Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education
Stephanie Land
From the New York Times bestselling author who inspired the hit Netflix series about a struggling mother barely making ends meet as a housecleaner—a gripping memoir about college, motherhood, poverty, and life after Maid. When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir Maid, she never could have imagined what was to come. Handpicked by President Barack Obama as one of the best books of 2019, it was called “an eye-opening journey into the lives of the working poor” (People). more
285 pages, Hardcover
First published Atria/One Signal Publishers
3.64
Rating
6063
Ratings
876
Reviews
Stephanie Land
2 books 1528 followers
Stephanie Land is the instant bestselling author of "MAID: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive." Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and many other outlets. Her writing focuses on social and economic justice. Follow everywhere @stepville or stepville.comCommunity reviews
As a reminder, this is how I track and share thoughts about my personal reading. This is not the NYTBR and we are not obligated to love every book we read. I went into reading Class with great interest because I really enjoyed Maid. Land is a great writer, particularly when conveying the relentless nature of poverty and the systems that work against women, especially. What works well in Class is showing how challenging it is to be poor and a single parent. more
I was SO excited to see this advance reader’s edition sitting on the shelf at work because I remember absolutely loving her first book, Maid, when I read it in 2020. Unfortunately this was a minimally enjoyable read for me. I want to preface by saying that this book focuses on the author’s experience living through incredibly difficult circumstances that I don’t fully understand, and I think she does an incredible job in Maid of telling a gripping story about how fucking impossible it was to not only be a mother, but to generally survive through abuse and poverty. Unfortunately, I do not feel the same about this book. I couldn’t stand reading about Land taking risk after risk, and then being SURPRISED when shit hit the fan. more
TW: Language, abortion, classism, graphic sex scenes, child abandonment, abuse, toxic parent relationship, gaslighting, cheating *****SPOILERS***** About the book: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. Release Date: November 7th, 2023Genre: Memoir Pages: 288Rating: ⭐ What I Liked: 1. The beginning What I Didn't Like: 1. Graphic sex scene(s) 2. more
This book is the memoir of a 35 yr old white unmarried undergrad with an uninvolved baby daddy and a 6 year old daughter. The writing is top-notch but the situations play out like a cautionary tale. It is especially annoying to me to read about the author blaming society for her own bad life choices. As a Latina I found my self shaking my head. I kept wondering, "my family has been in this country for about as long as Stephanie has been alive, how is it that we know more about avoiding the financial and situational pitfalls she so willingly falls into time and time again. more
3. 5 stars rounded up Taking place where Maid ended, Class is the personal memoir of Stephanie Land and her time at college in Missoula. After leaving behind her abusive ex and starting fresh at college in a new state, Land is still struggling to raise her daughter and attend school at the same time. Child support and food stamps are not enough, and Land faces new hardships while working to make a better life for her and her child. I really loved the book Maid, it's one of my favorite nonfiction books. more
I was curious how Land would follow up her debut, Maid, which was a bookstagram darling when it came out in 2019. I admit that I wasn't the biggest fan of that book because I did not like Land's victimhood mentality or her whiny voice. Sadly, this book was an extension of both of those things. For whatever reason, Land has a tendancy to come across as immature and does not trigger my sypathetic feelings at all. In this extension of her story, Land is now a 35-year-old woman with a child who moves to Montana to get her BA in English. more
"Class" is a memoir that shares the experiences of author Stephanie Land as a struggling single mother living in poverty. It is a follow up to the New York Times bestseller “Maid,” which became a limited series on Netflix. While this new memoir does shed light on the challenges faced by many women in similar situations, it is hard to fully empathize with Land due to the choices she makes throughout the book. Throughout "Class," the author repeatedly finds herself in difficult situations, often as a result of impulsive decisions and a lack of long-term planning. Her willingness to engage in risky behaviors, like accepting rides from strangers or dating men who offer little stability, raises questions about her judgment and priorities. more
This is enraging. As someone from the town where Class takes place, a former UM student and also as a former single Mom. this book is NOT true. The way she speaks of former professors by name, and accuses them of horrible things. wrong, and completely not true. more
2. 5 but rounded down. This was a compelling read in the sense that I wanted to keep reading to find out what would happen next. However, this read as if it was written in a hurry, and I guess that turned out to be true. Structurally, the chronology was difficult to follow (at times there are flashbacks within flashbacks that just come across as clunky). more
