At twenty-seven years old, Robin Silbergleid decided to become a single mother. Not as a backup or Plan B, but as first choice. In her memoir Texas Girl, she raises fundamental questions about the nature of family and maternity at the turn of the twenty-first century. At a moment when SMCs grace the covers of magazines and Hollywood films, Texas Girl adds the perspective of someone who boldly side-steps the social expectation for a woman to take a life-partner before she has a child. But she soon finds out the desire to have a baby comes much easier than actually getting pregnant. Beginning with a metaphorical conception, Texas Girl charts a long four-year journey, including infertility, miscarriage, and high-risk pregnancy, traveling from Indiana to Texas and back to the snowy north. In this compelling coming-of-age narrative, Silbergleid explores the notion of the chosen family, as close female friends provide perspective, support, and comic relief along the way. A must-read for anyone contemplating single motherhood, this bitingly honest memoir will resonate with anyone concerned with the vital feminist issue of what reproductive choice really means and the obstacles we face in pursuit of it.

Robin Silbergleid is an associate professor of English at Michigan State University, where she directs the creative writing program. She is the author of the chapbook Pas de Deux: Prose and Other Poems (Basilisk Press 2006), and her poems, essays, and scholarship can be found in a number of journals and anthologies online and in print. She lives in East Lansing, Michigan, with her two children.

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