Maid, by Stephanie Land, is my story, or rather, my mother’s
Shortly after I started writing about homeless people in New York, my friend recommended I start reading Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive by Stephanie Land.
Right away, I was struck by the similarities Land’s story had to my own life, or rather, my mother’s.
Land, like my mother, was a pretty, white woman in her 20s when she became a mother and a victim of domestic violence. She starts the memoir homeless after she leaves her abusive boyfriend and works her way to a studio apartment, a one-bedroom apartment and eventually to Missoula, Montana where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and used her story to advocate for those in similar circumstances.
Most of the story takes place in the Pacific Northwest, a region my mom and two of my younger siblings currently reside and where I spent my formative years.
In her book, Land describes what it’s like to live on food stamps, to need childcare grants, and other government assistance. She describes the stigma she faced as a single mother who relied on, and needed, help to survive and the grueling manual labor she endured.
There are a few key differences between Land’s stories and my mother’s. Land is a writer. She was given the gift of articulating her plight. My mother, an intelligent and sometimes eloquent woman who has privileges awarded to her that many other mothers don’t, could…
