Liked Evicted? -- Read Maid
Stephanie Land recently tweeted this depressing statistic: "a single parent would have to work 140 hours a week at minimum wage to pay for basic necessities." And Land would know. Her new memoir -- Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive -- chronicles her time as a single mother working as a house cleaner and just scraping by on the combination of her paycheck and various forms of government assistance. In telling her story of ending up a single mother living in a homeless shelter with effectively no family or friends to turn to for help, of figuring out how to make a little money working insanely hard, and of dealing with the stigma of asking for government "handouts," Land weaves a narrative about life on the financial precipice that sticks with you. And embedded in her story are glimpses into the lives of her clients, through which Land creates portraits of the trials of (usually) better off families who nonetheless struggle in different ways.
In short, read her memoir. It's fantastic. And if you're not totally convinced that you must read it right now, there's more after the jump.