Maid Download

ISBN: 0316505110
Title: Maid Pdf Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive
Author: Stephanie Land
Published Date: 2019-01-22
Page: 288

An Amazon Best Book of January 2019: Stephanie Land lifts the rug on the life of the working poor in her eye-opening book, Maid. She is writing about the people who clean our homes, who tend to our yards—yet so often these workers go unseen and their stories untold. As a single mother, Stephanie Land cares for herself and her young daughter through a complicated system of government assistance programs and through employment as a house cleaner. Her experience with government aid programs magnifies their worst inconsistency: how difficult is it for people to become self-sufficient when they are reliant on child care and food assistance credit in order to work and live, yet even the smallest increase in income can mean a significant loss of benefits. Land doesn’t have family or friends who could help her financially. They just don’t have it to give. She is truly on her own, yet using a food assistance card at the grocery store checkout has earned her scorn and judgement from strangers who think anyone using the system is abusing the system. Land is a fighter—her desire to create a better life for her daughter is what drives her to keep trying to dig her way out of poverty, working long hours for low pay, and grasping what kindnesses she receives like a life line. Maid is compelling because it’s so personal. Land isn’t whining or blaming, she’s letting us into her life, sharing feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, and desperation that come with trying so damn hard to do better and still living below the poverty line in spite of her efforts. Land has a hard life but she also has hope and resilience. She finds joy in small moments that are often overlooked in the distraction of material things. Maid is an important work of journalism that offers an insightful and unique perspective on a segment of the working poor from someone who has lived it. --Seira Wilson, Amazon Book Review

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

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.

At 28, Stephanie Land's plans of breaking free from the roots of her hometown in the Pacific Northwest to chase her dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer, were cut short when a summer fling turned into an unexpected pregnancy. She turned to housekeeping to make ends meet, and with a tenacious grip on her dream to provide her daughter the very best life possible, Stephanie worked days and took classes online to earn a college degree, and began to write relentlessly.

She wrote the true stories that weren't being told: the stories of overworked and underpaid Americans. Of living on food stamps and WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) coupons to eat. Of the government programs that provided her housing, but that doubled as halfway houses. The aloof government employees who called her lucky for receiving assistance while she didn't feel lucky at all. She wrote to remember the fight, to eventually cut through the deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor.

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 about her relationship with her clients, many of whom do not know her from any other cleaner, but who she learns plenty about. As she begins to discover more about her clients' lives-their sadness and love, too-she begins to find hope in her own path.

Her compassionate, unflinching writing as a journalist gives voice to the "servant" worker, and those pursuing the American Dream from below the poverty line. Maid is Stephanie's story, but it's not her alone. It is an inspiring testament to the strength, determination, and ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

There are many better books discussing what it is like to live in poverty, and how people get there This just rubbed me the wrong way. I do think that it is of the greatest importance for people to learn more about what it is like to live in poverty and how one gets there. Happily, there are many excellent books that are relevant here: $2 a Day, Evicted, Both Hands Tied, and Ehrenreich’s book come quickly to mind. There are also a very, very good five-part podcast on poverty (co-produced by On the Media and some one else, probably in 2016), and a couple of sympathetic and illuminating books about payday lenders.I have read all of those books (and quite a few others), and would recommend any of them rather than Maid. Maid is not a terrible book. But neither is it a good one. I was often frustrated by what certainly seemed like obtuseness or lack of insight on the part of this author.It's not a book about maids - it's a look at the the life of the working poor who happen to be maids Giving this any sort of bad review almost seems like it would be an act of spite, given the circumstances Stephanie Land is writing from - but still, for the first third of the book I really wasn't liking it, and I couldn't put my finger on why.But at about the halfway point, I realized I had been bait-and-switched - this is not a story of a "maid." It's the story of a working, poor, single mother, dealing with a variety of problems both self-inflicted and beyond her control who *happens* to be a maid. But that's a harder elevator pitch so I understood why "maid" became the focus. But I don't think that's really the book.When I changed my focus to the book I realized it actually was I appreciated it a lot more. At that point, I could look at this as a window to this life. Yes, Stephanie Land is often self-pitying and finds confrontation and judgement around every corner - but of course she would. Her relations with her daughter's father is not good, and she's unable to find a really solid boyfriend, because of course she can't. She wishes for a better life and probably misprioritizes things in the moment instead of thinking long-term, because of course she would.That's the hustle and grind of this life - everything is working against her. I don't believe that in every checkout line she went through she got a hard time from people standing behind her, or the checkout person - but I do believe that it felt that way to her. I don't necessarily think she was exploited by her employers quite as badly as she describes - but I'm sure she felt she was. When you're in this situation, everything is exaggerated and every bit of bad luck is magnified. That's an interesting book - harsh and hard - but interesting. Reading it in that lens made it successful in a different way then the title that had originally misdirected me.I had to go on unemployment once (well, I didn't have too - I was laid off, and it was my right), and it's like going into another mirror universe - society's respect you took for granted is suddenly upended. You're no longer seen as a responsible member of society who can be trusted to be self-reliant. You're a liar, a rube, a sap who can't write a resume. Everything becomes lowest common denominator - the assumption is you're a grifter who's trying to get one over, or an idiot who has to be talked too like a child. I could see very easily how someone in that situation long-term could quickly stop caring about honesty or integrity because the people on the other side assume the worst. I hated it, hated myself, and it was only six weeks.So *of course* Stephanie Land is defensive and self-pitying at times, because society is expecting her to be. That's the role the working poor play - we feel bad for them, toss them some baseball tickets now and then, and make sure they know we're better than they are.When I read her book THAT way, it all came into focus. This is not a book about a maid - it's the book about a life when the only job you can find is being a maid. In that way, it is valuable - because somebody needs to tell that story, and the only way to tell it is if you live it. Even Barbara Ehrenreich's famous "Nickel and Dimed" was sort of a grift - she just pretended for awhile. Great writing, but an act. Stephanie Land isn't acting, so the occasional self-pity and various poor decisions are all part of that real life. It's not that poor people have especially bad luck, it's that they can't easily recover from even sort of bad luck.So - don't look at the title and think it's a book about maids. Think of it as a look into the world of the working poor that most of us look past and hope we never encounter in our own lives. Nobody wants to hold up a line to deal with food stamps, and all the clowns who say "you're welcome" and act like food stamps are being lifted out of their own pockets, should hope and pray the situation never reverses.To digress on the subjects of maids. I was in a big hotel in Mobile, Alabama once and I was getting ice from the bucket or whatever I was doing, and I walked by the maid's station and the group was in a conference. It was probably a dozen African-American women doing their meeting before the day's shift - most of them were young in typical maid uniforms, but there were two older women in business casual leading the meeting. I realized (or at least assumed) that these two women had probably been on staff for years, working up through those ranks. This was their kingdom; I had to think, back in their neighborhoods, they controlled everything - who could get a job at this nice hotel, where it probably was a good place to work, taking calls from mothers trying to get their daughters that opportunity, no doubt laying down the false compliments amid the desperation. How would they choose? I thought of all the compromises they had to make to get to that level of responsibility - all the customers they had to put up with, the managers who probably disrespected them, the owners who looked past them, all to get to this morning meeting. I want to read that book.So I left a very good tip in the room when I left, for some woman I never saw. I think I did. I've told myself I did. I'm a nice guy so I'm sure I did. All white, middle-class Americans are very nice. We're happy to give you $10 tips and free baseball tickets. Just don't hold us up in the checkout line with your food stamps and your crying kid.

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