Reviews
Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive, by Stephanie Land, Barbara Ehrenreich
bookswithbrittanica's review against another edition
1.0
I waited a few months for this audiobook, and boy do I regret wasting 8 hours of my life on this. I almost DNF'd this so many times just out of pure frustration.
.
Let me just say, I was expecting this to be about a Latinx woman working as a maid, working hard as f**k in America and defying the odds. I wanted this story! But no. This is about a grown ass white woman who apparently has no other skills than cleaning toilets?
I know this is essentially, a memoir, but the life choices this woman made was downright FRUSTRATING. I don't get to tell people how to run their life and spend their money, but really. She constantly complains to everyone around her about how terrible her life is without doing anything to better her situation. 'I work 25 hours a week as a professional cleaner and still can't pay the bills." WAA!
Yeah, this is AMERICA. No one can pay their damn bills working only 25 f**king hours a week. I couldn't afford to live anywhere in my state working on 25 hours a week. "Oh, but I have a child so childcare inhibits my working hours!" Do you know how many single mothers I know personally who helped raise me who worked multiple jobs to take care of their kids? Seriously. Get a real job and stop complaining. You're like 28 and you have NO OTHER skills?? Like you can't work at a grocery store or a department store or a freaking Target full-time and make benefits? Some grocery stores pay better than my job in Finance!! Jesus. She kept working this part time cleaning job, as a white woman who speaks perfect English. You can literally work almost anywhere. You are not limited to this job!!
This was just infuriating. On top of the fact that she chose to have her child (which I totally get) but then ropes the dad into spending time with her and paying for her when he specially said he's not interested in having a kid with her or ever, and made that CRYSTAL clear. And yet she's like "I dunno why he doesn't wanna see her." He doesn't want a damn kid and yet you force him to be a dad when he said NO repeatedly and he's lowkey abusive!??
Or the fact that she dates people just to live with them and mooch off of them and then is like ohhh I'm so independent? Ugh. I'm being harsh but this was such an infuriating 8 hours.
.
Let me just say, I was expecting this to be about a Latinx woman working as a maid, working hard as f**k in America and defying the odds. I wanted this story! But no. This is about a grown ass white woman who apparently has no other skills than cleaning toilets?
I know this is essentially, a memoir, but the life choices this woman made was downright FRUSTRATING. I don't get to tell people how to run their life and spend their money, but really. She constantly complains to everyone around her about how terrible her life is without doing anything to better her situation. 'I work 25 hours a week as a professional cleaner and still can't pay the bills." WAA!
Yeah, this is AMERICA. No one can pay their damn bills working only 25 f**king hours a week. I couldn't afford to live anywhere in my state working on 25 hours a week. "Oh, but I have a child so childcare inhibits my working hours!" Do you know how many single mothers I know personally who helped raise me who worked multiple jobs to take care of their kids? Seriously. Get a real job and stop complaining. You're like 28 and you have NO OTHER skills?? Like you can't work at a grocery store or a department store or a freaking Target full-time and make benefits? Some grocery stores pay better than my job in Finance!! Jesus. She kept working this part time cleaning job, as a white woman who speaks perfect English. You can literally work almost anywhere. You are not limited to this job!!
This was just infuriating. On top of the fact that she chose to have her child (which I totally get) but then ropes the dad into spending time with her and paying for her when he specially said he's not interested in having a kid with her or ever, and made that CRYSTAL clear. And yet she's like "I dunno why he doesn't wanna see her." He doesn't want a damn kid and yet you force him to be a dad when he said NO repeatedly and he's lowkey abusive!??
Or the fact that she dates people just to live with them and mooch off of them and then is like ohhh I'm so independent? Ugh. I'm being harsh but this was such an infuriating 8 hours.
bkish's review against another edition
2.0
This book is different and that doesnt mean better just different
It is an honest retelling of the author's difficult life as a single mom with an unsupportive family. Its about her very strong love and connection to her daughter Mia.
Its about living in poverty and working to rise above the circumstances of a .
Its also about how other deal with those in her life situation.
Its about America
Stephanie land to me is not especially likeable. Her writing is OK and she becomes a writer which is her dream
This memoir covers a period of about 2-3 y and begins with her abusive relationship w Jamie who is the father of their child Mia. He is abusive and very violent. She does leave him or maybe he forces her to leave him. He stays in the memoir since he does see his daughter sometimes. Basically he hates Stephanie. There is another man in this memoir Travis who lives in a trailer and takes care of a farm. She and Mia join him until he tells them to leave.
There is something very vital missing in her life story that I would call a depth or a consciousness.
Judy
Stephanie works as a maid and for two different companies who hire her out and pay her peanuts.
