Maid

Maid: hard work, low pay and a mother's will to survive / Stephanie Land, 274 pgs.

A memoir of the struggling single mother who works cleaning houses for crappy pay. Trying to provide for her child and keep things going is almost more than can be done with the resources at hand.  How can you afford to move out of your apartment with black mold when you have to miss work to take your kid to the doctor because she is sick from the black mold?  How can you maintain your income when your car is wrecked when you need your can to get to your job?  With no safety net, no savings, and a family who is also experiencing poverty, there are really very few options.  This mother does escape poverty but reading this makes you wonder HOW she could maintain the level of effort needed to propel herself out of such a bad situation.

Maid

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive / Stephanie Land, 270 p. 

The author finds herself 32, mother to an infant, Mia, and homeless, after Mia's father's behavior becomes so disturbing they are forced to flee.  Over the years of Mia's infancy in Washington State, Stephanie works frantically to sustain herself and her daughter through carefully maximizing all government benefits available, and working a variety of housecleaning jobs, all while taking online courses in an attempt to move her family on to something better.  Stephanie's book makes clear the effort of conscientiousness and organization required to hold on to those meager benefits, and opens up the feelings of being an anonymous household 'maid,' required to clean the toilets of strangers.  Her exhaustion, vulnerability and loneliness are clear.  Particularly enlightening is a story she tells of being in a grocery store using a WIC coupon and hearing an older man in line behind her shout angrily, "You're welcome," presumably because he felt he should be thanked for contributing to her child's glass of milk.