**I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. I honestly think people are missing the point of this book. People living at the poverty line are still allowed to have hopes and dreams, as Stephanie Land did with her MFA, but a lot of the other reviews criticize her for taking too many risks or being selfish. Being able to live a life free of risk (or taking calculated risk) is a privilege afforded to people with money. Security is a privilege when it should be a right, and Land was working hard to make that happen for herself. more
Started with a lot of anticipation and am DNF’ing about 15% of the way in. I appreciated Land’s story in Maid and was eager to read this follow up, but a few things annoyed me enough to stop reading. The main thing was the constant mention of never being able to do anything because of her “kid” (the overuse of that word rather than child, daughter or an actual name was another annoyance) and then the next sentence would describe her out at a party. I don’t care that she went to parties, but in a memoir like this where the main complaint is how hard life is with a “kid”, including the trials of finding and paying for childcare for every outing is crucial. It’s what makes the story whole and real. more
3. 5 StarsI have read and really enjoyed the author's previous memoir so I was excited to continue her story in this book. The reviews are coming back with mixed ratings and I get it. This book is complicated. The author is not perfect which makes for a challenging read. more
So was super excited to get a copy of the follow up to Maid, loved the show and let me just say this was a let down for me. Stephanie is VERY whiny, numerous times she does things that just have you thinking WHY. Why would a sane person do that or make that choice. And then some very different viewpoints on systems that are in place to help and aid…. just overall left me annoyed and disappointed. more
Thanks for the free copy. An interesting read. However, I was a bit put off by the way she lived her life, as though someone (everyone. ) owed her something. Obviously intelligent, she should have known to use birth control. more
Lets agree that we are not to judge another’s actions, especially as few of us have never been impulsive, mislead, needy, ignorant, or just plain stupid enough to have committed an act we would rather not anyone know about. And, if you did not come from a family that moved on with no care for you, and were abused, and faced hunger, and wondered where you would sleep at night, you can’t pass judgement on those who have. If you ever had a dream of a better life, and sought to have motherhood and education and a better future, if you ever were lonely, hungry, scared, and depressed, if you have loved a child, if you stretched yourself so thin you were desperate for any affection, even a passing encounter, then you will understand. I was a huge fan of Stephanie Land’s memoir Maid. Her new memoir takes up her story at university, much older than the other students, and hoping to go on to earn an MFA and fulfill her childhood dream of writing. more
This book is a frustrating read because the author lacks a lot of self awareness and she doesn’t fully understand the ways in which she is benefitting from white privilege. She acknowledges her white privilege very briefly in one paragraph which reads like something her editor made her include. There are countless examples of times when she benefits from her whiteness and makes no note of it while continuing to share her endless self-pity. Tell me which racialized person can send notes to their professors TELLING(not asking) them that they will be bringing their 6yo to senior level undergrad classes. Or the time there is no one to meet her child at bus stop and a STRANGER who is also a mom happens to take care of her child for seemingly at least 2-3 hours. more
This book could have been an email. I hate to rate a memoir but this book was bad. . more
This memoir by Stephanie Land should be on everyone's list if you haven't already read it. Classism as pertains to higher education amongst low income parents, low income students in general -- it's more pertinent than ever. Be prepared to set aside everything you think you know about government assistance, food benefits, time management, community, etc. This is undoubtedly one of the best memoirs I've read to date. more
I was very excited to see that Stephanie Land had written a follow up book to Maid, and immediately had to get my hands on it. I was very moved by Land's account of doing everything she could in what were often impossible circumstances in Maid, and I cheered her on - every page along the way - as she worked relentlessly towards her goals. I'm sad to say that Class left me with a very different impression, almost more of the feeling you have if you witness someone oversharing with a lack of insight and angry self-indulgence. A couple of times I paused to consider what I think is the distinct possibility that Land intentionally wrote Class in a tone that would be controversial to drum up publicity. While I absolutely believe Stephanie Land's life is exhausting and difficult and she must often feel like she's Sisyphus pushing the boulder up a hill, I also couldn't imagine being a friend to her and NOT telling her to wake the f* up. more
