STEPHANIE LAND's work has been featured in the New York
Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, the Guardian, and many
others. Her writing focuses on social and economic justice.
BARBARA EHRENREICH is the author of fourteen
books, including the bestselling Nickel and Dimed and Bait and
Switch. She lives in Virginia.
President Barack Obama, Summer Reading List (2019)Forbes, Most
Anticipated Books of the YearGlamour, Best Books of the Year
Time, 11 New Books to Read This JanuaryVulture, 8 New Books You
Should Read This JanuaryThrillist, All the Books We Can't Wait to
Read in 2019USA Today, 5 New Books Not to Miss
Amazon, Best Books of the MonthDetroit News, New Books to Look
Forward to in 2019The Missoulian, Best Books of the MonthSan Diego
Entertainer, Books to Kick Off Your New YearPeople, Perfect for
Your Book Club
Boston.com, 20 Books to Look Out for in 2019Hello Giggles, Best New
Books to Read This WeekNewsweek, Best Books of 2019 So FarCNN
Travel, Books You Should Read This SummerMental Floss, Summer
Reading ListBookTrib, Books That Will Make You Look Smart at the
Beach!
"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"
"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
"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
"Maid provides an important look at the morass of difficulties
faced by the working poor."--Elle Magazine
"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
"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
"[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
"[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
"[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
"A fun read."--South Platte Sentinel
"A heartfelt memoir."
--Harvard Business Review
"A moving, intimate, essential account of life in poverty."
--Entertainment Weekly, Must List
"An empowering story of a woman determined to pull herself up in
life through which we all feel stronger!"
--Gretchen Carlson, Politico
"An eye-opening exploration of poverty in America."--Bustle
"An eye-opening journey into the lives of the working poor."
--People, Perfect for Your Book Club
"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
"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
"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
"Honest, unapologetic, and beautifully written."--Hello Giggles
"I loved this story about one woman surviving impossible
circumstances."--Reese Witherspoon
"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
"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
"In a perfect world, Maid would become required reading in schools
across the country."--North Bay Bohemian
"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
"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
"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
"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
"Maid-part Educated, part Hillbilly Elegy-is an eye-opening
portrait of how privilege and the female working class can
commingle."--Glamour
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
"Stephanie Lands memoir [Maid] is a bracing one."--The Atlantic
"Takes readers inside the gritty, unglamorous life of the
underpaid, overworked people who serve the upper-middle class for a
living."--Parade
"Tells an honest story many are too afraid to
examine."--SheKnows.com
"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
"The next time you hear someone say they think poor people are
lazy, hand them a copy of Maid."--Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"The particulars of Land's struggle are sobering, but it's the
impression of precariousness that is most memorable."--The New
Yorker
"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
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