Summary:
At 28, Stephanie Land's plans of breaking free from the roots of
her hometown in the Pacific Northwest to chase her dreams of attending a
university and becoming a writer, were cut short when a summer fling
turned into an unexpected pregnancy. She turned to housekeeping to make
ends meet, and with a tenacious grip on her dream to provide her
daughter the very best life possible, Stephanie worked days and took
classes online to earn a college degree, and began to write
relentlessly.
She wrote the true stories
that weren't being told: the stories of overworked and underpaid
Americans. Of living on food stamps and WIC (Women, Infants, and
Children) coupons to eat. Of the government programs that provided her
housing, but that doubled as halfway houses. The aloof government
employees who called her lucky for receiving assistance while she didn't
feel lucky at all. She wrote to remember the fight, to eventually cut
through the deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor.
Maid
explores the underbelly of upper-middle class America and the reality
of what it's like to be in service to them. "I'd become a nameless
ghost," Stephanie writes about her relationship with her clients, many
of whom do not know her from any other cleaner, but who she learns
plenty about. As she begins to discover more about her clients'
lives-their sadness and love, too-she begins to find hope in her own
path.
Her compassionate, unflinching
writing as a journalist gives voice to the "servant" worker, and those
pursuing the American Dream from below the poverty line. Maid is
Stephanie's story, but it's not her alone. It is an inspiring testament
to the strength, determination, and ultimate triumph of the human
spirit.
My Thoughts:
This book made me feel ALL the emotions. Frustration, anger, sadness, hope, faith, helplessness, and so many more. I loved the fact that this book took all the stereotypes of a "poor person on welfare" and turned them on their heads. As I read this book, I felt such deep compassion for Stephanie, and then angry that it was so difficult for her to survive. Yes, it all started with an unexpected pregnancy with a man she was not in a committed relationship with, but her struggle to survive could apply to women who end up raising a child on their own due to many different circumstances. Stephanie writes about how she ended up leaving her child's father and living in a homeless shelter with her daughter because he had become abusive. The choice between financial stability with abuse or freedom from abuse but living in poverty is one that so many other women have had to make. Women end up as single parents for a variety of reasons, and it's not easy for any of them. Stephanie even relates how difficult it was to gain custody of her child. It broke my heart to read it. "While judges were rumored to say 'I don't care if the child sleeps on a concrete floor! They will have overnight visitation with their father,' mothers fighting for sole custody had to provide a sort of life that was simply impossible to obtain...I had to fight for the ability to mother my nursing infant, the infant Jamie (her boyfriend) had screamed at me to abort. I had been ground to a pulp by that judge. Like I had been in the wrong for leaving a man who threatened me."
One of the most important themes of this book was how there is a general stigma against those on government assistance in our society. There's this feeling that these people are lazy, just looking for handouts, unwilling to work and better themselves. And there may be SOME people who are that way, but I don't think it describes the majority of those living in poverty. Stephanie describes in the book how her lack of experience made it difficult to find a good job, and many of the jobs available to her would require her to work non-standard hours, hours when day care for her child wasn't an option. She relied on government assistance because she had no other choice. She worked as many hours as she could at the backbreaking and low-paying job of house cleaning. Several times in the book she mentions the hoops she had to jump through to get government assistance. She says "I was overwhelmed by how much work it took to prove I was poor." She mentions the shame she felt as she used EBT cards and WIC to buy groceries, and others in the line would say things like "You're welcome!" or roll their eyes at her. She talks about the misconception that undocumented immigrants are using taxpayer money to qualify for free health care and free food (that's actually something that is only available to citizens).
Another quote "Anyone who used food stamps didn't work hard enough or made bad decisions to put them in that lower-class place. It was like people thought it was on purpose and that we cheated the system, stealing the money they paid toward taxes to rob the government of funds...When people think of food stamps, they don't envision someone like me...Someone like them...Maybe they saw in me the chance of their own fragile circumstances, that, with one lost job, one divorce, they'd be in the same place as I was."
Stephanie talks about how although her daughter qualified for Medicaid, she did not. So she was completely unable to afford any doctors visits at all, even though she desperately needed them. Add that to the fact that she was severely traumatized from her abusive relationship, homelessness, and the Herculean struggle to just make it to the next day and keep herself and her daughter alive and safe, and she was in desperate need of some mental health services, which she also couldn't access or afford.
When she describes the temporary shelter she lives in that doubles as a halfway house, she says "I thought of how many times the police, firemen, and paramedics had come to our building in the last couple of months; of the random checks to make sure living spaces were kept clean or to make sure broken-down cars in the parking lot had been repaired; to patrol us so that we weren't doing the awful things they expected poor people to do, like allowing the laundry or garbage to pile up, when really, we lacked physical energy and resources from working jobs no one else wanted to do. We were expected to live off minimum wage, to work several jobs at varying hours, to afford basic needs while fighting for safe places to leave our children. Somehow nobody saw the work; they saw only the results of living a life that constantly crushed you with its impossibility."
She also says "When a person is too deep in systemic poverty, there is no upward trajectory. Life is a struggle and nothing else." I will admit that I have been one who used to think that people who were poor just didn't try hard enough, that they just needed to find a better job and work on a budget. This book cleared the last of those lingering prejudices from my mind. Stephanie kept the tightest budget I've ever heard of. She lived on coffee and peanut butter sandwiches in order to make sure her growing daughter had enough to eat. She worked out a trade with the owner of a local kids consignment store - cleaning after hours in exchange for clothing for her daughter. There is this general idea in the world that government assistance keeps people poor. It provides no incentive for them to improve. And this is actually true, but not in the way you would expect. In the book, Stephanie says "The most frustrating part of being stuck in the system were the penalties it seemed I received for improving my life. On a couple of occasions, my income pushed me over the limit by a few dollars and I'd lose hundreds of dollars in benefits....There was no incentive or opportunity to save money. The system kept me locked down, scraping the bottom of the barrel, without a plan to climb out of it."
Every time I put down this book I was some combination of intensely sad and incredibly angry. It's just absolutely not RIGHT that people in this country should have to struggle so much just to survive. Survival is a bare minimum goal! We want people to thrive. We should want people to be able to enjoy their lives and their children. One quote towards the end of the books really hit me hard. "The [other mothers] at Mia's day care..limited screen time, scheduled craft projects, limited sugary snacks, and served appropriate servings of fruit and vegetables at every meal. [They were mothers] with the privilege, time, and energy to mother well and who might judge me for not doing the same."
Basically everything I do as a mother to ensure that my children grow up in a safe, supportive, emotionally and physically healthy environment is largely only possible because I don't happen to live in extreme poverty. Even the year of our life where we struggled more financially, I was still able to provide a pretty good home environment for my kids. I left this book feeling like there are most certainly some sound policy decisions that could be made that will help kids be able to grow up in better environments than their parents can provide on their own. And for me, the argument that "some people will take advantage" is not a good enough reason to allow all the rest to just keep languishing in poverty, with little to no hope of making it out.
Please read this book. It is so good. It helped me gain a better perspective on those who are living in poverty, and I will think twice before I start jumping to conclusions about the person at the store paying with food stamps.
