Q&A with Nicole Lynn Lewis, author of ‘Pregnant Girl’

“I was a person before I was a mother, before I was a teen mother, before I was the pregnant girl.”

The last time I spoke to Nicole Lynn Lewis, founder of Generation Hope, she told me that student parents, especially those who are teenagers, are a “largely invisible population.” Despite being at the epicenter of intersecting issues, including systemic racism, poverty, classism, and basic needs insecurity, young adults who are juggling school, work, parenting, and growing up are frequently left out of discourse on everything from student debt cancellation to societal perception of what young adulthood holds. Around 12 years ago, when Lewis first got the idea to share her story via a memoir, that’s what the mentality was: Lewis was told audiences wouldn’t be interested in the story of teen parents being successful. She knew that mentality part of the problem.

With the release of Lewis’s book, Pregnant Girl: A Story of Teen Motherhood, College, and Creating a Better Future for Young Families (out May 4th from Beacon Press), student parents are at the center. The book isn’t only the story of one young mother, or just a critical call to action that demands better of our politics, policies, and structures of power. Pregnant Girl is also a nuanced portrait of the…