I
It is an honest retelling of the author's difficult life as a single mom with an unsupportive family. Its about her very strong love and connection to her daughter Mia.
Its about living in poverty and working to rise above the circumstances of a .
Its also about how other deal with those in her life situation.
Its about America
Stephanie land to me is not especially likeable. Her writing is OK and she becomes a writer which is her dream
This memoir covers a period of about 2-3 y and begins with her abusive relationship w Jamie who is the father of their child Mia. He is abusive and very violent. She does leave him or maybe he forces her to leave him. He stays in the memoir since he does see his daughter sometimes. Basically he hates Stephanie. There is another man in this memoir Travis who lives in a trailer and takes care of a farm. She and Mia join him until he tells them to leave.
There is something very vital missing in her life story that I would call a depth or a consciousness.
Judy
Stephanie works as a maid and for two different companies who hire her out and pay her peanuts.
I
arlafreeman's review against another edition
5.0
Wow! I really connected with this book in multiple ways. My mother was a maid when we first moved to the states. I remember seeing the fatigue, damaged skin on her hands, and struggling smile. I remember living on food stamps when she became pregnant with my brother. She is now a supervisor at Hilton And oversees cleaning inspections. She also runs her own cleaning services on the side.
It took moments or struggles and hardships to get to where she is now.
I am a title one kindergarten teacher. Many of my students come from poverty situations from Detroit that Stephanie describes. Many of my students are kids like Mia.
I love this memoir. I am so proud of Stephanie and how far she has come. I think this book sheds light on many perspectives. Even the perspective of how money doesn’t always mean happiness or love.
Very well written. Very powerful.
It took moments or struggles and hardships to get to where she is now.
I am a title one kindergarten teacher. Many of my students come from poverty situations from Detroit that Stephanie describes. Many of my students are kids like Mia.
I love this memoir. I am so proud of Stephanie and how far she has come. I think this book sheds light on many perspectives. Even the perspective of how money doesn’t always mean happiness or love.
Very well written. Very powerful.
aaltheas's review against another edition
4.0
I lapped up every one of Stephanie Land's words as she recalled her four years of work as a maid while living as a single mother under the poverty line. Her story is intensely personal, Land recalls with exacting detail everything from the types of messes some clients left to her internal monetary calculations as she juggles an unending set of challenges.
As someone who has done a lot of reading about low income single mothers, this book didn't fit exactly where I thought it would in a wider cannon. I struggled initially to review it and assigned a few different scores as I was deliberating, but I think my main problem with this book was ultimately guided by a potentially unfair mis-assumption I drew on the basis of the book jacket - and due to no fault of Land's own piece. The book jacket and my loose understanding of the text set me up to expect something journalistic in tone, which is a space where Maid underperforms. Land is writing a memoir, just because the experience she retells is intensely educational for those of us who have not experienced government assistance programs and life near the poverty line does not mean that this is a primarily journalistic work. We are learning from Land's life, perspective, and authorial voice, what she chooses to narrate, highlight, and reflects on. She doesn't present statistics, she doesn't situate her work in a wider society, she doesn't contribute to an ongoing conversation so much as she tells us what her life has been, what it has meant to her to be poor. As readers, we get little to no information about public assistance programs beyond how their consequences affect Land directly. It's a powerful story, but it is a memoir.
And that's not a bad thing! It actually really frustrates me that this mischaracterization serves to almost elevate Land's project, as though what she's actually doing isn't a really phenomenal, brave thing. It takes courage, like Land discusses openly, to be so honest, to engage so directly with stigma and to open oneself up to criticism as a voice of a marginalized and largely lambasted economic class. Land did not voluntarily "do the research," she got caught in a shitty situation and did what she had to do. It reminds me of one part in her own book when she discusses the idea of people calling her a hero; she wasn't trying to be! She was just destitute and abandoned by the insufficient and incomplete infrastructure that the U.S. Government dares to call Public Assistance. I almost felt like whoever wrote this dust jacket is trying to invalidate her actual - much more successful - project.
Land also is a great writer! She is clear, reflective, and engaging. I couldn't put the book down, I wanted to her what she had to say and to see the world through her eyes. The organization and structure of the book isn't the tightest I've seen: it's Land's first long form piece and the learning in the transition from shorter works to a full book is visible and probably the biggest critique I would make. There's some disjointed moments, some repetition that doesn't feel entirely purposeful. But the language and the voice are great.
I wish there had been a bit more fact-based information, but I also get that's not the point. I'd recommend this to people among a wider body of literature I think goes under-consumed and has been - for me at least - an integral part of understanding the divergence between how poverty is lived and perceived in America. For more of an academic approach to this subject matter, I'd probably recommend "Beggars and Choosers" by Rickie Solinger.
