What I like most about memoirs is that they are introspective, reflective, and personal, and although Maid perfectly depicted how poverty entraps individuals into endless cycles of suffering, I found the rest of the memoir lacking. 

The writing wasn’t very good. The timeline was very confusing and often jumped from place to place without smooth transitions, and I often felt that things were always either over or under explained, and after finishing it, I still didn’t feel connected to the author. There were a lot of questions I had while reading that never got answered, like what was Stephanie Land doing during her early and mid twenties? Why did she continue working as a maid despite the poor pay and high transportation costs? Had she considered working at a restaurant or a grocery store or even the daycares her daughter went to? Why did she wait until her late twenties and early thirties to go to college? Did she consider her financial situation before deciding to have Mia? I’m not asking these questions because I want to criticize and judge her, but there were huge gaps in my understanding of her life and it was hard to grasp the whole picture.

Honestly, I think this book focused more on being poverty inspiration than anything else, which is why it lacked both self-reflection and systemic critique. Although Land explains well how the government fails impoverished people, she doesn’t critique the system itself. I feel like this book is popular because it’s a “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” story, but lots of people live in poverty and never get book deals. I expected this book to be a mix of nonfiction and memoir, but it disappointed on both fronts.