Stephanie Land's 2019 memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive was a visceral portrait of living in poverty as a single mom, cleaning houses. It was a bestseller and later adapted into a critically acclaimed Netflix series. Now Land has a new book, Class, about her experience juggling college, motherhood, and work. During that time she experienced food insecurity, and struggled to get government assistance. "I see such a lack of empathy toward people who live in the margins of society," she tells Tonya Mosley. Also, rock critic Ken Tucker reviews the new album from guitarist Marnie Stern, and David Bianculli reviews the latest season of Fargo. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
On the Ted radio hour, linguist Ann Curzan says she gets a lot of complaints about people using the pronoun they to refer to one person.
I sometimes get into arguments with people where they will say to me, but it can't be singular.
And I will say, but it is.
The history behind words causing a lot of debate.
That's on the Ted radio hour from NPR.
This is FRESH AIR.
I'm Tanya Moseley.
In the new book Class, writer Stephanie Land picks up where her 2019 book Maid left off.
In Maid, spelled M A I D, Land wrote about what it was like as a young single mother living below the poverty line, fleeing to a homeless shelter to get away from an abusive boyfriend, and cleaning houses for a living.
In class, a memoir of motherhood, hunger and higher education, Stephanie Land is in her mid thirties at the University of Montana, desperately trying to fulfill her dream of becoming a writer.
Juggling classes, childcare, rent, the loneliness of it all as a single mother and a plot twist, a second pregnancy.
Her first book made hard work, low pay, and a mother's will to survive, was picked as one of former President Obama's best books of 2019 and made the New York Times bestseller list.
It was also adapted as a Netflix series under the same name in 2021.
And Stephanie Land, welcome back to FResh Air.
Thank you for inviting me.
You call this time in your life when you were a senior at the University of Montana, one of the parts of your story that you're the most proud of?
Absolutely.
It was a lot of work.
It was really hard.
It would have been very easy to quit.