Maid

Maid

Author: Stephanie Land

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2019-01-22

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0316505102

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"A single mother's personal, unflinching look at America's class divide (Barack Obama)," this New York Times bestselling memoir is the inspiration for the Netflix limited series, hailed by Rolling Stone as "a great one." 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 found 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 as a "nameless ghost" who quietly shared in her clients' triumphs, tragedies, and deepest secrets. Driven to carve out a better life for her family, she cleaned by day and took online classes by night, writing relentlessly as she worked toward earning a college degree. She wrote of the true stories that weren't being told: of living on food stamps and WIC coupons, of government programs that barely provided housing, of aloof government employees who shamed her for receiving what little assistance she did. Above all else, she wrote about pursuing the myth of the American Dream from the poverty line, all the while slashing through deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor. 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. "A single mother's personal, unflinching look at America's class divide, a description of the tightrope many families walk just to get by, and a reminder of the dignity of all work." -PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, Obama's Summer Reading List


Far from My Father

Far from My Father

Author: Véronique Tadjo

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2014-04-07

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 0813935644

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"To attain some sort of universal value," Véronique Tadjo has said, "a piece of work has to go deep into the particular in order to reveal our shared humanity." In Far from My Father, the latest novel from this internationally acclaimed author, a woman returns to the Côte d'Ivoire after her father’s death. She confronts not only unresolved family issues that she had left behind but also questions about her own identity that arise amidst the tensions between traditional and modern worlds. The drama that unfolds tells us much about the evolving role of women, the legacy of polygamy, and the economic challenges of daily life in Abidjan. On a more autobiographical level, the author depicts a daughter’s efforts to come to terms with what she knew and did not know about her father. Set against the backdrop of civil strife that has wracked the Côte d'Ivoire since the turn of the century, this story shows Tadjo’s remarkable ability to inhabit a character’s inner world and emotional landscape while creating a narrative of great historic and cultural dimensions. CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from the French


The Maid

The Maid

Author: Kimberly Cutter

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2012-03-29

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1408821869

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The girl who led an army. The peasant who crowned a king. The maid who became a legend.


The Maid's Version

The Maid's Version

Author: Daniel Woodrell

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2013-08-15

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 1444732862

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In 1929, an explosion in a Missouri dance hall killed forty-two people. Who was to blame? Mobsters from St Louis? Embittered gypsies? The preacher who cursed the waltzing couples for their sins? Or could it just have been a colossal accident? Alma Dunahew, whose scandalous younger sister was among the dead, believes the answer lies in a dangerous love affair, but no one will listen to a maid from the wrong side of the tracks. It is only decades later that her grandson hears her version of events - and must decide if it is the right one.


The Maid's Daughter

The Maid's Daughter

Author: Mary Romero

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2012-12-31

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1479814660

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At a very young age, Olivia left her family and traditions in Mexico to live with her mother, Carmen, in one of Los Angeles's most exclusive and nearly all-white gated communities. Based on over twenty years of research, Romero brings Olivia's remarkable story to life. We watch as she struggles through adolescence, declares her independence and eventually goes off to college and becomes a successful professional. Much of her story is told in Olivia's voice and we hear of both her triumphs and her setbacks. Romero explores this story about belonging, identity, and resistance, illustrating Olivia's challenge to establish her sense of identity, and the patterns of inclusion and exclusion in her life. Romero points to the hidden costs of paid domestic labor that are transferred to the families of private household workers and nannies, and shows how everyday routines are important in maintaining and assuring that various forms of privilege are passed on from one generation to another. She shows how mythologies of meritocracy, the land of opportunity, and the American dream remain firmly in place while simultaneously erasing injustices and the struggles of the working poor. From publisher description.


Maid for Murder

Maid for Murder

Author: Barbara Colley

Publisher: Kensington Books

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9781575668741

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After Jackson Dubuisson, a client of her housecleaning service, is found murdered in his study, Charlotte LaRue finds herself unwillingly drawn into the mystery when those who knew the victim insist on confiding in her.


Maid in SA

Maid in SA

Author: Zukiswa Wanner

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781431408962

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Maid in SA is a laugh-out-loud take on a woman's home, but is as serious as the security guards in gated communities. It is a quirky, lighter look at one of South Africa's most important, yet most overlooked, relationships: that between a domestic worker and her madam. In this book you 'll find the women in your life - your mothers, your sisters, your cousins, your friends and yourself.


Bootstrapper

Bootstrapper

Author: Mardi Jo Link

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0307743586

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A hilarious memoir about a newly single mother who makes a seemingly impossible resolution: to stay in her century old-farmhouse and continue raising her three boys on well-water, chopping wood, and dirt. “Glints with Link's raw, willful energy.... Possesses that rare, elusive, but much sought-after feeling of authenticity." (The New York Times Book Review) When Mardi Jo Link finds herself newly single after nineteen years of marriage, she decidesto stay in her old farmhouse with her three boys. Armed with an unflagging sense of humor and a relentless optimism that would put Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm to shame, Link and her resolute accomplices struggle through one long, hard year of blizzards, foxes, bargain cooking, rampaging poultry, a zucchini-growing contest, and other challenges.


Lady's Maid

Lady's Maid

Author: Margaret Forster

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2012-08-22

Total Pages: 687

ISBN-13: 0307823024

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“Fascinating . . . The reader is treated to a revealing account of the passionate romance between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning through the eyes of an intimate observer.”—Booklist Young and timid but full of sturdy good sense and awakening sophistication, Lily Wilson arrives in London in 1844, becoming a lady’s maid to the fragile, housebound Elizabeth Barrett. Lily is quickly drawn to her mistress’ s gaiety and sharp intelligence, the power of her poetry, and her deep emotional need. It is a strange intimacy that will last sixteen years. It is Lily who smuggles Miss Barrett out of the gloomy Wimpole Street house, witnesses her secret wedding to Robert Browning in an empty church, and flees with them to threadbare lodgings and the heat, light, and colors of Italy. As housekeeper, nursemaid, companion, and confidante, Lily is with Elizabeth in every crisis–birth, bereavement, travel, literary triumph. As her devotion turns almost to obsession, Lily forgets her own fleeting loneliness. But when Lily’s own affairs take a dramatic turn, she comes to expect the loyalty from Elizabeth that she herself has always given. Praise for Lady's Maid “[A] wonderful novel . . . fully imagined and persuasive fiction.”—The New York Times Book Review “Absorbing . . . heartbreaking . . . grips the reader's imagination on every page . . . [Margaret] Forster paints a vivid picture of class, station, hypocrisy and survival in Victorian society.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Extremely readable . . . The author's sense of the nineteenth century seems innate.”—The New Yorker “Highly recommended . . . an engrossing novel of the colorful Browning ménage.”—Library Journal “Delightful . . . entertaining.”—Vogue