I’m not sure this book was quite as compelling as Maid, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I could relate to the struggles of single parenting with a difficult ex and limited finances. I admired Land’s determination to succeed and follow her dreams despite her circumstances. I will continue to read memoirs by this author.

This book brought up a lot of thoughts and feelings from my own life that I thought I had gotten past. I was an older, non traditional college student as well. I was told many times that I was selfish for going to school and then that I was selfish for going back to further my career. I was also in an unhealthy relationship at the time and struggled to pay the bills, feed the kids, and not lose my mind trying to navigate life in an unhappy marriage. Her descriptions of juggling bills, car repairs, and minimum payments is all too accurate. I didn’t always agree with her choices but they were hers to make. I think that’s the abuse in her past likely influenced the choices she made in who she dated and in how she was reluctant to get too close to anyone. I enjoyed this book and it made me think about a lot of things.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher and author for the ARC.

Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education (Atria/One Signal, 2023) is Stephanie Land’s detailed account of her time acquiring an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing at the University of Montana, Missoula.

A standalone memoir, as well as an excellent twin to her New York Times bestselling book Maid, Land highlights the socioeconomic disparities among many students attending college, especially those who are first-generation, single mothers, and/or living without familial support. Land also stresses the toll that food and housing insecurity, including fifteen homes at age five for her daughter extracts from energy that she could spend studying, with her child, or even working.

The double entendre of the book’s title “class” piqued my curiosity, but I also realized that there was a third meaning (triple entendre?). In addition to socioeconomic class and college classes, part of Land’s life was colored by the behavior, the class(isness), of other people in her day-to-day. Without naming specific professors who, perhaps, lacked empathy for her experiences, I would like to emphasize that the professor and author, Walter Kirn, was written about so fondly that I might pick up another one of his books soon.

Particularly adept at cutting through the mirage of platitudes, red tape, and false narratives on college attendance and how single moms are utilizing social services Stephanie Land successfully presents another humanistic, socioeconomic treatise, and gender studies book for the decades: right up there with Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America and Tara Westover’s Educated: A Memoir.

Thank you to Stephanie Land, Atria/One Signal, and Net Galley for the eArc.

So many people I know read and loved Stephanie Land’s first book, Maid. I read it then watched the Netflix series and thoroughly enjoyed both. I was completely gripped by her story and her struggles. I sympathized with her determination and wanted to see her succeed.

Class, her follow-up, recently came out, and it details her desire to continue her education and her ongoing struggles. I was so excited to dig in where we left off in Maid, and see how Stephanie’s life unfolded since. She is a fantastic writer, that’s for sure, and she certainly has talent.

I didn’t feel the same amount of sympathy in this book and couldn’t relate to her constantly poor choices and risky behavior. Her attitude rubbed me the wrong way and when I finished the book, I felt lukewarm about it. I wanted to see her succeed, but this book didn’t leave me feeling the same as her first.

Plot:

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). Later it was adapted into the hit Netflix series Maid, which was viewed by 67 million households and was Netflix’s fourth most-watched show in 2021, garnering three Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Stephanie’s escape out of poverty and abuse in search of a better life inspired millions.

Maid was a story about a housecleaner, but it was also a story about a woman with a dream. In Class, 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.

Class is Stephanie Land’s follow up to her book, Maid. In this book, Stephanie balances parenthood, life as a student, and daily responsibilities. She discusses the mental and physical tolls of poverty.

I really love Stephanie’s writing style. Her story is an incredibly heart wrenching perspective of her experience as a member of the working poor. Throughout her experiences, she was forced to persevere and put on a brave face. Her story highlights the inequities in our country, but ado acknowledges her privileges as a white woman.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for an ARC copy of this title in exchange for my honest review.

Stephanie Land's Maid is a book that I have never forgotten (The "Netflix" series---not so much). Land and her struggle to raise her child and clean homes, all while making next to nothing, has stayed with me. I have long admired her strength to leave an abusive relationship and find the will to seek a better life. Class is the follow-up to Maid. In Class, Land is seeking a Masters degree in Fine Arts. Her goal is to be a "real writer." There is more struggle, a lot more struggle in this memoir. Stephanie ends up having another child---while baring her soul and being so damn honest. Some may judge her for her life and her choices. I find her drive and strength---and her choices----a triumph. I know this book will be a "miss" for many---but it's a hit for me. Land is her own woman, and I respect the hell out of her!

