Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive Kindle Edition

This book is terrible. Where do I start? This is basically a book of a woman complaining "woe is me", throwing herself a pity party. She blames everyone else for her problems and doesn't accept any responsibility for her terrible decisions. First of all, this book promised what it didn't deliver. From the Amazon description: "Maid explores the underbelly of upper-middle class America and the reality of what it's like to be in service to them." Nope. There is no glimpse at "upper-middle" class other than her judging her clients for being "sad" or "smoking cigarettes" when she smokes herself.Secondly, she doesn't provide a look into the poverty in America. She doesn't recognize herself coming from a place of privilege as a white, American woman. She was afforded opportunities that other marginalized groups may not have received. She describes some of her greatest "sacrifices" as being her daughter not being able to get "organic" milk on the WIC program and her daughter's only "organic" foods were Annie's macaroni and cheese. Really? There are many, many, many Americans that can barely afford groceries and would be thankful to have any milk or food for the week, much less being choosy about ensuring it was "organic". She seems to lament that she can't be a "stay at home mom" which the majority of Americans can't afford. The "stay at home mom" role is something that very few can afford. That isn't a mark of "poverty". Many families have both parents who work, that isn't something "special" or sympathy inducing. Then there is the accident in which she pulled off on the median of a highway and leaves her daughter in the car seat while she walks along the highway looking for a $5 doll. Then she refuses to accept any blame or her role in the accident. She complains about not getting paid to drive to the jobs she works....um....do any of us get paid for our commute?She then gets $4,000 back in a tax refund, which is annoying within itself, but then instead of saving the money and building her future, she buys herself a diamond ring? What?? Her daughter is suffering health consequences from black mold, yet she doesn't nothing about that...no, instead, she wants diamonds.She is so full of self-pity the book is hard to read. One of the most important components of a book is to have a likable main character in which the reader can sympathize with and roots for their success. I tried, but I couldn't make myself root for her. I can't believe this book made its way through an agent, editor and publishing house and became a featured book on Amazon. Did any of them read this first? Super disappointing.

The description led me to believe that this book was going to be of the same genre of $2 a Day and other fine works. Not so. It is a story of a 29 year old woman who gets pregnant with a guy she hardly knows and then gets a job as a maid to support herself. She complains about the maid job, but chose it over working in a coffee shop. She also whines about her parents not helping her with her predicament. Well, she was brought up in privilege in the suburbs; what has she been doing since high school? No wonder her parents think it is high time she stand on her own two feet.She was not born to poverty, but blames the welfare system for keeping her poor and in her place. The book is a narrative on the author playing the victim. She also plays the domestic violence card, where the only violence that the man committed was punching out a window with anger. A bit of insurance fraud was added, too. A sham of a book. Don't waste your time or money on this.

Giving this any sort of bad review almost seems like it would be an act of spite, given the circumstances Stephanie Land is writing from - but still, for the first third of the book I really wasn't liking it, and I couldn't put my finger on why.But at about the halfway point, I realized I had been bait-and-switched - this is not a story of a "maid." It's the story of a working, poor, single mother, dealing with a variety of problems both self-inflicted and beyond her control who *happens* to be a maid. But that's a harder elevator pitch so I understood why "maid" became the focus. But I don't think that's really the book.When I changed my focus to the book I realized it actually was I appreciated it a lot more. At that point, I could look at this as a window to this life. Yes, Stephanie Land is often self-pitying and finds confrontation and judgement around every corner - but of course she would. Her relations with her daughter's father is not good, and she's unable to find a really solid boyfriend, because of course she can't. She wishes for a better life and probably misprioritizes things in the moment instead of thinking long-term, because of course she would.That's the hustle and grind of this life - everything is working against her. I don't believe that in every checkout line she went through she got a hard time from people standing behind her, or the checkout person - but I do believe that it felt that way to her. I don't necessarily think she was exploited by her employers quite as badly as she describes - but I'm sure she felt she was. When you're in this situation, everything is exaggerated and every bit of bad luck is magnified. That's an interesting book - harsh and hard - but interesting. Reading it in that lens made it successful in a different way then the title that had originally misdirected me.I had to go on unemployment once (well, I didn't have too - I was laid off, and it was my right), and it's like going into another mirror universe - society's respect you took for granted is suddenly upended. You're no longer seen as a responsible member of society who can be trusted to be self-reliant. You're a liar, a rube, a sap who can't write a resume. Everything becomes lowest common denominator - the assumption is you're a grifter who's trying to get one over, or an idiot who has to be talked too like a child. I could see very easily how someone in that situation long-term could quickly stop caring about honesty or integrity because the people on the other side assume the worst. I hated it, hated myself, and it was only six weeks.So *of course* Stephanie Land is defensive and self-pitying at times, because society is expecting her to be. That's the role the working poor play - we feel bad for them, toss them some baseball tickets now and then, and make sure they know we're better than they are.When I read her book THAT way, it all came into focus. This is not a book about a maid - it's the book about a life when the only job you can find is being a maid. In that way, it is valuable - because somebody needs to tell that story, and the only way to tell it is if you live it. Even Barbara Ehrenreich's famous "Nickel and Dimed" was sort of a grift - she just pretended for awhile. Great writing, but an act. Stephanie Land isn't acting, so the occasional self-pity and various poor decisions are all part of that real life. It's not that poor people have especially bad luck, it's that they can't easily recover from even sort of bad luck.So - don't look at the title and think it's a book about maids. Think of it as a look into the world of the working poor that most of us look past and hope we never encounter in our own lives. Nobody wants to hold up a line to deal with food stamps, and all the clowns who say "you're welcome" and act like food stamps are being lifted out of their own pockets, should hope and pray the situation never reverses.To digress on the subjects of maids. I was in a big hotel in Mobile, Alabama once and I was getting ice from the bucket or whatever I was doing, and I walked by the maid's station and the group was in a conference. It was probably a dozen African-American women doing their meeting before the day's shift - most of them were young in typical maid uniforms, but there were two older women in business casual leading the meeting. I realized (or at least assumed) that these two women had probably been on staff for years, working up through those ranks. This was their kingdom; I had to think, back in their neighborhoods, they controlled everything - who could get a job at this nice hotel, where it probably was a good place to work, taking calls from mothers trying to get their daughters that opportunity, no doubt laying down the false compliments amid the desperation. How would they choose? I thought of all the compromises they had to make to get to that level of responsibility - all the customers they had to put up with, the managers who probably disrespected them, the owners who looked past them, all to get to this morning meeting. I want to read that book.So I left a very good tip in the room when I left, for some woman I never saw. I think I did. I've told myself I did. I'm a nice guy so I'm sure I did. All white, middle-class Americans are very nice. We're happy to give you $10 tips and free baseball tickets. Just don't hold us up in the checkout line with your food stamps and your crying kid.