This is a book I was looking forward to, and I was so excited to receive an eARC of it earlier this month. It was, as was the first one, a relatively quick read - I devoured it during my morning and afternoon commute, and was done in two days. After reading it, though, I made the terrible mistake of going online to see what other reviewers were thinking - naively believing that most of us would have interpreted it in a similar way. I was sorely disappointed, when instead of five-star reviews - which this one is, by the way - I found quite a lot of negative comments, complaining, mostly, about the “graphic” sex scenes and Land’s “bad decision-making” skills. Let me just start with the first point : the sex scenes. more
DNF. I loved the auth0r's first book, Maid, and the author herself after reading it. This one I couldn't get past 50 pages of a total whine-fest. . more
Thanks to my self-imposed rule to finish every book I start, I DID finish this one, but I was not happy with myself or the book for doing so. This book could have been SO useful and inspiring to others, but instead, chose to whine about EVERYTHING. I agree with other reviewers that with a subtitle that includes motherhood as the subject of this memoir, VERY little attention was given to actually MOTHERING the child. (I hazard a bet that if you highlighted the space she spent about interacting with her child in a meaningful way against the space taken by either chasing men and a good time and GRAPHICALLY describing how she and those men make each other cum exactly, you would find she probably spent much less time with the child than in the pursuit of personal pleasure. ) Instead, "the kid" seems to be where she places much of the blame for her inability to party and go to school worry-free. more
Class by Stephanie Land. Thanks to @atriapub for the gifted Arc ⭐️⭐️⭐️While Land’s memoir, Maid, told of her life as a housekeeper, Class tells of her life as a student, writer, and single mother. I really appreciate the honesty and genuineness that goes into a memoir. This story did show the struggles of attaining an education in poverty, and as a single mother. There was just a lot of extra stuff that I didn’t feel really fit that well. more
I would think it would be quite intimidating as an author to follow up a debut like Maid, an international bestseller turned Netflix series, but Stephanie Land did an admirable job with her second memoir, Class, which has the reader following her during her senior year of college as she struggles to balance finishing her education, raising her daughter, and becoming pregnant with her second child all while living under the poverty line and struggling - literally - to keep food on the table. While Maid was extremely impactful as an examination of poverty and single motherhood in our country, Class feels much more personal to the author. The same themes are explored, of course, but there’s something more intimate about the slice of life we get here. That said, it still felt somewhat arms-length (I found it strange, for example, that there was no explanation or even parenthetical aside about why her daughter Mia now went by her full name Emilia) and I struggled to empathize with many of her decisions, which made it hard to get through at times. Being uncomfortable with her circumstances, however, is often the point, so I don’t fault her for that. more
There is so much to say about the failing of the system for poor people, especially single mothers, and just how hard the working class have to work with absolutely zero safety net. The tenuous balance of those trying to get ahead is a message that should be told. this is not the person to tell that story. This is a person who is so self-indulged and without any sense of prioritization or strong decision making. I found myself flabbergasted again and agin by the actions of this person and how much of her stress was brought on by herself, versus the system. more
I liked “Maid” pretty well but this one was a no. I got so tired of the author feeling sorry for herself and repeatedly telling us what a victim she was while simultaneously running after men, going to concerts, drinking, and leaving her child with any Tom, Dick or Harry who happened to be around. While I sympathize with anyone struggling in poverty, the author managed to make me dislike her pretty early on. . more
DNF - it is really rare for me to DNF a book. I really enjoyed Maid but I did not like Class at all. The first half of the book that I read seemed like a lot of complaining that the author could not go out and party because she was a single mom getting a degree in English. . more
I did read some of the negative reviews prior and went in thinking people were overdramatic and frankly, quite rude about this second book from Stephanie Land. I wasn’t as enamored with Maid as other people but thought it was still quite a beautiful and necessary story to tell. It was a solid 3 stars and I thought the show was well done and was excited to read more of her story about moving to Montana. After getting about 30% through this book, I started understanding the negative reviews about this and by 60%, I was agreeing with them all. I’d like to preface this with my take before and after I read the book. more
No. Just No. This woman is the quintessential slug that you find on a pylon on a pier in the ocean. Just hanging on until time to make a move. Mo Money. more