The Maid's Daughter ─ Living Inside and Outside the American Dream

Winner of the 2012 Americo Paredes Book Award "This detailed, intimate investigation of domestic work from the perspective of a domestic worker's child is a significant achievement that reads like a more academic Random Family."--Publishers Weekly "Romero is again the perfect scholar -- respectful, curious, honest about her own orientation. She's a listener, allowing the women she talks with to guide the way in which their stories are revealed... It's very moving work; thoughtful, sensitive, the best possible use of scholarship to open our eyes."--Los Angeles Review of Books "Readers who found the popular novel The Help annoyingly glib and superficial may find The Maid's Daughter, an oral history and sociological study, astonishingly complex and often raw with emotion." --Washington Independent "Two decades of research culminate in the real-life story of a Mexican-American girl navigating issues of class, race, and identity in contemporary Los Angeles."--Los Angeles Magazine This is Olivia's story. Born in Los Angeles, she is taken to Mexico to live with her extended family until the age of three. Olivia then returns to L.A. to live with her mother, Carmen, the live-in maid to a wealthy family in an exclusive suburb. Raised alongside the other children of the family, Olivia lives in an affluent household and is often treated like a member of the family, except that she is not. Based on over twenty years of research, noted scholar Mary Romero brings Olivia's remarkable story to life. We watch as she grows up among the children of privilege, struggles through adolescence, declares her independence, and eventually goes off to college and becomes a successful professional. As we hear of both Olivia's triumphs and her setbacks, we come to understand the painful realization of wanting to claim a Mexican heritage that is in many ways not her own and of her constant struggle to come to terms with the great contradictions in her life. A complex story about belonging, identity, and resistance, The Maid's Daughter illustrates Olivia's struggle to establish her sense of self, and the patterns of inclusion and exclusion in her life. Through Olivia's story, Romero shows how mythologies of meritocracy, the land of opportunity, and the American dream remain firmly in place while simultaneously erasing injustices and the struggles of the working poor. Mary Romero is Professor of Justice Studies at Arizona University. She is the author or editor of many books, including Maid in the U.S.A. In 2012, she was awarded the Julian Samora Distinguished Career Award by the Latino/Latina Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.