Class is a follow-up to the book Maid. If you are a fan of true stories, this will be a great read for you. I enjoyed learning more about Stephanie as she struggled to support herself and her daughter while she went to school. I look forward to more books by Stephanie Land. Thank you to NetGalley, One Signal publishers/Atria for the ARC. I am leaving this review and is my own opinion. #class, #stephanieland, #onesignalpublishers, #atria, #netgalley

This books that Land writes are great. They allow you to see the world from a place where you may never have thought to look. When you read this memoir, you can't help but feel emotionally attached to the characters and the story.

A very interesting personal memoir about a single mother who goes back to college while juggling part-time gigs, government bureaucracy and societal shaming. She is a good writer and I was interested in her story and struggles. My favorite parts were her relationship with her daughter and her description of all of the obstacles and hurdles she dealt with while trying to get a college education to set her up for future success. I have not read her first book (but I own it and plan to read it). Other reviewers said they prefer her first book to this one but since there was a lot I liked in this one, I look forward to reading her first book "Maid."

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for an ARC and I voluntarily left this review.

Stephanie Land’s memoir, Class - a follow up to her best selling debut ‘Maid’ is a tale of resilience, determination and navigating the exhausting and unfair barriers of the system , all in pursuit of higher education.
This is according to me a better and more well written book than Maid. The reader feels her frustration, anger at her circumstances and even her small joys to celebrate her tiniest of wins. The reader feels for her, with her as she balances the tight rope of being Single mom, a student with little support from friends or family or anyone for that matter and the strong willingness to attain higher education. The tenderness and love in her relationship with her six year old daughter is penned in the most heartfelt way. There is so much more the reader is left wanting to know which most probably with be the book after this one.
I flew through this book, it’s an absolute page turner and highly recommended. Hope to see the follow up to the Netflix show as well!

After reading Maid, I knew I needed to read the second memoir by Stephanie Land.

And I'm very conflicted on how I felt about it. I think I went in expecting it to be more like Maid, but this one felt more centered around the author's sexual encounters in college and continued poor decisions.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the gifted copy.

This memoir, much like the one that preceeded it, was wonderful but painful to read. While I am not a single parent, many of my other circumstances and choices reflect those of the author, right down to the design of the Discover card I took out during my undergrad years. The account is relentless, and I can't think of a moment that I'd describe as truly hopeful, but I wouldn't go quite so far as to describe it as bleak. Despite the grim content, it was easy to fly through the compelling narrative in just a couple days, pausing only to explain to my partner why I was gasping or tearing up as I listened to the audiobook while going about daily tasks. Stylistically (and, at times, thematically) it reminds me of "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed, which is one of my all-time favorite memoirs.

I LOVED "maid" (before it was a TV show) and I continue to adore Stephanie Land's writing. "Class" is an expert follow up. I Thanks to netgalley for the ARC!

I really liked this book, it was different than anything else I've read which was a breath of fresh air. I will be recommending this to my friends, and auto buy this author!

3.5 Stars. This second memoir bridges the gap between the two voices in Maid: that of the young, struggling mother working as a maid, and the author herself years later. It focuses on her life and struggles while Land finished her BA in Montana. I found this valuable as a prompt to question all the structural and societal biases that require people to "perform" poverty in the right way in order to qualify for benefits or even just sympathy, and I really like Land's writing style. However, this felt more chronological narrative than memoir than Maid, and I wanted a little more depth. In this installment, there is a much stronger feel of a support network in the background - friends who take her daughter camping, or who she hikes with, or who provide babysitting - but they mostly stay in the shadows, and I'd like see more of those relationships; there is a little dissonance in her dissatisfaction with the reliability of her friends/network and all the small ways they show up in these background roles, and I think there is more there that would be very interesting to explore.

The true story of a single mother making things work with an unsupportive ex-husband. I liked it, but the magic of The Maid was somehow missing for me. Maybe she needed more distance from this part of her life to truly offer insight.

Congratulations to you and your healing. This book is beautiful ♥️🙏 thankfully it is not as heart breaking as maid. This one is about the ups and downs. What came next. ♥️
Thank you netgallery for letting me read this title.

Congratulations and that you Stephanie for sharing your journey and letting us heal with you ♥️

DNF.
Truly was not enjoying this memoir at all and it was not for me. The voice felt whiny and like a giant pity party/author feeling like a victim constantly. It was not in any way inspiring for me to read so I will not be finishing.

