I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I read Maid and was looking forward to it. It was an interesting perspective of the struggles she had. I think that people who enjoyed Maid will also enjoy Class.

I absolutely loved Maid, so I was excited to receive an advance reader copy of Class. Class continues Stephanie Land’s story as she continues in her college studies. The amount of obstacles she has to overcome is astounding, but she is determined to finish college. Just like Maid, this book is the story of the working poor in the US, and it tells how hard it is to get ahead. Great book! Thank you, NetGalley, for the copy!

I would think it would be quite intimidating as an author to follow up a debut like Maid, an international bestseller turned Netflix series, but Stephanie Land did an admirable job with her second memoir, Class, which has the reader following her during her senior year of college as she struggles to balance finishing her education, raising her daughter, and becoming pregnant with her second child all while living under the poverty line and struggling - literally - to keep food on the table. While Maid was extremely impactful as an examination of poverty and single motherhood in our country, Class feels much more personal to the author. The same themes are explored, of course, but there’s something more intimate about the slice of life we get here. That said, it still felt somewhat arms-length (I found it strange, for example, that there was no explanation or even parenthetical aside about why her daughter Mia now went by her full name Emilia) and I struggled to empathize with many of her decisions, which made it hard to get through at times. Being uncomfortable with her circumstances, however, is often the point, so I don’t fault her for that. And while I wasn’t always engaged 100%, her writing is great. I’m hesitant to label anyone’s personal story with a star rating but for me as a reader this was 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 for Goodreads.

Pub Date: 11/7/23
Review Published: 11/4/23

Sophomore memoirist's efforts are often a disappointment, and Class lacks the novelty and freshness of Maid. In her latest memoir, Land remains a single parent, earns a barely living wage as a housecleaner, and is a full-time college student, although she questions the worth of a degree in English and the need to take on additional debt to obtain the masters degree which she believes will be the gateway to stable employment with benefits. Land again outlines the tension she has with her daughter, Emilia’s, father who reneges on his obligation to spend six weeks in the summer with their daughter, which would have enabled Land to take on additional work to pay down her credit card debt, to spend time with friends, and to go out on a date. Less visitation means that Land could have her support modified; however, she learns that she would not hear back from the Portland child support office for “six months to a year.” She chronicles the back-breaking work, the mountains of laundry, and homework that consumes her waking hours: “The fight to make rent, eat, and find child care was constant. I never got a break from it.” She also recites the loneliness of battling food and housing insecurity and the inability to forge a relationship when the men she dated realized that “the kid I usually had around changed from a playmate to a responsibility.”

Although statistics show that a college degree helps break the cycle of poverty, Land’s memoir raises questions regarding whether an advanced degree in fine arts is a worthy endeavor when jobs in academia are notoriously difficult to procure and, despite writing a surprise bestseller which was adopted into a hit Netflix series, Land recently told the New York Times that she remains worried about job security. Perhaps Emilia’s father was not incorrect when he said a fine arts degree was a “selfish” pursuit. Many of us work in jobs that pay the bills but do not fulfill our childhood dreams. Land also had a second child despite having had a prior abortion and chronicling the barriers she encountered, such as reliable, no-cost child care, as a single parent trying to compete her college degree. Her response to naysayers is, “becoming pregnant and choosing to have the baby was, ultimately, my right.” But is it when she cannot feed, clothe, and house the child she already has without government assistance. Although I admire her grit and determination, I do question her choices.

Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education, by Stephanie Land, is the story of the author's struggle to get an education to build a career to provide for her children. In some ways, this is the quintessential American "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" tale, with a few exceptions. It is hard, so hard...every day, hard to scrape the money together, to make the food last, to heat one room and try to not only keep your child alive and wet, to not only protect her from harm but to encourage her, build her self-esteem, insure she learns and has fun. For all practical purposes, the author was abandoned by parents and siblings. Not surprisingly, she was a perfect target for emotional abuse. As bad as that was, she had to endure the struggle to deal with bureaucratic lunacy in order to get the assistance she was entitled to by law. Nonetheless, the process by which you receive what you need deprives you of your sense of worth and energy. She conveys that she always feels judged, and she is always judging herself and her decisions. She is not wrong...those with privilege, whether inherited, graced by luck, or self-earned, often do judge those that have not yet reached a comfortable landing.

