Review by New York Times Review
"I'm not your maid," goes the outraged refrain of the mother; "I'm not your mother," the outraged refrain of the girlfriend or wife. The declarations are pleas for respect, consideration; they invoke roles in which women can't necessarily expect either. What indignities are you subject to when you are both mother and maid? When Stephanie Land was 28, she accidentally got pregnant with a man she'd been dating for four months, a cook in Port Townsend, Wash. This man yelled at her regularly, but she stayed with him until he punched a hole in the door during a fight. Her daughter was 7 months old. Land moved in with her father, but he got violent too, and she left for a homeless shelter. From there, she secured federally subsidized Section 8 housing. Eventually, she began dating someone who had a farm, moved in with him, and started cleaning houses for $9 an hour, a job that offered "no sick pay, no vacation days, no foreseeable increase in wage." At least one of these $9 hours went to making gas money for the commute. When the farmer broke up with her, she collected money for a deposit on an apartment of her own by appealing to her connections on Facebook. On moving into a studio, she learned it was infected by black mold. Cleaning, which soon became the main source of Land's income (she also did yardwork), proved grueling and tedious labor. To every house, she lugged "two spray bottles, one container of powdered Comet, two sponges, one pair of yellow gloves, 50 white rags, two dusters, one Oreck vacuum, two mop handles." As a rule, she started in the upper left corner of the building or room and worked her way across and down until she was done - not unlike a reader. Her boss referred to her as the business's best cleaner. Clients who had found fault with other employees did not complain about her. Meanwhile, the mold in her apartment made her and her daughter sick, and the cleaning made her body hurt: a "constant burn," "shooting pain," "tingling sensations" down her limbs. Nerve damage prevented her from gripping with her dominant right hand, so she was forced to use her left. She got in a car accident and lost her car. She had no time to cultivate new friends, and those she already had weren't always kind about her plight. She was ashamed to be on public assistance. With nobody around to give her the comfort or reassurance she needed, she tried giving it to herself. "I love you," she whispered piteously when she was overcome with pain or panic. "I'm here for you." She fantasized about moving to Missoula, Mont., for college; about owning a house like the ones she cleaned; about finding a lasting partner. All her hopes seemed implausible. If she were ever in a position to hire a cleaner herself, she vowed, she'd tip them, offer them food, leave them small gifts. She'd treat them "like a guest, not a ghost." Sometimes, she cried while she cleaned. The strain of caring for a child in insecure circumstances shadowed the pleasures of motherhood. Land followed a strict bedtime routine with her daughter, hoping that rigid structures would increase the girl's sense of stability, knowing any foundation was being eroded by her shared custody agreement and frequent changes to their living arrangements. After her relationship with the farmer ended, Land regretted the loss on her daughter's behalf more than her own. She encountered no personal obstacle that wasn't magnified in some way by being a single parent, no problem of parenthood that wasn't intensified by her financial predicament. For a while, as Land recounts in "Maid," her memoir of her time as a cleaner, she was on seven kinds of government assistance, and still hardly surviving. The paperwork she was forced to complete in order to qualify for help was interminable: applications with questions about her plans for the years to come, detailed proof of income that included documentation of her schedule and letters from clients verifying that she did indeed work for them, and continual updates to account for any change in status. When, at one point, she submitted a handwritten pay stub, an official from the Department of Health and Human Services threatened to rescind her child care grant. To be eligible for a program that subsidized her rent, Land was required to attend a class about how to approach landlords, because they tend to resist renting to those on public assistance. Rent plus groceries plus utilities plus laundry plus insurance plus gas plus clothing minus an hourly paycheck of barely more than minimum wage and the scant assistance parceled out by the government with spectacular reluctance - the brute poetry of home economics recurs throughout Land's book. When Land is faced with any kind of irregular expense, she must check the budget pinned to her wall, next to her notes about when each bill will be withdrawn and for how much. Math like this isn't complicated, it's merely endless. Calculated and recalculated as if the sums will improve with repetition, the figures overwhelm the mind. As Lizzie Feidelson wrote in a 2016 essay for n+1 about her work as a housecleaner, an ambivalent pleasure of the job is that it gives you singularly novelistic insight into the people who dirty the spaces you clean. Details emerge "unbidden, without warning, like smells." Documents spread on a table, receipts pinned to the fridge, a sound clip emanating from a laptop - the plot points of her clients' lives, Feidelson observes, "connected in an instant." Land finds the intimate knowledge she acquires of her mostly absent clients to be similarly evocative. She names the houses she cleans according to whichever possession or habit of the occupants is most conspicuous to her: The Plant House, crowded with large pots on wheeled stands; The Porn House, where a stack of romance novels sits next to a twin bed and a stack of Hustlers near an armchair; The Sad House, whose walls are lined with pictures of the owner's dead wife and son. She glimpses receipts for rugs that cost as much as her car, a dry-cleaning bill so large she could replace half her wardrobe with the same amount of money. One woman fills her freezer with cartons of cigarettes and her bathroom with jars of anti-wrinkle cream. How well the underclass are forced to know their overseers. This state of affairs is so ordinary, so unremarkable, people hardly mention it. That the poor must grow adept in the customs and quirks of the rich, must attune themselves to their desires and peeves, that this attention is forever and fatally one-sided, is understood merely as the basis for good customer service. Land's memoir is not particularly artful. The narration advances with some circularity; the language is often stale. But her book has the needed quality of reversing the direction of the gaze. Some people who employ domestic labor will read her account. Will they see themselves in her descriptions of her clients? Will they offer their employees the meager respect Land fantasizes about? Land survived the hardship of her years as a maid, her body exhausted and her brain filled with bleak arithmetic, to offer her testimony. It's worth listening to. Land was on seven kinds of government assistance and still hardly surviving. EMILY cooke is the editorial director of The New Republic.