At 28, Stephanie Land’s dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer quickly dissolved when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. Before long, she finds herself a single mother, scraping by as a housekeeper to make ends meet. Maid is an emotionally raw, masterful account of Stephanie’s years spent in service to upper-middle-class America. Maid is Stephanie’s story, but it’s not hers alone. It is an inspiring testament to the courage, determination, and ultimate strength of the human spirit.
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 is a gripping memoir about college, motherhood, poverty, and life after Maid.
At 28, Stephanie Land’s dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer quickly dissolved when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. Before long, she finds herself a single mother, scraping by as a housekeeper to make ends meet. Maid is an emotionally raw, masterful account of Stephanie’s years spent in service to upper-middle-class America. Maid is Stephanie’s story, but it’s not hers alone. It is an inspiring testament to the courage, determination, and ultimate strength of the human spirit.
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 is a gripping memoir about college, motherhood, poverty, and life after Maid.
Selected Personal Essays
I signed my first book contract without paying much attention to what it said. I didn’t know at the time that the book would be a best seller or that it would one day inspire a Netflix series. I just needed the money. I was a single mom with a 2-year-old and a 9-year-old, living in low-income housing, and because of a late paycheck, I hadn’t eaten much for a few weeks, subsisting on pizza I paid for with a check I knew would bounce.
Let me tell you something you already know: Your housekeeper spies on you.
We work alone. We get bored. What do you expect?
We’d talked through the final part of the plan several times. Yesterday my husband made a small box out of rough-cut pine. That morning we picked out the hydrangea to plant over it, which now sat at my feet.
In my mind, the scene of the accident was always the same. It didn’t clearly make sense how it happened, but that didn’t matter. When it played out behind my closed eyelids, I saw my truck, a late-Eighties Toyota 4Runner, stopped…
Read More Selected Personal Essays
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- “The Three Car Crashes That Changed My Life” Narratively, September, 2015
- “Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Return of Empathy When America Needs It Most” TIME, November, 2020.
- “We Were Going to Call Our Baby Ellis. What I Learned About Grief After Losing 3 Pregnancies in 6 Months” TIME, October, 2020.
- “Losing a pregnancy is complicated. Trying again in the pandemic was right for me” CNN, October, 2020.
- “Grieved, but Calmed by a Different Kind of Storm” Longreads. April, 2020.
- “My greatest honor: I wrote a book that touched people living in poverty” The Guardian
- “I used to clean houses. Then I hired a maid.” The Atlantic, September 24, 2019
- “How Learning to Say No Saved My Career (and My Sanity),” The Riveter, January 2020
- “I went to the hospital to stay sane…,” Vox, February, 2016
- “Learning to Walk Alone,” The New York Times, February, 2016
- “Coming Out as Poor,” The Guardian, August, 2018
- “Trump Trolls Came, and I’m Still Reeling,” Narrative.ly, January, 2018
On Social Justice
It didn’t take me long to go from financial stability to fearing homelessness. In January 2014 I was 35-years-old, raising a six-year-old nearly full-time and six months pregnant without a partner.
At first glance, my 9-year-old daughter doesn’t look “poor.” She meticulously chooses her outfits for school, often sleeping in them — even the shoes. She models in front of the hallway mirror and insists I wash clothing that has been worn for only a few hours. But I’ve bought most of her clothes at Walmart, along with a few nicer dresses I’ve gotten when I had some extra money.
Her little hand squeezed mine a bit when we walked into the gymnasium. Four rows of tables covered half of a newly-waxed floor. I led her to the end of the line for breakfast, served at no cost, every morning before school begins. She chose cereal, milk, juice, and toast. Holding her tray, she walked to a table and I sat next to her.
Minimalism is a virtue only when it’s a choice, and it’s telling that its fan base is clustered in the well-off middle class. For people who are not so well off, the idea of opting to have even less is not really an option.
Read More Social Justice Work
- “Opinion: Want to Get Money To People In Need Right Now? Use Food Stamps,” BuzzFeed.News, Apr. 7, 2020
- “It Shouldn’t Take A Pandemic For Us To Care About Working People And The Poor,” Huffington Post, Apr. 2, 2020
- “Pay Your House Cleaner Anyway,” The New York Times, Mar. 20, 2020
- “It’s easier to have a ‘spirited child’ when you’re white,” The Guardian, Nov., 2015.
- “Please Don’t Feed the Animals,” Missoula Independent, October 15, 2015, (PRINT ONLY)
- “The Problem with Food Stamps for Parents…,” SheKnows, March, 2016.
- “House Farm Bill Doubles Down on TANF’s Mistakes,” May, 2018.
- “Farm Bill only creates Paperwork,” April, 2018.
- “Continuing RFK’s Legacy,” Changewire, June, 2018.
- “Classism in ‘Clean’ Eating,” Scary Mommy, November, 2017.
- “Healthcare bill pulls the lifeline…,” Missoulian, July, 2017.
- “Pell Grants put me through college,” TalkPoverty, May, 2017.
- “From homeless to a full-time writer,” TalkPoverty, February, 2017.
- “Missoula’s Child Care Crisis,” Missoula Independent, September, 2016. (PRINT ONLY)
- “Welfare Reform was 20 years ago…,” The Nation, August, 2016.
- “Food is entertainment at low-income,” Talk Poverty, July, 2016.
- “When you can’t afford self-care,” Talk Poverty, June, 2016.
- “With $55,000 of debt, you learn…,” The Guardian, June, 2016.