I remember sitting in my college classes as an 18-year-old woman and thinking how strange it was to see someone in their thirties taking the same class. They seemed out of place, and I don't remember talking to them much. However, now I wish I had. I have to assume that there is a cool story about why someone in their thirties would go back to college. I truly missed out on an opportunity.

Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education by Stephanie Land opened my eyes of what it would be like to try to raise as a child as a single mother, attend college courses in order to attain a degree, all while living in poverty.

Land is the bestselling author who inspired the series, "Maid," on Netflix. This book takes place during Land's last year in college. She invites us in to share the highs and lows of her last year in college as a thirty-something as she aspires to become a writer.

I have not read Land's previous book, but I did enjoy this one. I will now have to go back and read it.

I gave this book four out of five stars for my honest review.

Reviewed in Literary Mama
Reviews | November/December 2023

Writing Her Way Through Poverty: A Review of Class
By Shellie Kalinsky
Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education
by Stephanie Land
Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2023; 288pp; $28.00
Buy Book
It’s not easy to follow your dreams when you’re an outsider. As a fifty-four-year-old mother and grandmother in graduate school for creative writing, I sometimes feel like the oddball of my MFA cohort. Fortunately, I have a strong support network of family and friends that I can lean on while pursuing my education. Stephanie Land did not have the same kind of support, and that’s one of the themes of her new memoir, Class, which explores how Land earned her degree as a single mom navigating school, work, and parenting while living in poverty.

Class book cover
Class continues the story Land started in her debut memoir, Maid, a book that became a New York Times bestseller and Netflix series. Maid tells how Land escaped an abusive relationship with the father of her child and found a path to college through the help of scholarships, loans, and public assistance.

In Class Land is now a 35-year-old undergraduate and a single mother living in poverty with her kindergarten-aged daughter, Emilia, in Missoula, Montana. In honest, clean prose, she describes their life on the margins. “Most of my time as a mother had been spent weighing the pros and cons between a horrible and not-so-great situation. There was hardly ever a good choice.” A broken-down car means no way to get to school or work; no money means nothing to eat but peanut butter until next month’s government SNAP benefit is deposited into her account. Their apartment thermostat won’t heat above 65 degrees. It gets worse when the temperature falls below freezing outside. When it becomes a matter of survival, Land brings portable heaters into the house. “I stopped caring if my landlords would find out,” she says. “I tried to imagine a baby crawling on the freezing floor. Add that to the feral cat who lived under the front porch of the house that Emilia and I were allergic to, the mildew and mold growing in the bathroom, and it was a perfect formula for constant illness.”

Land’s situation is both precarious and humiliating. Each time she submits paperwork to recertify her eligibility for food stamps, she is forced to undergo a microscopic examination of her life, as if she were attempting to cheat the government. “These invasions of privacy caused me to fidget and squirm but I submitted to them, like everything else, because it was another means to an end,” she recalls. On Emilia’s first day of kindergarten, the cafeteria cashier loudly calls Emilia “a free meal kid.” When Land later receives her SNAP recertification, the benefit has been reduced because Emilia is now in school during the day. Readers feel the discomfort and shame heaped on Land’s shoulders. It’s both heartbreaking and infuriating.

In addition to government assistance, Land combines funds from a partial scholarship, Pell grants, and student loans to cover her education and living expenses. Some readers might wonder why she doesn’t leave school, work full-time until Emilia is older, then return to her studies later. But all mothers who have faced the impossible task of shrinking our career aspirations into smaller and smaller vessels while we pour ourselves into our children understand why Land presses on.

When Land was younger, she was obsessed with writing. Before motherhood she claimed her diaries would be the first thing she’d grab if her house caught fire. Later she reflects, “Now I had to dig them out of my basement. This downright poetic indication of their lower status in my life created an indescribable discomfort in the deepest center of my chest. The last time I had looked at these things, motherhood hadn’t yet consumed me.”

