Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive

 

Summary (from the publisher): Evicted meets Nickel and Dimed in Stephanie Land's memoir about working as a maid, a beautiful and gritty exploration of poverty in America. Includes a foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich.

"My daughter learned to walk in a homeless shelter."

While the gap between upper middle-class Americans and the working poor widens, grueling low-wage domestic and service work—primarily done by women—fuels the economic success of the wealthy. Stephanie Land worked for years as a maid, pulling long hours while struggling as a single mom to keep a roof over her daughter's head. In Maid, she reveals the dark truth of what it takes to survive and thrive in today's inequitable society.

While she worked hard to scratch her way out of poverty as a single parent, scrubbing the toilets of the wealthy, navigating domestic labor jobs, higher education, assisted housing, and a tangled web of government assistance, Stephanie wrote. She wrote the true stories that weren't being told. The stories of overworked and underpaid Americans.

Written in honest, heart-rending prose and with great insight, Maid explores the underbelly of upper-middle class America and the reality of what it's like to be in service to them. "I'd become a nameless ghost," Stephanie writes. With this book, she gives voice to the "servant" worker, those who fight daily to scramble and scrape by for their own lives and the lives of their children.

Review: In this memoir, Stephanie Land details her grueling existence as a low-wage domestic worker and single mother. As a maid working full time and even with every form of public assistance she can qualify for, she still struggles to afford the tiniest of apartments and to feed and clothe her child. Just one major financial emergency stands between her and homelessness. Her story shows the reality of life in poverty and how hard it is to survive, let alone have the time, energy, and resources to try to improve your circumstances. This is an amazing story of resilience, hard work, and single motherhood. 

This was a moving story and I couldn't help but be reeled in by Stephanie's story and her dogged efforts to provide for her daughter Mia on her own. She comes across as hard working and determined, even in the face of setbacks and immense adversity. Often overlooked by society, she has a unique perspective to observe the homes and lives of her middle class clients, even as she goes home to her mold infested studio apartment and is condescended to by doctors who only see her as a poor, single mother. I listened to this on audible and it was read by the author herself, which gave it a personal touch. 

Of course, like with all memoirs, as a reader I wondered about the other version of events and what others would say about how she depicts herself and her life. There was also not much backstory presented, only vague references to her life in Alaska, physical abuse in her past relationships, and her mother leaving for Europe, with no real context. I know this memoir was intended to focus on her time working as a maid, but I would have loved some more detailed personal history. However, overall I thoroughly enjoyed this story and wish more people who view low-wage earners with scorn would be required to read this and see how difficult it truly is to move out of poverty once you are firmly planted in it. 

Stars: 4