This book was both heartbreaking and joyous. It shows how so much in life is dependent on whether your family is there to back you up, and lift you up when times get hard. Sometimes your family can't help because they don't have the strength or resources, and sometimes they won't help because your life choices didn't fit into their picture of your future; however, the outcome is the same. It's difficult to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps when most everything in society is trying its best to keep you from doing just that. This memoir also shows you can break the cycle for your child by being there for them unconditionally..

Ultimately I agreed with Roxane Gay’s Goodreads review. I came into this book expecting a Barbara Ehrenreich-esque look at domestic labor, and this is more of a memoir about motherhood and relationships with the author’s work as a secondary subject. It was well-written, I just felt it was marketed differently from what I read, and I’m not especially partial to memoirs.

3.5 stars. This was a fantastic story of overcoming adversity and how determination helped Stephanie overcome poverty. This book taught me how much I take for granted, having family and friends that I can fall back on and having a dependable partner that can always help me out. So many kudos to Land for overcoming what she has and following her dream to become a writer (as this book is very well written).

A vivid portrait of life as a maid in middle America and its struggle to exist and live in poverty. Hearting tale and a must read for a true tale much in the style of the novel Dignity.

Land gives readers a very personal and eye opening look at the struggle to survive in a world where even making ends meet is an impossible feat for far too many. Hers is a story of struggle, love, determination, and hope.

This book should be required reading for, well, everyone. It's a fascinating glimpse into the life of a woman who is trying her hardest to make a better life for herself and her baby daughter. What I liked about it the most was how Stephanie showed how easy it would be for anyone to find themselves in the circumstances she ended up in. and how difficult life really is for people on welfare and other government assistance. It's not a long book but it's so informative and well written. I highly recommend this book.

LOVED THIS! An absolute must read about what it is truly like to be poor in this country. You feel very connected to Stephanie Land as she navigates her life.

This book is an important read as a view into the realities of single motherhood and poverty in America. The depiction of someone who is working hard and still feels the constant stress of poverty and trying to raise her daughter are vivid. There is the constant reminder that one little thing going wrong could jeopardize everything. Like many people, there was no help to be had from her family and her description of the way people treated her when they found out she was on government assistance was recognizable and crushing at the same time.

This book was fantastic! I loved that the book draws you in immediately. I did not want to put it down. The author has a great way of involving the reader throughout. Highly recommend!

"My daughter learned to work in a homeless shelter."

Picture the woman who wrote this sentence. Is she white? Black? Latinx? Is she down on her luck or high on drugs? How did she fall out of the American Dream and into what most Americans consider their worst nightmare: poverty and homelessness.

Stephanie Land has written a memoir that gives the reader insights into a world most of us hope never to visit. Her reveal is insightful, soul-baring, and a compelling read.

Stephanie, like many other young people, came from a home of divorce. Her father is slipping out of middle class success. Her mother wants to "find herself". Stephanie is collateral damage. Stephanie's plans include becoming a writer with her dream school being University of Montana in Missoula. Born in Washington State and then too Alaska. When her parents' Alaskan dreams don't pan out, they return to the Northwest. Ultimately, her father remarries and her mother goes Bohemian in Europe.

An unplanned pregnancy derails Stephanie's personal plans. Her boyfriend stays with her for awhile. Then he turns abusive and Stephanie, with a daughter to care for, leaves. She ends up in a homeless shelter but tries to set a path out of her personal disaster. This means plunging into the world of welfare, SNAP, Medicaid for her daughter. It's a world in which people give you the side eye when you pull out your food stamps at the register. Others judge Stephanie's need for government assistance, never considering that there might be extenuating circumstances.

Stephanie is no welfare queen. Without marketable skills or degrees, she takes the only work available to her, cleaning houses. If you have ever hired a cleaning service, you may want to rethink your attitude toward the "cleaners" after reading Stephanie's books.. every house that is cleaned comes with its own set of challenges and instructions. Mostly the owners of large, expensive homes overlooking the ocean are absent when the cleaners come. To them, Stephanie and her coworkers are invisible"cleaning fairies." A few, a very few, get to know Stephanie and turn out to be (mostly) sympathetic and clearly defined personalities. The houses, themselves, have personalities. there is The Smokers House, The Hoarding House, The Farm, The Chef's House and more. Eventually, Stephanie expands her services to personal clients gathered from Craigslist ads.
Stephanie is lucky that it seems most of her Craigslist clients are legitimate, and not perverts of some kind.

While Stephanie works seemingly non-stop, she is also fighting her daughter's father for custody and moving frequently into mold-infested apartments most of us would not consider unless we had no choice. Stephanie has no choice and so she and her daughter, Mia, become sick from toxic mold and unheated living conditions that she can barely afford. Her fears include her reliable car breaking down, or worse, having an accident. When the worst happens, the reader thinks that things can't get much worse for Stephanie.