- “Saying your house is messy…is a privilege,” Washington Post, May, 2016.
- “Donald Trump is a fraud…,” Salon.com, April, 2016.
- “Lawmakers continue…attacking single moms,” Chasing the Dream, April, 2016.
- “Why can’t the poor have nice things?,” SheKnows.com, April, 2016.
- “Who are the ‘Legitimate’ Poor?,” BillMoyers.com, March, 2016.
- “Why Poverty isn’t a Halloween Costume,” Talk Poverty, October, 2015.
- “The Art of Balancing the Ledger while in Poverty,” Talk Poverty, October, 2015.
On Domestic Violence
Three months after we got married, I called the police for help. When I finally asked him to leave, it was in an almost primal push for survival
There are moments in my life that I can return to easily. I don’t have to close my eyes or envision the surroundings or what it smelled like.
The cop stood in my kitchen, making it look twice as small. I’d put a towel on the door, duct taping it there to keep out the January cold. It was a relief to finally have something to show for the year-long abuse, even if it was just missing Plexiglas in a door.
When we moved to Montana, Jamie stopped calling Mia for months. We had our own place in this old house next to downtown and we’d go for walks to the park and the river. Then he called to say he’d moved to Portland and had a new job which meant regular paychecks.
On Single Parenting
When I announced my second solo pregnancy, I got hate-filled messages asking me what the hell I was thinking.
In August, I went on six dates in one week. I had decided that I was ready to look for a partner. Enough of this dating unavailable men a half-decade younger than me.
I used to work full-time as a maid, spending my nights doing coursework for a full load of college classes after my then-3-year-old daughter had gone to bed. The two of us lived in a 300-square-foot apartment that was full of mold and made my daughter sick.
At the start of my 10-minute break during a two-hour writing workshop, I looked down to check my phone. I had three missed calls and five text messages, all from the friend who was supposed to be watching my daughter.
Read More On Single Parenting Work
- “Dating as a Single Mom…,” Washington Post, January, 2016
- “Raising the Daughter my Mom Wanted,” Washington Post, October, 2015.
- “If She Wants to, She Can,” Mamalode, September, 2016.
- “A Single Mom’s path to Dating with Confidence,” Scary Mommy, August, 2016.
- “A Smartphone Raised my Dating Standards…,” Washington Post, June, 2016.
- “Sheryl Sandberg may get single moms, but not me,” SheKnows, May, 2016.
- “Summers aren’t fun and games for single parents,” Washington Post, June, 2018.
- “2016 May be the Year I Support my Family…,” The Huffington Post, January, 2016.
- “Keeping the Christmas Spirit Alive…,” The Huffington Post, December, 2015.
On Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / Myalgic Encephalomyelitis
The usual response to “I’m going to an old friend’s house who’s severely ill” is some form of the hopeful “Give them my best.” I took it a step further and said with purpose, “I can’t, really. I won’t be able to see him.”
I found out recently an old friend of mine, Whitney Dafoe, has a severe disease. He’d posted on his website that he was sick, but when he’d said “chronic fatigue syndrome,” I thought that meant normal or mundane tasks overly exhausted him and that was the end of his affliction.
Years after spending a romantic month alone with a young photographer, Stephanie Land learns of his crippling chronic disease–and gets a glimpse of how much she meant to him.
A couple of months ago I discovered my friend Whitney had been bed-bound for over three years. His dad, Dr. Ron Davis, a scientist involved in the Human Genome Project, focused all of his time and effort in researching his son’s disease.
Beginnings
You notice it first at work, rising from a chair. A sharp pain on the right side of your lower abdomen immediately makes you sit down. The third or fourth time it happens that morning, you call your doctor. They have an opening during your lunch hour.
I see my self-identity in the same way I see most things: a list, in greatest to least importance. I’ve found I can’t use the multitude of hats analogy or some kind of flow chart where circles are connected by lines and entwined in Venn diagrams. I need a list. I need a top shelf.
Her little hand squeezed mine a bit when we walked into the gymnasium. Four rows of tables covered half of a newly-waxed floor. I led her to the end of the line for breakfast, served at no cost, every morning before school begins. She chose cereal, milk, juice, and toast. Holding her tray, she walked to a table and I sat next to her.
My therapist sat in a leather chair across from me in her small office. I stared out the window as I spoke of the events over the last week, and then looked at her for answers. “I think you normally handle stress very well,” she said. “You’re like a person teetering on a sharp ridge. Then a huge gust of wind comes and blows you off.”
Read More Early Work
- “Parenting From Her Vantage Point,” The Mid, August, 2015.
- “Why Solo Parenting is Actually Really Hard…,” Scary Mommy, July 2015.
- “Our Rescue Dog…,” The Huffington Post, June 2015.
- “A Safe Home of Her Own,” ESME.com, May 2015.
- “Too Little,” print, Mamalode, Spring 2015.
- “Start There,” YWCA Blog, January, 2015.
- “There’s Hope in the Chicken,” Mamalode, November 2014.
- “Unblocking Blocked Milk Ducts…With Vibration,” Scary Mommy, October, 2014.
- “The First Step: Recognition,” YWCA Blog, August, 2014.
- “Home Birth Away From Home,” Mamalode, August, 2014.
- “Some Boys Do,” Mamalode, July, 2014.
- “Our Own Studio,” Mamalode, April 2014.
- “William Albert Allard: Pick a Bird,” MTPR, November 2013.