that everyone can understand what is really happening in our community with pregnancy and homelessness.
SDM: You have been on a whirlwind tour promoting your book, with one stop being the Roland Martin Show. How has this impacted you?
Thana Hickman: I’m going to be honest with you. The more I advocate and the more I talk about the disparities that we see with young girls and African American women, I get emotional. It’s one thing to do the work every day onsite, but when you start going into rooms and telling others and you are repeating these stories and reliving the experiences with these mothers, it has fueled me and angered me more than I ever imagined. I want to be transparent with that because it is anger that fuels me to advocate and get a message out there. It is anger that fuels me to open maternity homes in other cities. I’m heading to Baltimore to put a contract on the home. It’s anger that has fueled me to research all the MSAs across the U.S. that need our services the most. So, the anger fuels me to do more and the more I talk about it, just like I’m talking to you, I realized that it is a bigger crisis than I even saw while doing the work. The more that I share why this book is necessary, it fuels me in a different way.
SDM: What do you want your readers to take away from your new book?
Thana Hickman: I want them to take action. Chapter 10 shows how at any level, you can take action. You can advocate and you can point a mother to education. Everybody can do their part. We are our sister’s keepers and if we don’t step in and help at any level, we can use our voices. We can take a mother to a health care appointment. We can point a mother to services. You can give financially. You can educate in classrooms on the implicitly biased healthcare system here in America because if mothers don’t know that the training is rooted in racism, then they don’t know to research the hospitals that have the best maternal outcomes and to advocate. Culturally, most of us don’t think this stuff is real until it happens to us or to somebody that we love, and we are impacted. We don’t know this is real because it’s never going to make the news. This book is bringing awareness and the interviews are bringing awareness.
SDM: Congratulations on the success of your first book, which is available via Amazon or the website below! Thank you for relentlessly advocating for and educating us on this significant public health matter.
Website: www.thanahickman.com
