Pregnant Girl
Nicole Lynn Lewis was a pregnant teenager living in poverty when most people around her assumed her future was over. In this memoir she recounts how she finished high school, made it through the College of William and Mary while raising her daughter, and later founded an organization to help other young parents earn degrees. Lewis is honest about the exhaustion, the judgment, and the near-misses, but she also pushes back hard against the tired story that paints teen mothers, and especially young Black mothers, as failures. She argues that what these women lack is not character but support. The book mixes personal narrative with a clear-eyed look at the systems that make a hard road harder. It is both a coming-of-age story and a case for treating young parents as people with potential.
What you might want to know about Pregnant Girl
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A woman who became a mother as a teenager and went on to graduate from college tells her story and challenges the myths about young Black mothers.
Stephen Curry selected it for his Underrated Book Club, which features overlooked stories and authors.
Pregnant Girl was written by Nicole Lynn Lewis, published in 2021 by Beacon Press.
Pregnant Girl is 384 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Pregnant Girl takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
Pregnant Girl is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.