Stephanie Land

Stephanie Land (born September 1978) is an American author who writes about poverty in the United States.

Stephanie Land
Land on her 40th birthday in September 2018
Born1978 (age 41–42)
EducationB.A. in English and Creative Writing, University of Montana (2014)
OccupationWriter
Years active2014–present
OrganizationCenter for Community Change
Notable work
Maid
StyleMemoir
Spouse(s)
Tim Faust
(
m. 2019)
WebsiteOfficial website

History

Land grew up between Washington and Anchorage, Alaska,[1] in a middle class household.[2] A car accident at age 16 led to her having post-traumatic stress disorder which was later exacerbated by her financial struggles.[3] In her late twenties, she lived in Port Townsend, Washington, where she had her first child and became a single mother who worked maid service jobs to support her family.[4][5] Although she did not grow up in poverty, she spent the next several years living below the poverty line[6] and relied on several welfare programs to cover necessary expenses; this later informed her writing on issues of poverty and public policy.[7]

After six years of cleaning in Washington and Missoula she was eventually able to use student loans and Pell grants to move to earn a Bachelor of Arts in English and Creative Writing from the University of Montana.[4] During her studies, she published her first public writing in the form of blog posts and local publications[8] followed by Internet-based publications such as The Huffington Post[3] and Vox.[7] Upon graduating from the University of Montana, Land ended her dependence on food stamps,[9] started working as a freelance writer, and became a writing fellow with the Center for Community Change.[10]

Land is married to Tim Faust[11] and their family has four children.[12]

Maid
External video
After Words with Stephanie Land, from C-Span: Stephanie Land discussed her path from working as a maid to earning a journalism degree and later writing about the working poor. She was interviewed by Rachel Schneider, co-author of The Financial Diaries.

In 2019, Land's debut book Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive was released. It debuted at #3 on The New York Times Best Seller list.[7] The book was an elaboration of a 2015 post that she made to Vox.[13]

The book has received critical acclaim. In USA Today, Sharon Peters praised the book's honesty, writing that it fills the "with much candid detail about the frustrations with the limitations of programs she relied on. It is a picture of the soul-robbing grind through poverty that millions live with every day."[2] Emily Cooke of The New York Times summed up her review by focusing on the clarity of Land's suffering in the work: "Land survived the hardship of her years as a maid, her body exhausted and her brain filled with bleak arithmetic, to offer her testimony. It’s worth listening to."[9] Katy Read of The Star Tribune suggests, "The next time you hear someone say they think poor people are lazy, hand them a copy of Maid. Stephanie Land can tell them otherwise and, unlike most authors who write about poverty, speaks from personal—and recent—experience."[14] In The Washington Post, Jenner Rogers writes, "Maid isn’t about how hard work can save you but about how false that idea is. It’s one woman’s story of inching out of the dirt and how the middle class turns a blind eye to the poverty lurking just a few rungs below—and it’s one worth reading."[15] Kirkus Reviews concludes that Maid is "[a]n important memoir that should be required reading for anyone who has never struggled with poverty."[16]

List of works
  • "I Spent 2 Years Cleaning Houses. What I Saw Makes Me Never Want to Be Rich.", Vox, November 12, 2015
  • "Trump’s Election Stole My Desire to Look for a Partner", The Washington Post, December 5, 2016
  • Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive, published by Hachette Books, January 22, 2019 (ISBN 0316505110)
  • "The Day My Husband Strangled Me," The Guardian, November 15, 2018.

See also

References
  1. Cohen, Stefanie (January 12, 2019). "Maid's Tell-All Reveals Dirty Secrets of America's Middle Class". The New York Post. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  2. Peters, Sharon (January 22, 2019). "Five Takeaways from Stephanie Land's Memoir, Maid". USA Today. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  3. Dunne, Susan (January 18, 2019). "Meet Stephanie Land, Author of Maid, a Mother's Memoir on the Reality of Poverty". The Hartford Courant. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  4. Gross, Terry (January 29, 2019). "In Maid, a Single Mother Finds 'No Way' to Make It on Minimum Wage". Fresh Air. NPR. Retrieved February 16, 2019., audio transcript available at https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=689611873
  5. Land, Stephanie (November 15, 2018). "The day my husband strangled me". The Guardian. Retrieved June 14, 2020.
  6. Hughes, Becky (February 15, 2019). "Maid Author Stephanie Land on Her Years in Housekeeping: 'Each Toilet Takes a Little Bit Out of You'". Parade. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  7. Prior, Ryan (February 16, 2019). "She Used to Scrub Toilets for $9 an Hour. Now Her Book About It Is a Best-Seller". CNN. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  8. Fetters, Ashley (January 28, 2019). "The Crushing Logistics of Raising a Family Paycheck to Paycheck". The Atlantic. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  9. Cooke, Emily (January 31, 2019). "The Brutal Economy of Cleaning Other People's Messes, for $9 an Hour". The New York Times. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  10. "Stephanie Land". Center for Community Change. Retrieved June 14, 2020.
  11. Land, Stephanie. "Love. Joy. Beaming Faces. 😃❤️". Facebook. Retrieved June 14, 2020.
  12. @stepville (August 20, 2019). "Party of six. Blended families FTW. Photo by Erika Peterman" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  13. Gaillot, Ann-Derrick (January 31, 2019). "Maid Offers a Striking Portrait of Single-Working-Motherhood". The Nation. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  14. Read, Katy (February 4, 2019). "Review: Maid, by Stephanie Land". The Star Tribune. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  15. Rogers, Jenny (February 1, 2019). "From Middle Class to Homeless: A Mother's Unapologetic Memoir". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  16. "MAID by Stephanie Land". Kirkus Reviews. October 15, 2018. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
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