Land is a gifted, talented writer who shares her struggle with brutal honesty. Her writing conveys the entire spectrum of emotion. I read the book in two days, and have much to think about and process. For now, it is enough that I hope to never judge the person next to me, never feel superior, and try to help when I can. I have no idea what they are going through. I know that but for the untold benefit of circumstance and luck, there go I.

I highly recommend this book. Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for allowing me to read a digital ARC.

I read this book for free thanks to NetGalley in exchange for my honest feedback.

This memoir was extremely well written, with a good flow of events. My only complaint is that her daughter seems to be 6 for several years.

I could relate to the authors struggles, although thankfully I've never experienced the same level of poverty.

I wasn't sure I wanted to read this book as I like the TV show for Maid better than her book. (Though i did like the book) But Class was excellent. I loved reading the rest of her story. Ms Land is a great storyteller who engages her readers.

Wow, this book was amazing and heartbreaking. The struggles of single mothers just trying to survive will rip your heart out. A don’t miss book!

I can’t wait for Stephanie Land’s next book!

Her writing style is sublime. I couldn’t put this down and hated to finish it so quickly.

(3.5 rounded up)
I was obsessed with Stephanie Land's first memoir "Maid" when I read it a couple of years ago. I found it fascinating and of course very heartbreaking & eye opening, I recommended it to everybody who asked for a non-fiction rec! That being said, I think I will continue to recommend "Maid" to people over her newest, "Class".

I thought "Class" was good, however it was basically just a continuation from "Maid" and I felt like it wasn't as compelling. This is probably because we've already seen her go through these struggles so as a reader I was a little desensitized to everything when reading.

It also felt a little rushed, like she glazed over a few areas that I would have loved to have heard more about. But then when she was talking about her writing programs, that wasn't so interesting to me and I felt like she really dug into that topic area.

I read Maid a number of years ago and found it quite moving. I was excited to see that Stephanie Land wrote another memoir, and very grateful to Atria and Netgalley for gifting me an advanced copy to read and review. Class is out on Tuesday!

This is an honest, raw, and heartbreakingly resilient story of a woman trying to break through the cycle of poverty. Stephanie is a single mother who went back to school and is doing everything in her power to provide for her daughter and graduate. She details her struggles, and it is such a stark and important reminder of the systems that exist in this country that make it so difficult for people to improve their lives.

In my professional life I have been deeply involved in campaigns to reform our child care system and extend benefits such as SNAP and the Child Tax Credit. It is easy to get caught up in the numbers of these programs, but even more important to hear and amplify stories like Land's about how these programs are critical but still fall woefully short.

Land is so candid in her sharing her story - the good, the bad, and the ugly. While the emotional abuse she suffered and the child support fights she had to wage were at times hard to read, they were also important. I'm so thankful to Land for opening herself up and sharing this story - she is not alone in her struggles, but by sharing them I am hopeful we can continue to fight for a world that dismantles so many of these oppressive systems.

I will post this review on goodreads, retail sites and my bookstagram @scottonreads.

Hmmmm....I want to rate this so high simply due to my love of Maid, but I just wasn't in love this time around. Stephanie grabbed our hearts in her first story about the struggles over overcoming so many obstacles to make a better life for her and her daughter. I LOVE what she was able to accomplish, portray to readers, and make happen in her life.

Class, while ultimately being intriguing, was a let down. As a mother to four I get that often we see the world through a very different lens. When our children are put into categories that feel unfair we want to pounce. I was just overall disappointed at how much judgement I felt both from me towards our author, and the judgement she also was issuing.

Overall, I did finish the read. Quite honestly I was looking for redemption. I only found a blah "I'm glad this is over" feeling. Not all books are for every reader. I appreciated reading this story and having the freedom to grant my own conclusions.
Thank you to the publisher for the advanced copy!

I loved Maid and it was so compelling and interesting to read more from Land, both related and different to what we've seen from her before. This made me look at and think about class in ways other books in the genre have not. I hope this gets the same praise and attention from readers because it deserves it.

I, like many other people, absolutely loved "Maid," and felt so deeply for the young woman who struggled to make ends meet and raise her daughter, so I dug into "Class" as soon as I was approved for it. And I was greatly disappointed by this book.

I don't know if it's that the woman writing it was in a different frame of mind when she put her thoughts on paper this time, but she came off as incredibly unrelatable and selfish. I spent the whole book trying not to judge her for her choices, but as a mother, I got to a point where I couldn't defend her anymore. Whether she was exaggerating her feelings for the sake of the narrative or whether it was all true, I just couldn't take her side this time.

