Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive – Paperback

“A single mother’s personal, unflinching look at America’s class divide (Barack Obama),” this New York Times bestselling memoir is the inspiration for the Netflix limited series, hailed by Rolling Stone as “a great one.” At 28, Stephanie Land’s dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer quickly dissolved when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. Before long, she found herself a single mother, scraping by as a housekeeper to make ends meet. Maid is an emotionally raw, masterful account of Stephanie’s years spent in service to upper middle class America as a “nameless ghost” who quietly shared in her clients’ triumphs, tragedies, and deepest secrets. Driven to carve out a better life for her family, she cleaned by day and took online classes by night, writing relentlessly as she worked toward earning a college degree. She wrote of the true stories that weren’t being told: of living on food stamps and WIC coupons, of government programs that barely provided housing, of aloof government employees who shamed her for receiving what little assistance she did. Above all else, she wrote about pursuing the myth of the American Dream from the poverty line, all the while slashing through deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor. Maid is Stephanie’s story, but it’s not hers alone. It is an inspiring testament to the courage, determination, and ultimate strength of the human spirit. “A single mother’s personal, unflinching look at America’s class divide, a description of the tightrope many families walk just to get by, and a reminder of the dignity of all work.” -PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, Obama’s Summer Reading List Product DetailsISBN-13: 9780316505093 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Grand Central Publishing Publication Date: 01-21-2020 Pages: 288 Product Dimensions: 8.10(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.80(d)About the Author STEPHANIE LAND’s work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, the Guardian, and many others. Her writing focuses on social and economic justice. BARBARA EHRENREICH is the author of fourteen books, including the bestselling Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. She lives in Virginia.What People are Saying What People are Saying About This #1 New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness – Susannah Cahalan “Marry the evocative first person narrative of Educated with the kind of social criticism seen in Nickel and Dimed and you’ll get a sense of the remarkable book you hold in your hands. In Maid, Stephanie Land, a gifted storyteller with an eye for details you’ll never forget, exposes what it’s like to exist in America as a single mother, working herself sick cleaning our dirty toilets, one missed paycheck away from destitution. It’s a perspective we seldom see represented firsthand—and one we so desperately need right now. Timely, urgent, and unforgettable, this is memoir at its very best.” New York Times bestselling author of Waiter Rant – Steve Dublanica “Stephanie Land’s heartrending book, Maid, provides a trenchant reminder that something is amiss with the American Dream and gives voice to the millions of ‘working poor’ toiling in a country that needs them but doesn’t want to see them. A sad and hopeful tale of being on the outside looking in, the author makes us wonder how’d we fare scrubbing and vacuuming away the detritus of an affluence that always seems beyond reach.” New York Times bestselling author of With or Without You – Domenica Ruta “As a solo mom and former house cleaner, this brave book resonated with me on a very deep level. We live in a world where the solo mother is an incomplete story: adrift in the world without a partner, without support, without a grounding, centering (male) force. But women have been doing this since the dawn of time, and Stephanie Land is one of millions of solo moms forced to get blood from stone. She is at once an old and new kind of American hero. This memoir of resilience and love has never been more necessary.” New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist and Hunger: A Memoir – Roxane Gay “What this book does well is illuminate the struggles of poverty and single-motherhood, the unrelenting frustration of having no safety net, the ways in which our society is systemically designed to keep impoverished people mired in poverty, the indignity of poverty by way of unmovable bureaucracy, and people’s lousy attitudes toward poor people… Land’s prose is vivid and engaging… [A] tightly-focused, well-written memoir… an incredibly worthwhile read.” Show More Table of Contents Table of Contents Foreword Barbara Ehrenreich xi Part 1 1 The Cabin 3 2 The Camper 15 3 Transitional Housing 23 4 The Fairgrounds Apartment 33 5 Seven Different Kinds of Government Assistance 41 6 The Farm 54 7 The Last Job on Earth 64 8 The Porn House 73 9 The Move-Out Clean 81 10 Henry’s House 96 Part 2 11 The Studio 109 12 Minimalist 117 13 Wendy’s House 125 14 The Plant House 133 15 The Chef’s House 141 16 Donna’s House 149 17 In Three Years 156 18 The Sad House 162 19 Lori’s House 173 20 “I Don’t Know How You Do It” 187 21 The Clown House 198 22 Still Life with Mia 210 Part 3 23 Do Better 223 24 The Bay House 234 25 The Hardest Worker 241 26 The Hoarder House 248 27 We’re Home 260 Acknowledgments 269 Show More

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