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Primetime TV Book Reviews
The Pregnancy Project: A Memoir by Gaby Rodriguez and Jenna
Glatzer
Review by Suzanne Lanoue
3/31/12
I enjoyed reading the book. It was better
than the movie, in many ways. The movie changed many things
to make the story more generic or palatable, such as making
some characters white (most of the characters in the book,
who are real-life people, are Latino). It stayed away from
any abortion controversy as well.
The book is the real-life tale of teen Gaby Rodriguez, who
pretended to be pregnant for her senior project in school.
She wanted to discuss stereotypes and how teens live down to
people's negative expectations of them (particularly
teenaged pregnant girls).
It was all very interesting, both in the movie and the book.
Gaby is very young, so the way people treat her shocks her.
She doesn't seem to realize that when you're young,
particularly in high school, teens will judge and pick on
any student who is "different", so of course they are going
to do that with a pregnant girl. Eventually, people grow up
and get more mature about things. They may not stop judging
you, but at least they are not quite so obvious about it.
She kind of contradicts herself because on the one hand she
is very much judging people, but she expects them not to
judge her. She sounds a little smug in parts of the book
when she talks about how smart she is and how she gets such
good grades and would never let herself get pregnant.
The other thing that bothered me is her complete
anti-abortion stance, which is only briefly addresesed. She
is entitled to that opinion, of course, but if you spend a
whole book whining about how so many girls in your family
and in town get pregnant, and how it ruins their lives, then
perhaps you should consider abortion as an alternative. It
saddens me to see someone so young having this attitude. She
also really didn't address the "give your baby up for
adoption" issue at all, either. One has to wonder how poor
birth control education is after reading this.
The book moves along very quickly. Rodgriguez uses a ghost
writer to help her out a bit. She sounds like a smart teen
who will go far in life, once she grows up and realizes that
not everything is black and white.
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page updated 3/31/12
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