As someone who has done a lot of reading about low income single mothers, this book didn't fit exactly where I thought it would in a wider cannon. I struggled initially to review it and assigned a few different scores as I was deliberating, but I think my main problem with this book was ultimately guided by a potentially unfair mis-assumption I drew on the basis of the book jacket - and due to no fault of Land's own piece. The book jacket and my loose understanding of the text set me up to expect something journalistic in tone, which is a space where Maid underperforms. Land is writing a memoir, just because the experience she retells is intensely educational for those of us who have not experienced government assistance programs and life near the poverty line does not mean that this is a primarily journalistic work. We are learning from Land's life, perspective, and authorial voice, what she chooses to narrate, highlight, and reflects on. She doesn't present statistics, she doesn't situate her work in a wider society, she doesn't contribute to an ongoing conversation so much as she tells us what her life has been, what it has meant to her to be poor. As readers, we get little to no information about public assistance programs beyond how their consequences affect Land directly. It's a powerful story, but it is a memoir.
And that's not a bad thing! It actually really frustrates me that this mischaracterization serves to almost elevate Land's project, as though what she's actually doing isn't a really phenomenal, brave thing. It takes courage, like Land discusses openly, to be so honest, to engage so directly with stigma and to open oneself up to criticism as a voice of a marginalized and largely lambasted economic class. Land did not voluntarily "do the research," she got caught in a shitty situation and did what she had to do. It reminds me of one part in her own book when she discusses the idea of people calling her a hero; she wasn't trying to be! She was just destitute and abandoned by the insufficient and incomplete infrastructure that the U.S. Government dares to call Public Assistance. I almost felt like whoever wrote this dust jacket is trying to invalidate her actual - much more successful - project.
Land also is a great writer! She is clear, reflective, and engaging. I couldn't put the book down, I wanted to her what she had to say and to see the world through her eyes. The organization and structure of the book isn't the tightest I've seen: it's Land's first long form piece and the learning in the transition from shorter works to a full book is visible and probably the biggest critique I would make. There's some disjointed moments, some repetition that doesn't feel entirely purposeful. But the language and the voice are great.
I wish there had been a bit more fact-based information, but I also get that's not the point. I'd recommend this to people among a wider body of literature I think goes under-consumed and has been - for me at least - an integral part of understanding the divergence between how poverty is lived and perceived in America. For more of an academic approach to this subject matter, I'd probably recommend "Beggars and Choosers" by Rickie Solinger.
katelynelizabeth's review against another edition
4.0
A really wonderful book about, overall, a mother’s determination to survive and provide a good life for her child. Told through stories of her cleaning houses and navigating through the governments assistances programs. It made me pause and reconsider the way I think about poverty and the people stuck in it.
sagebarns's review against another edition
5.0
loved. very good insight into the mess that is the social welfare system.
lifewithmisskate's review against another edition
2.0
I soooooooo badly wanted to love this read. I actually pushed it to the top of my “to read” list I was that excited.
Which becoming doubly disappointing the quality of this book.
I wanted to cheer Stephanie on from the sidelines, pull for her and little Mia! But boy did she make it difficult. In addition to continually entrapping herself in relationships with obviously unreliable and unfit men, her writing is repetitive to the point of frustration. Yes, mold, we get it.
Brilliant concept, stories such as Maid need to be given life, and read so that people who don’t have a background in poverty can grow in their understanding of how so many people live and effect change. Unfortunately, this book did not deliver in what it was capable of.
Perhaps, Maid would have been more powerful as an article instead. Fingers crossed a similar book is written, by a better author.
Which becoming doubly disappointing the quality of this book.
I wanted to cheer Stephanie on from the sidelines, pull for her and little Mia! But boy did she make it difficult. In addition to continually entrapping herself in relationships with obviously unreliable and unfit men, her writing is repetitive to the point of frustration. Yes, mold, we get it.
Brilliant concept, stories such as Maid need to be given life, and read so that people who don’t have a background in poverty can grow in their understanding of how so many people live and effect change. Unfortunately, this book did not deliver in what it was capable of.
Perhaps, Maid would have been more powerful as an article instead. Fingers crossed a similar book is written, by a better author.
amberlou105's review against another edition
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.5
amalgamation_of_things's review against another edition
4.0
I read this book because I was recommended the show. I think it's tough for people to critique someone's lived experiences, and the way they put them to paper. I received the message about the difficulty of poverty in America, especially as a single parent. I perceived that Stephanie Land does the best she can, with the resources she has, to provide for her daughter.