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"Being poor, living in poverty, seemed a lot like probation—the crime being a lack of means to survive." - Stephanie Land.
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Poverty is very much like mold, appearing during the gloomiest of days in the corners of the house, its stubborn presence making the residents sick. At times, even a good amount of scrubbing doesn't help because it will grow back the moment you get busy. From being a middle-class citizen to someone relying on government assistance, Land knows where exactly things went wrong. With the birth of her daughter, her partner conveniently walks out of the relationship. Without a degree, Land has nothing to fall back on so she starts working for a cleaning company. Most of the book is about her job which comes as no surprise considering the title itself but there's also a much bigger issue that she addresses honestly. About how it feels to be poor and how people view poverty like it is a conscious choice.
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Imagine a world with no friends or a stable family and romantic relationships that are doomed from the start and now add poverty and sickness to this. Land's life is one disaster after the other but she trudges on for the sake of her daughter, Mia. From being homeless to living in unfavorable conditions, the duo has seen it all. While she speaks of government assistance that provides her with food stamps or concession on rent, she also talks about how people view their taxes going to such aids. People like Land are constantly judged, watched and taunted for taking help from the government. The stark differences between the rich and the poor is only made sharper through her job. When Land sees food going to waste, she thinks of how she struggles to keep her daughter fed. To many of her clients, she's just a maid, nameless and utterly unimportant but it is often she who knows the deepest secrets that every house carries. When an occasional client acknowledges her presence and offers to help her, she is taken aback because the act is such a rare occurrence.
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Land's story is incredibly inspiring for she manages to stay afloat even during the roughest days. She assures the readers that no matter how dark it gets, there is almost always light at the end of the tunnel. While rating the book on Goodreads, I read few reviews which spewed hatred because of Land's description of her job. I can't for the life of me understand why they would choose such a book in the first place when they lack compassion and patience to understand what it actually is like to clean other's snot and piss and being paid next to nothing for such an uncomfortable job. One cannot expect the book to be about rainbows and unicorns when the title and cover are so clear about the book has to offer.
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Rating : 4.8/5.

Oof. This book was a lot.

“Maid” has been on my TRL for several years and when a friend recently posted about it I decided to pick it up. I then discovered it is a series on Netflix, which I am hoping is better than the book.

Something about it just rubbed me the wrong way.

I REALLY wanted to root for the author, Stephanie Land, who wrote this about her life, but kept finding her to be a victim of her own choices vs. being the victim of broken government assistance programs.

The cycle of poverty is difficult to get out of and the system not as helpful as it could/should be.

Stephanie is a hard worker and cleaning up after strangers must be the most horrific, humiliating work there is.

She loves her child but continued to put her daughter in very precarious and often dangerous situations.

I was hoping it would end with Stephanie coming from a true place of new found gratitude and it didn’t, or at least she did not convey as much.

I enjoyed “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich so much more and have to recommend that one over this.

This was an interesting look at todays society and how the system is broken in so many ways.
While the story is no doubt moving, and important, the writing style kind of threw me off.
In the end this probably wasn't the book for me, but others may enjoy it much more than I did.