Then, in Land’s senior year at Montana’s creative writing program, a professor calls her writing “solid gold.” Another professor predicts Land’s success: “This is going to be a book. This is going to be a movie!” Their words inspire her to apply to the university’s prestigious MFA program, despite pressure to earn wages. When a judge in her child support case says she is “voluntarily underemployed” and insinuates Land is a grifter because she lacks full-time employment, she thinks: “This was a child support hearing, not a criminal case, but I felt like I’d been charged with negligence or worse, and I needed to defend myself for going to college.”

At times I wondered whether Land would fall into deeper debt or successfully claw her way out of poverty. Her monthly budget covers only minimum payments on student loans she accrued from her undergraduate studies in Alaska, she needs roommates to help cover her rent, and she runs out of food and money before the end of the month. She says of her student loans, “Given the monumental sum, I knew with certainty that I would have that debt for the rest of my life.” Almost every decision Land makes is measured against its cost. When she takes Emilia for a special ice cream treat, the moment is clouded by the knowledge that money spent on ice cream is money unavailable for groceries. Unlike her carefree classmates who party hop every weekend or the well-dressed married moms who mingle at the bus stop, Land navigates these hardships alone. “My desire was for the overwhelming feelings of desperation, of panic and having nowhere to turn and disaster always breathing down my neck, to end.”

At one point in her studies, Land seeks guidance from the program’s director, a woman who had attended graduate school as a single mother, written a book about it, and gone on to lead the department. Land hopes the director will be a mentor, but she turns out to be another gatekeeper who tells Land the department won’t be able to help her with graduate school. Later she criticizes Land’s writing, calling it relentless. Land uses her disapproval as fuel for her work. In her notebook she writes, “My life may be relentless but goddammit so am I.”

The most compelling part of Land’s story is that despite all of these obstacles, she keeps going: “Every time I wanted to cry from the crushing hopelessness that life seemed to bring, something inside me hissed you must not allow yourself to fall apart.” She does it for Emilia. “I needed her to know I was good at this thing I fought so hard to become.”

As a mother there were times I chose to put my education and career on hold because I couldn’t juggle it all. I felt like I had failed. Reading how Land found a way through all of her difficulties inspires me to keep going with my own writing now. It reminds me that the only way through the hard moments is to never give up.

Land narrates her journey with a straightforward voice that seeks neither praise nor pity. “It’s not that I wanted things to be easy, but a little less hard would be nice,” she says. From navigating the byzantine financial aid process to finding student housing as a single mother, her story exposes indignities in our socioeconomic structure and reveals the inequitable nature of higher education. “I had forgotten the part of the game where no one’s education mattered more than the money the university could make from your opportunity to soak up all that learning. God forbid they would make it affordable or easy.”

At its core, Class is about how deeply a mother can love her child while at the same time trying to love herself. Land wants more than anything to be a writer—and a mother. Against impossible odds, she is both.


https://literarymama.com/articles/departments/2023/11/writing-her-way-through-poverty-a-review-of-class?utm_campaign=nd23011&utm_source=su&utm_medium=email&utm_content=reclass

CLASS by Stephanie Land (Maid) is subtitled "A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education." It's an eye-opening non-fiction work that describes the difficulties of attending college as a single mom. Land relates her own experiences while also exploring social justice issues like food and housing insecurity, pointing out: "The fight to make rent, eat, and find childcare was constant. I never got a break from it." Her struggles and loneliness will elicit empathy from readers while also encouraging them to think about questions such as "Who has the right to go to college? And what kind of work is valued in our culture?" For a preview of her writing style, see the Op-Ed piece in The New York Times. There she weaves in statistics like "23 percent of undergraduate students and 12 percent of graduate students face food insecurity" while also relating a harrowing after school experience for her young daughter. CLASS received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and is a LibraryReads selection for November. Land says that she shares these stories in order to let people know their feelings are valid: that life does indeed feel impossible at times. If you are interested in hearing more, Land will be speaking at an upcoming Family Action Network event on November 13 at 7:00pm. Access is available via Zoom.

