Download Women Work A Reckoning with Work and Home Megan K Stack 9780385542098 Books

Product details Hardcover 352 pages Publisher Doubleday (April 2, 2019) Language English ISBN-10 0385542097

Women Work A Reckoning with Work and Home Megan K Stack 9780385542098 Books Reviews

• being a 'privileged white woman' who has also worked as a maid (the "creative" professions can introduce you to alot of side jobs), I was prepared to dislike this book especially since the author is quite neurotic and tends to whine. However, I loved the book! The writing is both beautiful, poetic and incisive. She does "play victim" a bit, calling herself and her husband "immigrants" when, in fact, they are two journalists who travel the world. living interesting and well-funded lives and do not, to my knowledge, give up their American citizenship. But, that aside, her honesty about both motherhood, male/female inequality when it comes to career and children and her very real concern for the women who worked for her is moving and real. She does not romanticize the lives she is investigating or her own life. The relationship dynamic with her oddly clueless husband was infuriating (and unfortunately familiar to me). This would be a wonderful book for a women's book club...especially women who have nannies, maids, cleaning women, yard folks, etc. This is a conversation that needs to happen....will it? hard to say.
• I know it’s cliche but I couldn’t put this book down. It was a slice of life previously unknown to me, presented lyrically and honestly. It broke my heart a little and also made me feel hopeful.
• As a lawyer in her mid-thirties who wants to soon start a family, I have thought about about the compromises that are folded into that choice. Megan Stack writes beautifully about the tension of buying the time of less privileged women so that the careers and households of the more privileged can thrive. It is a wrenching and fraught situation. Stack's vulnerability brings this struggle to life. This book reads like a novel. I had a hard time putting it down. A thank you to the author for sharing this part of her life.
• Loved this book. Such great observations about the unfair burden women shoulder in doing the work of living.
• Women's Work by Megan K. Stack is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in late March.
  
  Stack is an American international news correspondent who gives birth to her children while travelling through China (son Max, emotional bundle of nerves toward his colic) and India (son Patrick, his birth invoking all kinds of Indian customs) before raising them and running a household with assistance from domestic workers, who she selects and letting go of with maybe too much concern toward their personal life and welfare. There are many segments of whinging and grievances based out of paranoia, safety, doubt, isolation, hyper-vigilism, and not having enough hours in the day to get things done before reuniting with all former domestic workers at the end to write of what happened to them and to reminisce.
• Megan K. Stack and her husband traveled the globe as foreign correspondents. They worked the same hours, slept in the same hostels, interacted with the same contacts--on the whole, they were equals. When they start their family, her husband disappears back out into that "valued" working world while she stays home with their son (and plans to write a book). It is here that the avalanche of inequity begins. Realizing she can't just write while the baby sleeps (do women still believe this?), she employs local Chinese and Indian women to handle the child care, cooking, cleaning, shopping, and the endless list of tasks involved in running a household and raising a family. On the surface this arrangement looks mutually beneficial for all women involved, however, there are often numerous unseen/unspoken tradeoffs. Stack wonders "Who is caring for these workers' children while they care for my children?" and "Where are the lines drawn when you live with someone and they care for your family but they are not your family?" Obviously this book points out the privilege of situations where white foreigners can hire local help from underdeveloped communities in/near where they live, but Stack's openness about her guilt, confusion, and her daily accounts of the complicated relationships makes this less a story of the exploitation of cheap labor and more about why all "women's work" is so undervalued in the first place. ⁣
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  I'd recommend this as a follow-up to "Fed Up Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward" by Gemma Hartley and "Maid Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive" by Stephanie Land. ⁣
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• Such a joy to find a book that is written well, enjoyable to read and thought provoking. A book with purpose that divulges the complex world of working moms who hire other women to help watch their children and maintain their households; other working moms. It’s a complicated topic that is strongly written by a talented author who sees this world through her lens as a journalist - a reporter and a writer - with the added filter of her own motherhood. She explores through her memoir the dichotomy of our (women’s) desire to continue our careers when we become mothers by hiring domestic help who leave their own children behind, to take care of our children and houses, for a fraction of the pay of our own jobs. She explores the fragile relationships we build with our domestic help; the people we think we get to know (that some call family) but she points out we actually don’t know very well at all; how could we with the inherent imbalance of power. The author is direct and intense revealing insightful thoughts yet remaining open to living with this inner conflict; doing what she must to maintain her family and work life while struggling with her conscious and what is best for everyone. She thoroughly exposes herself through her vulnerability and dry humor. I highly recommend you read it.
  
  Thank you to NetGalley and DoubleDay for providing me an early release of this book in exchange for this honest and fair review. It was such a pleasure to read.