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 14, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Land's memoir of single motherhood and poverty gives a personal account of the factors influencing those issues. An unplanned pregnancy ends Land's dream of attending college in Missoula, Montana. An abusive boyfriend (soon to be ex-boyfriend), parents that aren't financially or emotionally able to be supportive, and a lack of a social network further conspire against her until she and her young daughter find themselves living in a homeless shelter. What follows is a series of woefully low-paying, back-breaking jobs; attempts to navigate complicated and inadequate government assistance; and scenes of public shaming for handouts." Land's honest writing, especially about her feelings of inadequacy, and her insights into the people whose homes she cleans are beyond engaging. Readers will understand working hard while simultaneously fearing that if one thing goes wrong, if one unplanned expense rears its ugly head, if one benefit doesn't come through, a delicate balance could be completely upended. For readers of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed (2001), Matthew Desmond's Evicted (2016), and Sarah Smarsh's Heartland (2018).--Kathy Sexton Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In her heartfelt and powerful debut memoir, Land describes the struggles she faced as a young single mother living in poverty. "My daughter learned to walk in a homeless shelter," she writes, before chronicling her difficult circumstances. Land got pregnant at 28, then left an abusive relationship and went on to raise her daughter, Mia, while working as a part-time house cleaner in Skagit Valley, Wash. Later, using public assistance, Land moved to a moldy studio apartment and got her daughter into daycare. While housecleaning, Land imagines the lives of the clients, whom she knows intimately through their habits and possessions (their apparent unhappiness despite financial comfort fosters compassion as well as gratitude for her own modest space), and experiences the humiliating stigma of being poor in America ("You're welcome!" a stranger snarls at the checkout as she pays with food stamps). Even while working, Land continued to follow her dream of becoming a writer. She began a journal and took online classes, and eventually attended the University of Montana in Missoula. Land's love for her daughter ("We were each other's moon and sun") shines brightly through the pages of this beautiful, uplifting story of resilience and survival. Agent: Jeff Kleinman, Folio Literary. (Jan.) c Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Land's memoir describes the disappointment and hard luck of a single mother with a young daughter. Without a supportive family, Land took care of herself and her daughter by working as a housekeeper and occasional landscaper. She supplemented her earnings with government programs such as housing assistance, food stamps, WIC (Women, Infants and Children), and Medicaid for her child. She dreamed of earning a college degree from the University of Montana and becoming a writer, and though she took online courses in her limited free time, Land was discouraged by how long it would take to achieve her goal. After encouragement from an associate and a housekeeping client, Land finally moved toward a better future in Missoula. The author narrates her own story flawlessly. Verdict Recommended to listeners with an interest in contemporary working conditions and those who enjoyed Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed. ["An illuminating read that should inspire outrage, hope, and change": LJ 12/18 review of the Hachette hc.]-Ann Weber, Los Gatos, CA © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
First-time author Land chronicles her years among the working poor as a single mother with only a high school diploma trying to earn a living as a minimum-wage housecleaner.The author did not grow up in poverty, but her struggles slowly evolved after her parents divorced, remarried, and essentially abandoned her; after she gave birth to a daughter fathered by a man who never stopped being abusive; and after her employment prospects narrowed to dirty jobs with absurdly low hourly pay. The relentlessly depressing, quotidian narrative maintains its power due to Land's insights into working as an invisible maid inside wealthy homes; her self-awareness as a loving but inadequate mother to her infant; and her struggles to survive domestic violence. For readers who believe individuals living below the poverty line are lazy and/or intellectually challenged, this memoir is a stark, necessary corrective. Purposefully or otherwise, the narrative also offers a powerful argument for increasing government benefits for the working poor during an era when most benefits are being slashed. Though the benefits received by Land and her daughter after mountains of paperwork never led to financial stability, they did ameliorate near starvation. The author is especially detailed and insightful on the matter of government-issued food stamps. Some of the most memorable scenes recount the shaming Land received when using the food stamps to purchase groceries. Throughout, Land has been sustained by her fierce love for her daughter and her dreams of becoming a professional writer and escaping northwest Washington state by settling in the seemingly desirable city of Missoula, Montana. She had never visited Missoula, but she imagined it as paradise. Near the end of the book, Land finally has enough money and time to visit Missoula, and soon after the visit, the depression lifts.An important memoir that should be required reading for anyone who has never struggled with poverty. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