America is, or so the song tells us, the 'land of the brave and the home of the free'.What I learned reading 1-star reviews of 'Maid' (and comments on Goodreads) is it's also the home of some of the most unpleasant and pathologically unsympathetic victim-blamers that I've ever seen 'brave' enough to write such horrible things in a public place.I'm completely unfamiliar with any controversy around this book. I'm also not American. I'm not blind to the way some people seem to fall into a hole of despair and grab the nearest shovel to dig it even deeper, but I am more interested in how they do their best to try to climb out. I don't consider that anything the author might have done before the book started is actually any of my business. I take it at face value. Here's a woman with a small child, a bad habit of choosing the wrong kind of men, trying to get by in the world and trying to keep her child fed, clothed and housed by whatever means she can.I found the book very readable. I appreciated how vulnerable the millions of people without savings or job security can be when one or two things go wrong in their lives and they slide into poverty.It's not great literature. It's no 'Angela's Ashes'. Nobody's drinking tea out of jam jars or picking up coal in the street. It's an uncomfortable life but there are much worse in novels - nobody's shooting up the neighbourhood or getting our 'maid' hooked on drugs or forcing her to into sexual slavery. But that doesn't mean it's fair to blame her for her problems, accuse her of blaming everybody else for them, or to deny the unpleasant things that happen to her. So she wanted to buy organic milk on her food stamps because she (incorrectly, I'm pretty sure) thinks skimmed milk has added sugar. That's her choice - it's not our place to judge her, nor to sarcastically chant "You're welcome" as she bags up her groceries and we try to make her feel crappy because we - well not me, I don't pay US taxes - somehow paid for them.I liked Stephanie. I appreciated her work ethic. I understood her drive to be more. I also understood she was disappointed by her family but I didn't think less of her for that.As a work of literary greatness, this doesn't hit the mark for me, but as a realistic account of trying to do your best, it's not bad at all and if it makes some people feel uncomfortable that 'their tax dollars' are supporting scroungers, then maybe they need to look at what else those dollars are going on - killing people all over the world in support of the egotism of a president with a narcissistic personality disorder who clearly never had to decide where to spend his food stamps.

This may not be perfectly written. A little more of the backstory world have helped to set the scene and it seems to end rather abruptly.But I found it to be a gripping, harrowing, informative and inspirational account of one young woman's struggle to bring up a young child on her own in America, with minimal resources and little support.I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

This is a superbly-written account of Stephanie Land's eye-opening journey through the labyrinth of state 'support' via disappointment after disappointment, miserable privations and a work schedule that would floor most people, all the while giving her precious young daughter a degree of love and understanding that many of us would have envied in our own childhoods. There are incidents that will make you gasp in shock. Equally shocking is Ms. Land's discovery that 'the system' is calculated to prevent someone like herself from climbing up and out of her predicament; each time she earned a little bit more, a little bit of support was taken away, meaning that she was unable to save up enough, even by working, to improve her inadequate living conditions. No spoilers - read for yourself how thisa amazing woman eventually survives and thrives.....

I bought this because Barack Obama had recommended it. It’s an autobiography - a typical story of a single mum in the USA struggling with the inadequate benefit system. She isn’t that good an author and I lost interest in her plight. No real storyline just a series of struggles. If you wish to know how tough it is then read this book.

I have raised three sons on my own after my husband's early death so I was familiar with all of the situations the author found herself in. The loneliness and the sheer hard work and planning which goes on when you are the only parent. Hats off to the author for writing so knowledgeably and accurately about the many various aspects of finding suitable and time consuming operations in finding a career which covers the bills. At least I didn't a mean spirited and hateful character like her ex boyfriend to cope with. It's a pity she didn't disencumber herself of this psychic leech which sucked the joy out of her life. I'm hoping she will turn her back on the past with all its negativity. A good book well written.