A review by aaltheas
Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land
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.