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Stephanie Land

Biography

Stephanie Land

Stephanie Land is the author of MAID: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Washington Post, Guardian, Vox, Salon and many other outlets. She focuses on social and economic justice as a writing fellow through both Community Change and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She lives in Missoula, Montana.

Photo Credit: © Nicol Biesek

Books by Stephanie Land

Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger and Higher Education
by Stephanie Land - Memoir, Nonfiction

Stephanie Land's debut memoir MAID was a story about a housecleaner escaping poverty and abuse, but it was also a story about a woman with a dream. In CLASS, Land takes us with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn including a byzantine loan system, not having enough money for food, navigating the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn’t understand the demands of attending college while under the poverty line --- Land finds a way to survive once again, finally graduating in her mid-thirties. CLASS paints an intimate and heartbreaking portrait of motherhood as it converges and often conflicts with personal desire and professional ambition. 

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive
by Stephanie Land - Memoir, Nonfiction, Social Sciences

At 28, Stephanie Land turned to housekeeping to make ends meet. 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 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. 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.