Somehow, through her shattered self-esteem and her ability to move forward despite barriers, Stephanie comes out the other side of her nightmare. She and Mia start another new life and this one sticks and the result is this amazing book.

This book is especially relevant in the current climate of the 1% and then the rest of us. Stephanie represents every person whose life has not gone as planned and fights forward to a different life for herself and her daughter.

Recently, I've had trouble focusing on highly recommended books that seem to get lost in their own
narrative. In real life, Stephanie may have been lost, but her story never loses the reader. Perhaps Stephanie had to go through trauma to write this highly relatable, very important book.

How Stephanie got to her ending is a lesson for everyone who has ever labeled an unknown person a "welfare queen" or a drag on the system. Stephanie is neither and teaches us that there but for fortune goes you or I.

Best nonfiction I read all year. Land really captured the blight of a poor, single might. Wow. Powerful

Maid is a remarkable book about being poor in America. It is a down to earth story about just how hard life can be. So many of us grow up with family support and don't know what it is like to be down to our last dollar-much less how to make it day to day when you start with nothing. Maid is easy to read and should be read by all kinds of people-especially high school students who may be living in their own little bubble.

A beautiful story written about a single mother trying to make her way in life to support her child...I thought it would be a light read but was happy when I began to really relate to the story on a personal level. She experienced things I did too just never told anyone how hard it can be. Happy with this read!

I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I requested this book based on the description, and it was much more than I anticipated. Maid is written truthfully, and with no apologies. Stephanie Land tells the story of how she raised her Daughter as a single Mom after leaving an abusive relationship. She did what she had to do to make ends meet and that included living in Section 8 housing and using food stamps. You see first hand the craziness of living within “the system” and all of the obstacles one can face to get out of it.

There are sad and heartbreaking passages, but the fabric of this memoir is the love between Mother and Child and the things we will do to make a better life for our children.

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land

4.5 stars

Stephanie Land's memoir chronicles her continuous struggle to raise and support her daughter after fleeing an abusive relationship and how the government system does not often help those in need, but continue to perpetuate and trap them into neediness. This novel was a hard, but raw and real expose into the horror of poverty. The stories of Mia's illness due to the mold in their apartment and how the landlord refused to do anything about it. The stories of Stephanie cleaning house after house while her daughter went to a daycare that was not helping her sickness. The stories of cleaning houses until she was pulling muscles and had to take low-priced over the counter medicine because going to the doctor and getting a prescription was out of their price range. All of these stories hurt, but the stories of Stephanie going to Missoula for the first time bring hope. Not all of this book is pain. There are a lot of sweet and tender moments wrapped up in here, but this novel looks at one of the most painful times of Stephanie Land's life and so it makes sense that their is not a whole to rejoice about.


The writing and narration of this story are excellent. The voice of Stephanie leaps at the reader and makes you feel as if Stephanie is sitting you down for a real heart-to-heart with no barriers. This form of writing lends well to Stephanie's narrative and the plight that she had to battle through. The audiobook is also excellent to listen to. I believe it enhanced my enjoyment (if you could call it that) of this memoir and hooked me in a way that I may have not been captivated by if I had only read the text. This is a memoir you don't want to miss. I'm glad I saw it on Goodreads months ago because of karen's review. I surely would've missed out on an important narrative that is often silenced in privileged America. I highly recommend this one!


Whimsical Writing Scale: 4

Plotastic Scale: 5

Cover Thoughts: I hate this cover, but it gets the point across.

Thank you, Netgalley and Hachette Books, for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

I did not like this book. She was way too whiny for me. I saw comparisons of this book to Nickled and Dimed which seems much less woe is me than this book struck me.

Received a digital ARC of this book via NetGalley.

A powerful memoir of a single mom trying to make a better life for herself and her daughter. People tend to blame and judge a person for the situation they are in before they bother to take the time to understand or get to know the person. The stigma behind someone asking for/using food stamps and section 8 can make the person feel worse for trying to do better.

I thought this was an excellent account of how difficult it is to get by in America for people who are marginally employed. Stephanie Land has a lot of spirit and drive. This book was impactful.

One of my favorite memoirs of the year. I was completely involved in this book and the author. I cried with her, cheered for her, smiled with her. I felt the struggle, even though I have fortunately never experienced that gut-wrenching need to survive day by day. Absolutely worth the read and I would recommend to anyone..

This is a very well-written memoir that reads like fiction. The author of this book, Stephanie Land, details her years working as a maid after her daughter is born. She is a single mother and during this time she used government programs to help her get by. As a working mother of 2 small children it was hard and eye opening to read about some of the author's struggles. I can't imagine doing it alone and having the financial hardships that Stephanie had. I truly believe that working mothers are some of the strongest people in the world, and single working mothers even more so. I was rooting for Stephanie and her daughter, Mia, the whole book and I would definitely read more of her work in the future.