Stephanie Land paints her heart-wrenching story of higher education while living below the poverty line as a single mom. Her writing style is so narrative that I couldn’t put it down and sometimes forgot it was a memoir. This book is so important for anyone studying higher ed, social work, therapy, or any helping profession to understand the difficulties navigating systems never meant for certain demographics.

No, the high education system is not built for people like us. But I can’t help but look at some of her own choices and wonder if they could have been handled better. Yes, a lot of it is me reflecting on my own similar experiences with professors, classmates, and finances, and feeling like I needed to blame myself. But she continuously talked about pushing friends away, but when any shared concern for her, she shut them down as being fake. She had so much insecurity and embarrassment that it limited her ability to ask for help. Sometimes she passed a lot of judgment onto others without knowing what they were really thinking. One thing I can’t stop thinking about: HOW did she do any of this without a therapist?? As a therapist, I noticed so much of this negative self-talk and speculations of others were cognitive distortions, and it could easily have been addressed in therapy. I live in an area with many social services, though, and I recognized Montana may not have had the resources for free adult therapy.

I appreciated her view on empowerment in terms of sex, birth control, raising a child, etc. But one thing that bothered me was that she never talked of using condoms. Being in your 30s and not using condoms feels… immature. You’re a college student. Condoms are free and all over campus — literally in fishbowls at the student health clinic counter. *Eye roll* The amount of times I screamed “MAKE BETTER CHOICES” at this book…

Look. I can’t say I experienced most of Land’s struggles, but I am also from a low-income family and struggled financially in college. The hardest was grad school, living off my student loans, struggling to afford toilet paper. Not being able to afford graduation fees and balking during my final semester as we all prepared for the licensing exam, something I could not afford. Because of this, Land’s memoir Class will be forever special to me. I need a follow up memoir! What happened after school? How did things turn out? She obvs got a book deal. But how did she get there?

This was such an intriguing look into a life that would be (and was) judged harshly. You wonder why motivations are what they are and Land has a great way of both explaining without excusing and acknowledging missteps. I tore through this in one sitting. I recommend for everyone......it's good to walk a mile in someone else's shoes, especially when it is so easy for our society to judge every decision and every issue.

I read this because I was so impacted by reading Maid. This isn't that book. Although I was interested in reading about how hard it was to live in poverty while in college with a child, I found myself bored at times because the writing seemed more like lists and dry recounting of daily life. I also found myself judging some of her choices (for which I give Land credit for being so brutally honest.) I think there's a more important book out there yet to be written (published?) about the struggles of being poor while trying to get a college degree.

This is the first book by this author that I've read, thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy. Land did a great job describing all of the difficulties of trying to get her degree while being a single mom: father of her child giving bare minimum assistance (and she struggled to get that!), the struggles to get financial aid from social services, child care help and then trying to juggle the money she did get to fill all of the spots that needed filling. She was living out the phrase "robbing Peter to pay Paul"!
I almost stopped reading this book several times though, because it was depressing and brought back my own memories of the financial struggles of getting through college/nursing school. Thank goodness my only struggles involved money and none of the other issues Stephanie dealt with.
The rest of my observations concerning her situation are in part, I think, a reflection of my age (70) and being a retired nurse.
I can't figure out if some of the choices she made: careless sex, no birth control which led to another child when most of the book dealt with the hardships she and her daughter lived through, never occurred to her. I just wonder where personal responsibility enters in. Are we supposed to learn it from our family of origin? She talks of the lack of support from her parents. I basically got no financial support from my parents and it was a given I would never ask them for any. Of course, back then it wasn't as easy to get mired in credit card debt as it is now.

Thank you to Atria Books and Netgalley for providing an ARC of Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education by Stephanie Land in exchange for an honest review.

[book:Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive|39218350] by Stephanie Land was a book that opened my eyes to living in poverty in this country and Class had a similar effect. The author is a very talented writer and I found the book to be insightful and raw. I believe single mothers are a special kind of superhero and the fact that this woman put herself through college while living in poverty and still did the absolute best she could to take care of her little girl is really something. Telling this story is an act of bravery and is very well done.

The follow up book after Maid is a great and informative read. Author is down to earth and engages the reader right away.