March Book Club Discussion | Video Chat with Stephanie Land
OUR BOOK CLUB PICK FOR March 2019 | Maid by Stephanie Land
On the first Tuesday of every month, The Bookstore Plus hosts a unique Book Club experience where readers have the opportunity to discuss the book club pick with the author via video chat! Tuesday, March 5th, 2019, at 7:00 pm the author, Stephanie Land, will join us via Skype to discuss and answer questions about her memoir Maid. Our book club is open to the public. Pick up your copy today at The Bookstore Plus.
BOOK SUMMARY |
Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive
“My daughter learned to walk in a homeless shelter.”
In the tradition of bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Evicted, Stephanie Land—a writing fellow for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project (EHRP) and Center for Community Change (CCC)—writes a compassionate, unflinching account of her years scraping by as a housekeeper to make ends meet. In Maid, we enter Stephanie Land’s world and that of domestic workers who are paid far less than their needs.
As a single mother, Stephanie scrubbed the toilets of the wealthy and lived in a dank studio with her daughter. Her journey is one of resilience and grit as she hops from home to home and survives on meager wages and public assistance. Maid is a deep dive into the gut-wrenching truth of both the secret underbelly of middle class America, and the reality of what it’s like to be in service to them. Barbara Ehrenreich writes, “Stephanie Land has something to teach us about both sides of the inequality divide. Neither is what you are expecting.”
Written in raw, masterful, heart-rending prose, Maid is the story of one woman’s tenacity to survive and break free of the grips of the system to give her child a better life. Stephanie Land’s work gives voice to the working poor. Her compassionate, unflinching writing is fueled by her own struggle as a low-income single mother who aspired to use her stories to expose the reality of pursuing the American Dream while being held under the poverty line.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
Stephanie Land's passion is giving a voice to the working poor in America. Her writing is fueled by her own experiences, of struggling to put herself through college and start a career as a single mother. She aspires to use her stories to expose the reality of what it’s like to pursue the American Dream while being held back at the poverty line. She graduated college in 2014 and made her living as a freelance writer, author, and teacher. Many of her stories have gone viral in publications like the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Cosmopolitan, and Vox. Her forthcoming memoir, MAID, explores both the hidden underbelly of upper-middle class America, and her own struggle to make a life for her first daughter and herself, as a domestic worker with dreams of better things.