'My daughter Iearned to walk in a homeless shelter.'
So begins Stephanie Land's powerful, heartfelt and ultimately uplifting memoir, Maid. An unexpected mother at 28, Stephanie worked long hours as a cleaner to keep a roof over her daughter's head, scrubbing the toilets of the wealthy while navigating domestic labour jobs, higher education, assisted housing and a tangled web of government assistance.
Throughout all this, Stephanie wrote. She wrote the stories that weren't being told. The stories of the overworked and underpaid. She wrote to remember the fight, to eventually cut through the deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor. The result is this emotionally raw and masterful book. which reveals the dark truth of what it takes to survive and thrive in today's inequitable society.