My ARC was provided by Atria Books via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I am likely to be a minority among reviewers of Class, a memoir by Stephanie Land. While I am aware of her previous book, Maid, and its widespread popularity, I have not read that book, nor have I watched the Netflix series based on it. However, I found Class to be an engaging and thought-provoking standalone memoir. Since Land was pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in the University of Montana’s creative writing program, it follows that she’s an excellent writer. She balances her storytelling (mostly about her unreliable ex-husband and failed relationships) with the point of the book: the grueling journey of navigating the social welfare system as a single-parent college student living in poverty. Her story is sad, but interesting and very important.

Picking up after her move to Montana for college, Land recounts her years working for her degree while struggling to provide for herself and her daughter. While I did not think CLASS was as good as MAID, and there were a couple of scenes I wish had not been included in this book, I recommend CLASS to those who read MAID or watched the Netflix adaptation and feel invested in Stephanie’s story. I found the most impactful parts of the memoir to be when Land discussed the difficultly of navigating government assistance programs, and in showing the very real strain their circumstances had on her and her daughter.

Class by Stephanie Land. Pub Date: November 7, 2023. Rating: 3 stars. First off, I have read this author's first novel, Maid, and really found it informative, enlightening of poverty and full of grit. This novel, which is a continuation of the author's journey as a single mother, was not as impactful to me as a reader. I found the author making repetitive mistakes, lacking ownership of her mistakes and being judgmental to the government system when she was not getting the help she felt she needed based on repetitive mistakes she was making. I get the government system is not perfect, but I felt the author lacked personal self reflection on her actions in the endless cycle she was in. I wanted to enjoy this novel and learn more, but I found it hard to have empathy while reading this novel. Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for this e-arc in exchange for my honest review. #class #netgalley

Thank you @netgalley and @atriabooks for the ARC of the book "Class" by Stephanie Land.  I have not yet read "Maid" and while the book "Class" absolutely irritated me to no end, I am still interested in reading "Maid".  The book "Class" left me annoyed by the author's lack of personal responsibility or care for her life and subsequently her children.  It was very hard to get behind her cause and her reason for writing the book because of her "give me because I am poor" attitude.  I continued to get a sense that she thinks that taxpayers owe her for her mistakes and that they should just help her pay for school, food, clothes without her giving anything back.  I felt very judgy about the way that she spent her loan money and financial support on alcohol and concert tickets.  A person who is on financial assistance does still deserve to enjoy what anyone else enjoys but it seems crazy to me that she can whine so much about her predicament but then be so wasteful.  I was a good 75% through the book when I realized that this woman is 5 years younger than me and was acting like a college student in their early 20s rather than a college student trying to make it in her mid 30s!  I learned through a quick Google, that she was not born into a life of poverty by any means and while her mistakes as a youth shouldnt punish her in her middle years, she clearly didnt learn much from her errors.  The one thing I did really like though: she put on full blast the hypocrisy of the 3rd man who impregnated her.

After liking the previous book “Maid” and loving the adaptation tv series on Netflix, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Land’s follow-up, “Class.” However, this nonfiction follow-up lacked the pizazz that I found in its predecessor memoir. While I don’t like to pass judgments or be too critical of one’s own personal story, it seemed that Land was making a lot of rather questionable choices in her life that led to some of her difficulties and not the classist system. I was a bit surprised at the lack of self-awareness in this regard. This was a gritty read and I didn’t find myself taking as much from it as I did her earlier work. 3 stars ⭐️ . Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy for review.

Stephanie Land follows up her best selling book, Maid, with this book. This sequel follows her life as she moves away from her abusive ex, takes college classes, and raises her daughter mostly on her own. If I’m being honest there were times I was so frustrated with some of her decision making. It seemed as though she consistently made bad choices when it came to spending money, taking classes, and in relationships. I had to remind myself that there is a such a thing as poverty mindset and while many of these things made no sense to me, I have never feared being hungry or wondered how I would stay warm. There is a lot of this book that is just about sheer survival and while as an outsider looking in I am able to judge her decisions, I have never walked in her shoes. I can see this being on Netflix and really resonating with many people.

A continuation from Land's Maid, Class is an intimate and at times heartbreaking look at parental guilt, the battles between personal ambition and single parenting, and personal desire and finances. Who has the right to take the time for an education? Who has the right to have children? What kind of work is valued in our society? Class is written in clear, honest prose. It offers an indictment of our educational system as well as identifies the gaps and hoop-jumping of our welfare and assistance programs. At its heart, it is an inspiring testimony of a mother’s triumph against all odds.

I find it hard to rate memoirs. I was interested to read because I am currently watching maid on netflix and wanted to read more of the story. I felt it was a story worth reading and I feel like I learned some things but was disappointed I some of the choices she made. Overall worth the read. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an e ARC of this book.