Teen/YA Review: The Pregnancy Project: A Memoir

I always enjoy reading memoirs, so the new teen/YA memoir The Pregnancy Project, by teen Gaby Rodriguez, caught my eye.  Gaby’s story is a captivating one, well told with the help of author Jenna Glatzer.

Gaby comes from a long line of teen mothers.  Her own mother became pregnant at just fourteen and went on to have seven more children.  Her grandmother and aunts were all teen moms, too, as well as some of her own older sisters.  Gaby, an intelligent, hard-working young woman, was determined not to follow in their footsteps and become another statistic.  Her family’s history, though, made the topic of teen pregnancy intriguing to her.

So, when it was time to choose a year-long Senior Project along with her classmates, Gaby came up with something truly unique.  With the approval of her principal (and her mother and boyfriend), Gaby pretended to become pregnant in order to observe how friends, peers, family, and teachers treated her and to explore the stereotypes of pregnant teens.  This memoir is the story of Gaby’s project and her experiences inside the world of a pregnant teen.  It is eye-opening, to say the least.

I was fascinated by this memoir and by Gaby’s story.  Apparently, so was the rest of the world, as Gaby became an overnight sensation, sought after by every newspaper, TV network, and talk show in the nation (and beyond).  Lifetime even made a movie about her experiences (I’d like to see that).  Her memoir provides an inside look at high school, poor Hispanic populations, and the plight of pregnant teens.  It should be required reading for every teen girl.

216 pages, Simon & Schuster