Stephanie Land, "Maid"

As of 2017, there were at least two million domestic workers in the U.S., the majority of them women. These housekeepers, nannies, and caregivers seldom get minimum wage, let alone overtime, sick leave, or vacation pay. They disappear as individuals. “I’d become a nameless ghost,” Land writes about her years working as a maid. A single mother who tried to survive on $9 an hour, Land gives an unforgettable first-hand report of America from below the poverty line, recounting the frustration and humiliation of arduous labor, poverty, and inadequate government programs. Determined to provide a better life for her daughter, Land, now a staff writer at the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and a fellow at the Center for Community Change, sheds much needed light on the realities of today’s economic inequality. Land is in conversation with Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the classic Nickel and Dimed.

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Produced by Tom Warren