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A review by lovelykd
Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land
This book took forever to finish because 1) the tone often came across as bitter, whiny, and defeatist, and 2) Land’s continual practice of making very bad decisions, typically in the name of creating a family unit, even in the face of common sense and facts, was more than I could stomach.
How do you cheer for a woman who’s so obsessed with finding a husband she feels okay accepting less for herself?
Both Jamie (her daughter’s father) and Travis (her longtime “boyfriend”) treat her like garbage, and yet, she’s willing to overlook their abusive behavior if it means she’ll have a chance to “look” respectable in the eyes of society.
She constantly laments over how sad it made her to see other family units; how their very presence made her feel like a failure—or grossly inferior. How she longed for anything approaching a relationship because of how it would, potentially, legitimize her motherhood and make her more acceptable to those around her.
I cringed when she spoke about how she was so lonely during one particular birthday she asked her abusive ex to spend the night—just so she’d have a warm body to snuggle up with and hold on to.
Ugh. Seriously??
Then there’s the unnecessarily detailed explanations of the houses she cleaned.
Perhaps others long to know the details of her encounters with vomit-stained toilets, blood-stained unmentionables, and crap-stained carpets, but it was a no for me.
There’s a small amount of attention given to the poverty aspect, but it comes mostly in the form of how it made her feel to know she was dependent on the government to live and provide; it was also delivered in the same whiny, woe is me, tone that made me want to skim to the end/stop reading altogether.
I swear I spent the majority of this book wanting her to just do something other than sit at the table with her pity hat on. Especially since so much of what plagued her progress was self-inflicted.
For a lot of reasons, some of which are personal (I grew up around single moms and am the product of a single parent home), this book infuriated, more than, inspired me.
Thank you to Edelweiss for an Advanced eGalley of this book.
How do you cheer for a woman who’s so obsessed with finding a husband she feels okay accepting less for herself?
Both Jamie (her daughter’s father) and Travis (her longtime “boyfriend”) treat her like garbage, and yet, she’s willing to overlook their abusive behavior if it means she’ll have a chance to “look” respectable in the eyes of society.
She constantly laments over how sad it made her to see other family units; how their very presence made her feel like a failure—or grossly inferior. How she longed for anything approaching a relationship because of how it would, potentially, legitimize her motherhood and make her more acceptable to those around her.
I cringed when she spoke about how she was so lonely during one particular birthday she asked her abusive ex to spend the night—just so she’d have a warm body to snuggle up with and hold on to.
Ugh. Seriously??
Then there’s the unnecessarily detailed explanations of the houses she cleaned.
Perhaps others long to know the details of her encounters with vomit-stained toilets, blood-stained unmentionables, and crap-stained carpets, but it was a no for me.
There’s a small amount of attention given to the poverty aspect, but it comes mostly in the form of how it made her feel to know she was dependent on the government to live and provide; it was also delivered in the same whiny, woe is me, tone that made me want to skim to the end/stop reading altogether.
I swear I spent the majority of this book wanting her to just do something other than sit at the table with her pity hat on. Especially since so much of what plagued her progress was self-inflicted.
For a lot of reasons, some of which are personal (I grew up around single moms and am the product of a single parent home), this book infuriated, more than, inspired me.
Thank you to Edelweiss for an Advanced eGalley of this book.