This is a raw look at the way poverty and abuse impact a young mother’s life. Her struggle to provide for her daughter and constant difficulties in accessing government benefits are told in striking prose.

Stephanie’s story really made my heart ache for her and any person, especially a parent, who is fighting for their own survival every day. I think I enjoyed it even more since I listened to her tell it in audio format.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes that I think sums up the message of this one well: “I was overwhelmed by how much work it took to prove I was poor.”

Pretty good. Really want to talk it over with someone.

Memoirs are one of my favorite kind of non-fiction books to read. I learn so much from reading about other people's perspectives and I love being able to have a glimpse into a world that I might previously have not known much about. I was very interested in reading Stephanie's Land book Maid and was excited when I found it on the "new releases" table at the library the other week.  

Memoirs are also a very hard thing to review because they are someone's personal story.  I would like to say that while this book didn't entirely work for me, I appreciate Land sharing her story and there were very powerful parts of it. 

First, I think it can be deceiving when a book is compared to another book as powerful as Evicted and could potentially set your expectations unrealistically high. Evicted is touted as one of the most powerful non-fiction books on poverty in America and Maid is really a story of one person's experience in this situation. I think they are both important but it might be good to differentiate between those when starting this one. 

Stephanie Land did not have an easy start in life and I think it is important to recognize the privileges that we are given (or not), just by the families and environments we are raised in. Many of the choices I was able to make in life were directly correlated to being born into a certain situation which really was just the luck of the draw.

As a child I was given the "gift" of education, I had people who supported and believed in me and I grew up in a home where my basic needs like having safe housing, healthy food and proper clothing were not something I ever needed to worry about. I do not think that means that someone cannot succeed without that, or that life will be a smooth ride if you have those things, but I do believe it is something that has to be part of the equation when talking about these topics.

There is a cycle of poverty that is very hard to get out of, and I appreciated that Land took on this issue in her writing. I think that there is a huge misunderstanding of things like subsidized housing and childcare, food stamps, and free healthcare and I appreciate that her story shares a perspective about these things that many may not have encountered before. I would have loved to hear more about these things and less about the details of the lives and homes of the people she cleaned for but really did not know at all. 

I try very hard to not pass judgments on situations that I have not been in myself and unfortunately this is where this book really did not work for me. I have not been a single parent so I can only imagine many of the challenges that single working parents face. Land's story was powerful enough without passing judgments on the people she cleaned for or came across in the grocery store. 

"Living with illness or pain was part of my daily life. But why did my clients have these problems? It seemed like access to healthy foods, gym memberships, doctors and all of that would keep a person fit and well. Maybe the stress of keeping up a two-story house, a bad marriage, and maintaining the illusion of grandeur overwhelmed their systems in similar ways to how poverty did mine."

This kind of thing really turned me off and I struggled with this part of her writing. There are so so many challenges that people face, no matter their socioeconomic level, and this just felt like a total disconnect for me...I always think it is okay to vent and share the challenges that you face, but I struggle with a lack of empathy or ability to have perspective on how choices also play some part on the path of our lives.

Because there really was a lack of reflection and discussion this book felt very whiny to me. I don't want to belittle someone's significant challenges without having walked in their shoes but there was just too much emphasis on why other people's lives were better without the addition of some introspection from Land herself. I also often wished for more background information which I think would have made this writing so much stronger. I applaud Land for putting herself out there and I am so happy to hear of all she has done to better the lives of herself and her children. 

This was such a beautiful story of motherhood

Maid explores the life of a single mother trying to better herself. It walks through all of the convoluted steps to get any kind of assistance for housing and child care and food, and how the deck is stacked against you. Yes, the system is a mess, but the story only gives a couple concrete examples, then spends the majority of the book talking about going from house to house to house to house to house… and cleaning toilets, pubic hairs, and black mold in each one. The book could have been about half as long to make these points.

There is so much more that she could have talked about without being so repetitive. Fortunately, she received a number of breaks that enabled her to finish a degree and become a writer., but that all happens in about a dozen pages (I went on a trip, liked the town, moved and graduated). She did warn that time was compressed in the story, just maybe not in the right places.