CLASS Cover Reveal
CLASS Cover Reveal
It’s not an exaggeration to say this day has been years in the making.
Hello friends,
It’s not an exaggeration to say this day has been years in the making.
When I first heard the words “next book” after I finished writing MAID, I immediately thought of my senior year of college. My daughter began kindergarten that year, and two months after school started, I received notice that I would no longer qualify for food stamps. Because I now had a six-year-old, I was required to work 20 hours a week in order to receive food—an impossibility considering the workload I already had between school and caring for my daughter alone.
The 10-15 hours a week proved paltry, and I was denied the right to receive the minimal amount of assistance that went toward our groceries. This felt like nothing less than a punishment, and it was a moment that fundamentally changed my views on my own self-worth. The message was clear: higher education does not hold value for you; your value resides in how many hours you can work, and if you work enough, we’ll help you out a little by giving you a couple hundred bucks a month to eat.
In the following months, I sometimes considered fruit juice as produce, and my main source of protein was peanut butter, cheese sticks, and cans of beans. Hunger was not my only barrier for my presence in class. I had to rely on my car not breaking down, my child going to school, and the ability to do what work I could fit between it all.
This is the year I look back on as my grittiest. When things get tough, I tell myself that if I survived my senior year of college, I can survive anything. It’s a difficult story for me to tell, but an important one. Because getting to class should not be this hard.
I’m grateful to all the readers of MAID and for their passionate response to its publication. I’m also grateful to those who discovered my story via the series on which it was based.
For years I have felt a responsibility to my readers, particularly those who suffered from abuse and food and housing insecurity, to continue the story that—so far—I’ve only partly told.
So without further ado… CLASS is now available for preorder!
XOXO
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About The Book
From the New York Times bestselling author who inspired the hit Netflix series about a struggling mother barely making ends meet as a housecleaner—a gripping memoir about college, motherhood, poverty, and life after Maid.
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 paints an intimate and heartbreaking portrait of motherhood as it converges and often conflicts with personal desire and professional ambition. Who has the right to create art? Who has the right to go to college? And what kind of work is valued in our culture? In clear, candid, and moving prose, Class grapples with these questions, offering a searing indictment of America’s educational system and an inspiring testimony of a mother’s triumph against all odds.