Thank you Atria for this copy (and to S&S BookClub favorites for a physical copy). Class by Stephanie Land is excellent, I am the kind of reader who wants to dive into themes on college and learning in memoirs, I loved Educated, The Glass Castle and this fits in with those memoirs at least for me. At times it's important to sit with the ideas about who gets to go to college, who gets to be successful in college (and what is success in college anyway), and then to think about bigger themes on art and creativity and motivation. What does it mean to dream big but struggle with day to day challenges?
I appreciate the advocacy Stephanie Land does and her openness to using her voice, her writing, and her experience to highlight challenges and inequities in education.

I truly appreciated the authors first book Maid that walked us through her struggles of being a single parent struggling with emotional and physical abuse and trying to survive. So I was excited to receive her next book Class that continues her journey from the publisher and to hear it’s the Good Morning America book pick!
Class continues the authors journey she is now thirty five and she has moved to Montana with her daughter so she can go to college and get her English degree. We are taken on Stephanie’s journey as she is attending school to get her BA in English, she relays her challenges and complications that go with single parenting, low income, and juggling work with a school schedule for both her and her daughter. I truly appreciated her brutal honesty and she doesn’t try to portray herself as a perfect mom but a woman trying to survive in a system that looks down and judges her. It honesty amazes me that one small thing can literally take food from her and her daughters mouth. The government preaches they want people to work and make a life for themselves, yet they turn up their noses when a person wants to go to school to make a better life for themselves , and if they are a single parent they aren’t willing to help but call them lazy if they don’t work full time.
This book shows you that if you ever have a dream of a better life, and are willing to have motherhood and education and dream of a better future for you and your family you deserve and just because your living at the poverty line your are still allowed to have hopes and dreams,! This book is yet another story of how flawed are government system is and that it still needs major work. The story is emotional and really kept me turning the pages and I finished the book in two days, I truly appreciate Stephanie Land sharing her story with us.

This memoir follows Ms. Land as she works hard to complete college and become a writer, while raising her daughter with minimal child support. It is an interesting account of food disparity and stretching a budget to make ends meet. Faced with difficult decisions & frequent prejudice she fights to break stereotypes and show she is a force to be reckoned with. An interesting especially for fans of her previous book, Maid. Thanks to Atria and NetGalley for this ARC. This is my honest review.

I absolutely loved Maid and so when I saw Class on NetGalley I began crossing fingers and hoping I would be approved to read it as an arc. While Class was different from Maid in a lot of ways, there were still things that made me feel so connected to Land and the challenges she faced as a result of poverty.

In Class we find Stephanie and her daughter Emilia living in a college town with Stephanie finishing up her Bachelor of Arts and Emilia starting Kindergarten. Despite being a full time student and having student loans, Stephanie still needs to do odd jobs such as babysitting and house keeping in order to have enough food for her and Emilia. Her Ex is as controlling and abusive as ever, even though he is further away now and her lack of familial support is the same, as is the limited social services that are just as challenging to navigate. Poverty is of course a thread throughout and the way that Stephanie and Emilia are treated because they are experiencing poverty continues to be a heartbreaking and incredibly frustrating series of events as well.

Land does a really great job of explaining why poverty is a continuous circle through her life examples and the messages that she is receiving from those around her in those difficult moments. For example, Stephanie is trying to finish university so that she can have a better chance at getting a profitable career in writing. To do that, she needs government funding and what she tries to explain to endless numbers of workers in various social services sectors is that a short-term investment to help her and Emilia survive these next months and years will allow her to be a self-sufficient hard working professional a few years down the road. But the system is not set up for that, and thus the cycle of poverty continues because people who want an education to better their lives often can't afford to get it.

As in Maid I connected with both Stephanie and Emilia both in their experiences and their feelings. Stephanie is able to describe childhood trauma as an adult who experienced her own trauma, and as an adult witnessing it in the child she cares for. Often memoirs about trauma show a person who experiences childhood trauma and then struggles with that trauma throughout their life, but rarely has the person worked through the trauma so significantly that they are able to witness the signs and reflect on them when raising their children. This is intergenerational trauma in its essence.

