Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education

Land’s first memoir, Maid, told the story of how she navigated harrowing economic circumstances and supported her daughter by cleaning houses. Her latest memoir continues where she left off, having moved to Missoula, MT, from Washington State. Though she had hoped for some measure of financial security, she once again finds herself cleaning houses and relying on various forms of public aid to support herself and her children as she finishes her college degree. Narrating her own memoir, Land movingly communicates the bone-deep fatigue and pressure of her life, stretched thin by work and the stress of trying to be a good mother and student and achieve her dreams of being a writer. Land expressively describes the frustration of navigating government bureaucracy one moment and trying to make sense of a complicated and often oblivious academic world the next.