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A review by advujovich
The Pregnancy Project by Gaby Rodriguez
3.0
I have very mixed feelings about this book. MANY of my teenage students read this for their nonfiction independent reading project and I finally got a chance to read it. The overall message is, I think, an important one for teenagers to digest in high school: we are not forced to live what others expect of us; we are not (or perhaps) should not be judged on stereotypes; we should be "decent to one another" (127). Gaby, the you girl who "narrates" the book, does try her best to live that, and for that I have a tremendous amount of respect for her. In doing her senior project by pretending to be pregnant and examining how stereotypes she was able to send a powerful message at first to her peers at school and then to a much wider audience how exactly stereotypes and the gossip around stereotypes only perpetuates teen pregnancy (and many other issues in this society).
The story itself is intriguing and I find Gaby wonderfully brave for taking this on. I did, however find her a bit "morally superior" (115) a few too many times. She starts the book by talking about how she knew she didn't want her project to be like one of those other projects, which I found annoying. But whatever. I did feel outrageously uncomfortable when she was in Planned Parenthood and sharing her not so cloaked comments on abortion and adoption. Gaby was quite clear in the book that she was not like those other girls. She made good decisions. She didn't put herself in morally ambiguous positions. I am just reminded of Amy Poehler's not on feminism in her book, Yes please!, "Good for her! Not for me!" I guess what I mean is that as dangerous as I think stereotypes are, I don't think it's ok to suggest, especially to girls, that you have to be this one way. And, to a point, I do think that Gaby did that with this book. The topic matter is difficult to talk about, being teen sexual health and pregnancy. Gaby said that when she told her sister she was pregnant, "I waited and waited for an 'I told you so.' How many times had she said I was going to end up pregnant like her and I had said, 'never!' Wasn't this her moment of victory, where she got to gloat that she was right and I wasn't morally superior after all?" (115). Gaby truly does paint herself as morally superior, and that didn't sit well me. A lot of this read as really preachy, I guess is what I am trying to get at.
I was also a bit dubious of Gaby's disregard of the media. How she didn't want to be on tv and be famous. I liked in the beginning that she mentioned she didn't want her message to be distorted by the media. We all know that can happen very easily. But, I think from the beginning of her project this was the end goal. If it wasn't, it should have been. If she doesn't want a really large audience to hear this story, then she's doing something wrong. I think the goal should have been to find a wide audience from the beginning, outside of just Toppenish.
I hate that this had a ghost writer. The wildness of the cover really hid that. I just hate ghost writers. Maybe that's just me.
Overall, I won't dissuade someone from reading this. But it wasn't my favorite.
The story itself is intriguing and I find Gaby wonderfully brave for taking this on. I did, however find her a bit "morally superior" (115) a few too many times. She starts the book by talking about how she knew she didn't want her project to be like one of those other projects, which I found annoying. But whatever. I did feel outrageously uncomfortable when she was in Planned Parenthood and sharing her not so cloaked comments on abortion and adoption. Gaby was quite clear in the book that she was not like those other girls. She made good decisions. She didn't put herself in morally ambiguous positions. I am just reminded of Amy Poehler's not on feminism in her book, Yes please!, "Good for her! Not for me!" I guess what I mean is that as dangerous as I think stereotypes are, I don't think it's ok to suggest, especially to girls, that you have to be this one way. And, to a point, I do think that Gaby did that with this book. The topic matter is difficult to talk about, being teen sexual health and pregnancy. Gaby said that when she told her sister she was pregnant, "I waited and waited for an 'I told you so.' How many times had she said I was going to end up pregnant like her and I had said, 'never!' Wasn't this her moment of victory, where she got to gloat that she was right and I wasn't morally superior after all?" (115). Gaby truly does paint herself as morally superior, and that didn't sit well me. A lot of this read as really preachy, I guess is what I am trying to get at.
I was also a bit dubious of Gaby's disregard of the media. How she didn't want to be on tv and be famous. I liked in the beginning that she mentioned she didn't want her message to be distorted by the media. We all know that can happen very easily. But, I think from the beginning of her project this was the end goal. If it wasn't, it should have been. If she doesn't want a really large audience to hear this story, then she's doing something wrong. I think the goal should have been to find a wide audience from the beginning, outside of just Toppenish.
I hate that this had a ghost writer. The wildness of the cover really hid that. I just hate ghost writers. Maybe that's just me.
Overall, I won't dissuade someone from reading this. But it wasn't my favorite.