Whether you are a childhood trauma survivor, someone who has experienced poverty, someone who works with either of the above or a person who has limited understanding of trauma or poverty, you need to read these books. I know, that description covers almost all people, and it is meant to. This series is informative, interesting and important for everyone to read, if for nothing else because, to quote Land: "Empathy takes work" And by reading this book you are putting in the minimum amount of work required to become empathetic.

From the writer that inspired the Netflix series, Maid. This story follows Stephanie Land, who is now finishing up her college degree and raising her daughter while also fighting with her baby daddy for child support. She probably could have given up on her degree and started working so she could better support her daughter and herself. However, I admired her for her tenacity in escaping an abusive relationship, without any support from her family and trying to get her college degree. She is a great writer and does a great job of describing what it was like living below the poverty line and trying to escape it while raising her kids. While many could be frustrated at her life choices, it was important to remember that she living below the poverty line, had recently escaped an abusive relationship, and had no support from her family members. The only ones that really seemed to support her were her teachers and some of her friends.

Thanks to Netgalley, Atria Books, and the author for early access to this memoir.

This review is hard to write because I was so disappointed in this book. I loved her first book Maid,
I understand that the author is living in very difficult circumstances, and when reading Maid I really found myself rooting for her. When reading Class, I found that a lot of the decisions she was making weren’t the most responsible choices. I struggled reading about her being so exhausted and not able to find childcare to work, but when her daughter was away with her father she was out drinking and partying.
While I do not doubt that her situation is hard, I don’t think this book gave me the same feelings I got from her first book. It seems in this follow up I’m reading about someone making poor choices which are making her difficult situation even harder. I didn’t get the same feelings from her first book.

Stephanie shares her experiences as a single mom while earning a college degree in writing. Stephanie is a great storyteller. Even though I didn’t have kids during my college years, I could relate to the financial and time stresses of being a student. At times it was a bit depressing to read because she is sharing the difficult times in her life while trying to protect her daughter from a verbally abusive father. I skipped over the paragraphs about her romantic interludes because it was too spicy for me. My favorite part of the book is at the end when she delivers her second daughter, Coraline. What a sweet, tender moment in the book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

I remember enjoying Maid when it came out but this book seemed sort of rushed and unfinished. I think it must have been written after the popularity of the Netflix series based on Maid but it lacked depth. I don"t know if so much time has pasted it's not as fresh in her mind anymore or if she really was in a hurry but I didn't get a lot of insight or introspection in this one. It wasn't bad, it was just blah.

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. The writing honestly is all over the place and not easy to follow. Kinda mad that I wasted time on this one.

Trigger warnings: abortion, derogatory religious perspectives, language.

Thanks to Netgalley and Atria Books for my electronic advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Stephanie Land’s first book MAID was a rightfully-deserved bestseller and became a hit Netflix show. CLASS chronicles her struggles to attend college as a single mother, living below the poverty line and constantly fighting a system designed to keep her down.

Land writes with brutal honesty about college instructors who casually toss out cruel comments, food insecurity and basically being one step away from catastrophe: “Questioning the logic was useless, since there simply wasn’t any. All government assistance programs operated on the assumption that every person who walked into their office brought with them the possibility of scamming them in some way.”

While pursuing a 4-year education might be a given for many people, for Land it was a near-constant battle. She was continually having to justify her college degree to her abusive ex and to the family courts. She often felt guilty for just wanting a night out, a weekend alone or a cup of coffee from the local coffee shop. (“The paranoia that I would somehow get caught in a frivolous moment never left me. After several years on government assistance, my value as a member of society no longer seemed to be my education, but rather the low-wage work I would potentially do to make life easier in some way for a person whose family could afford to pay for them to go to college.”)

Despite all of this, Land graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in English and rest, as they say, is history. CLASS is a story of resilience and pursuing your dreams. Land never gave up even when it seemed that everyone was betting on her to fail. Highly recommend this inspiring memoir.

Wow, this was really powerful, albeit frustrating when certain risks were taken--however, it wasn't my story to tell.