Class

Class is the follow up to Stephanie Land’s award-winning memoir Maid, which was also turned into a Netflix series. The subject matter is largely the same, though this work focuses more on Land’s life as a mother and a student at the University of Montana than on her life cleaning houses in Seattle.

The writing is fine if a bit pedestrian. Much of the memoir is recounted through descriptive lists of what happened rather than scenes actively shown. It feels like a first draft in that way. The choices Land makes to be a student while raising her six year old, Emilia, are questionable. Land laments her financial constraints but chooses Cliff bars as her snack of choice—a more expensive version of a granola bar—and cleans houses around her class schedule rather than getting a more traditional job. The argument that her schedule can be flexible this way makes sense, but it’s hard to feel sorry for her when she’s chosen some of her hardships.

As someone who grew up in a working class house and then had my own money issues for years, I find her story neither inspiring nor important. Those who read it and get something more from it, I’m guessing, are experiencing her poverty as tourists: looking in on her life as one through a kaleidoscope, awed by what they see all the while knowing they can put the view down. It’s well written, though, so if you’re interested in memoirs about socioeconomic differences in America, this one may well be for you.