Description

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About the Author

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Journalist Stephanie Land's work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Vox, Salon, and many other outlets. She focuses on social and economic justice as a writing fellow through both the Center for Community Change and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

BARBARA EHRENREICH is the author of fourteen books, including the bestselling Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. She lives in Virginia.

Praise For…

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"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 2019 Summer Reading List"

"More than any book in recent memory, Land nails the
sheer terror that comes with being poor, the exhausting vigilance of knowing
that any misstep or twist of fate will push you deeper into the hole."—The Boston Globe


"Stephanie Lands memoir [Maid] is a bracing
one."—The Atlantic


"An eye-opening journey into the lives of the working poor."
—People, Perfect for Your Book Club


"The particulars of Land's struggle are sobering, but
it's the impression of precariousness that is most memorable."—The New Yorker


"[Land's] book has the needed quality of reversing the
direction of the gaze. Some people who employ domestic labor will read her
account. Will they see themselves in her descriptions of her clients? Will they
offer their employees the meager respect Land fantasizes about? Land survived
the hardship of her years as a maid, her body exhausted and her brain filled
with bleak arithmetic, to offer her testimony. It's worth listening to."
—New York Times Book Review


"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."
—Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist and Hunger: A Memoir

"An eye-opening exploration of poverty in America."—Bustle

"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."—Susannah Cahalan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

"For readers who believe individuals living below the poverty line are lazy and/or intellectually challenged, this memoir is a stark, necessary corrective.... [T]he narrative also offers a powerful argument for increasing government benefits for the working poor during an era when most benefits are being slashed.... An important memoir that should be required reading for anyone who has never struggled with poverty."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Maid provides an important look at the
morass of difficulties faced by the working poor."—Elle Magazine


"[A] heartfelt and powerful debut memoir.... Land's love for her daughter... shines brightly through the pages of this beautiful, uplifting story of resilience and survival."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"[A] vivid and visceral yet nearly unrelenting memoir... Her journey offers an illuminating read that should inspire outrage, hope, and change."—Library Journal

"Raw...Land [is] a gifted storyteller...Offers moments of levity...[Maid] shows we need to create an economy in which single
motherhood and the risk of poverty do not go hand in hand."—Ms. Magazine


"A heartfelt memoir."
—Harvard Business Review


"Maid delves into her time working for the upper middle class in the service industry, and in it, uncovers the true strength of the human spirit."—San Diego Entertainer, Books to Kick Off Your New Year


"In writing about the spaces outside of her work,
though, Land gives
shape to
the depleting anxiety and isolation that accompany motherhood in poverty
for
millions of Americans."—The Nation


"[An] example of the determination and grace [is] on
display in her memoir, in which she renders vividly the back-breaking and often
surreal work of deep-cleaning strangers' homes while navigating the baffling
bureaucracies of government assistance programs."—Salon

"The
book, with its unfussy prose and clear voice, holds you. It's one woman's story
of inching out of the dirt and how the middle class turns a blind eye to the
poverty lurking just a few rungs below -- and it's one worth reading."—The Washington Post


"It is with beautiful prose that Land chronicles her time working as a
housekeeper to make ends meet...Captur[es] the experience of hardworking
Americans who make little money and are often invisible to their
employers."—Boston.com, 20 Books to Read in 2019


"Fascinating...Communicates clearly the challenges of a marginal existence as a single
mother living in poverty as she sought to provide a stable and
predictable home for her daughter in a situation that was anything but
stable and predictable."—The Columbus Dispatch


"Takes readers inside the gritty, unglamorous life of the underpaid,
overworked people who serve the upper-middle class for a living."—Parade

"Stephanie Land strips class divisions bare in her
phenomenal memoir Maid, providing a profoundly important expose on the
economy of being a single mother in America. This is the warrior cry from the
tired, the poor, the huddled masses, reminding us to change our lives and
remember how to see each other. Standing ovation. Not since Barbara
Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed has the working woman's real life been so
honestly illuminated."—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Book of Joan

"In a country whose frayed safety net gets less policy attention than the
marginal tax rate, Land is the anomaly not only in surviving to tell the
tale - and in telling it with such compelling economy."—Vulture, 8 New Books You Should Read this January


"Land's memoir forces readers to examine their implicit
judgments about what we mean by the value of hard work in America and societal
expectations of motherhood."—Electric Lit


"Honest, unapologetic, and beautifully written."—Hello Giggles


"Tells an honest story many are too afraid to examine."—SheKnows.com

"A moving, intimate, essential account of life in poverty."
—Entertainment Weekly, Must List


"The next time you hear someone say they think poor people are lazy, hand them a copy of Maid."—Minneapolis Star-Tribune


"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."—Steve Dublanica, New York Times bestselling author of Waiter Rant

"In a perfect world, Maid would become required
reading in schools across the country."—North Bay Bohemian


"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."—Domenica Ruta, New York Times bestselling author of With or Without You

"A fun read."—South Platte Sentinel

"Maid is a testament to a young mother's survival skills - a constantly shifting balance of back-breaking labor, single-parenting responsibilities, complying with rules and regulations, college course-work, attitude adjustments and diplomacy on all fronts... The book is a gift of hope and joy for anyone lucky enough to see beyond blame."—Wicked Local

"It's as much a story about resilience as it is a hard look at current systems in place to help impoverished people and how hard they are to navigate. It's eye-opening and inspiring--a definite must-read!"—Style Blueprint

"If this memoir doesn't shake you up and give you a stronger understanding of poverty in America, your heart must be made of coal. Stephanie Land, who spent years in poverty, clues you in to what it's really like to live in a shelter. It's hard to think that a white paper or TV documentary could say it as well as she does."—Florida Times-Union

"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."—Amazon Book Review

"I loved this story about one woman surviving impossible circumstances."—Reese Witherspoon

—Gretchen Carlson, Politico

"Maid is a beautiful book and a sad book and even, at times, a joyful book--a story of a mother's love for her daughter--but most of all it's an important book about the U.S. economy and what it does to people."—Daily Kos