All right now to the story of
Stephanie Land that is now being
seen by thousands on Netflix.
She was 28 and living here
in the Pacific Northwest.
When her life plans to go to
college and become a writer,
were cut short pregnant and
escaping an abusive relationship.
She started cleaning houses to survive,
plunged into poverty with just few
of the supports that she needed.
She had to fight for housing
and for food for her child.
Her memoir made and now the new
Netflix show inspired by her book.
Explores the idea of hardship
of pursuing the American dream
from well below the poverty line.
The
book in the series Temiar are
each their own thing. Molly Smith.
Metzler's version of it is is absolutely
gorgeous and holds itself on its own.
The series does follow a lot of the events
that happened in my book to me personally,
a lot of the characters
have been fictionalized.
There's of course,
a way more diverse cast of characters
than they were in the memoir.
I feel like they did an excellent
job with bringing out the emotions
that error and the shock and and.
The heartbreak and really
the love just for your kid.
Yeah, it's hard when they take on
memoir and and make it something that
is now an episodic that we can all see.
But there is something that is
so unifying about your book,
especially something that we all
need to pay attention to you.
Talk about a lack of dreaming in
the book and. Being poor, how it?
It just it was hard for you to focus
on anything else but surviving,
and I just this quote that shortsightedness
kept me from getting overwhelmed.
But it also kept me from dreaming,
not something most of us realize,
but it weighs your soul down.
I would think you
know when you are in that situation,
thinking about five or ten years
from now seems impossible because
you can't imagine yourself in that
situation 5 or 10 years from now,
because I was the most exhausted
I was living with a lot of pain.
You know, back pain from the work that I was.
Doing I was so lonely and just
completely alone and it almost felt
like I couldn't afford to dream or
life didn't afford me that opportunity
because I I was just struggling to even
survive and and keep a house over our
heads or keep a roof over our heads
and and keep us fed and and really
to be able to hang out with my kid.
Yeah you clean houses for the middle
class and the wealthy and you shared in
the book how you felt invisible to them.
What is the lesson in how we have to
do a better job at seeing each other?
I think we need to remove dignity from
work and just place it in being alive.
America is so work focused and it especially
as work focused for people in poverty.
We want them to prove that they are working,
that they want to work,
that they're not lazy.
But the jobs that they have are the
jobs that nobody else wants to do.
I see that as like tide in a lot with racism.
In poverty, as we expect people to do
these jobs that nobody else wants to do,
but we're not paying them a living wage.
We hardly ever see them.
We hardly ever look them in the eye.
The feeling is like we're
we're totally OK with that.
Like we expect people to clean up
after us all day and I I feel like
there's some entitlement there.
And that was one of the things
that that really baffled me.
You know,
even though I was the same age as my client,
I still felt like I was less
than or that I had somehow.
Failed in life when really I
just didn't have a lot of the
invisible supports that they did.
No, it's something that I think like I said,
a lot of people resonate with,
but a lot of people who do resonate
it with it haven't written a book.
What made you decide when everything
was going through your life that you
said I have to write this into a book?
I know you were a writer and that's
what you always wanted to be,
but did you foresee this?
And and what inspired you
to get this down on paper?
Well, honestly, I saw a call for
pitches for Vox Media as a website
and and I sent them a pitch and I I
started it out with dear editor and
and said here's a couple of paragraphs
from an essay I worked on in college.
I hope you like it and they responded
and they paid me $500 and that was like
the most money I had ever seen ever for.
I've been working trying to work as a
freelancer for up to a year at that
point and the essay was published
and it went viral.
Like crazy and an agent from New
York reached out to me and said you
need to write a book and I said,
well, I didn't really want to write
a book about this and he said,
well, you need to write this book.
So, eleven months later,
we had a book deal and I really
didn't expect anyone to care about
what happens to a single mom who
cleans houses and lives in poverty.
But it it touched a nerve with
a lot of people,
sure
did. What is it you hope to take?
People take away from the book and
the show and society in general.
It's really encouraging to me that
people are talking about just.
They didn't realize how hard it
was to seek services like getting
on food stamps or childcare.
Or medical care?
I think the series did an excellent
job in portraying that and just how
many hoops you have to jump through
just how absolutely ridiculous it is.
And so I, I hope people remember
that when they vote this year and and
the next years and we vote people
into our communities who are either,
you know, empathetic toward people
in the margins or have experience
living in the margins.
You know you want to watch
the show now, right?
Well, good news is Netflix,
the series, inspired by Stephanie,
is available now.
And I just have to say again,
hats off to all you single
parents and guardians out there.