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

“Vulnerability was too risky, and I couldn’t allow myself to reach a point where it would be a huge upset if that person didn’t show up when I needed them to.”

Stephanie does not enjoy reciprocal relationships. She enjoys collecting friends and maintaining a wide circle of people who can help her, but she does not like to let people in or become close to her because it is too upsetting when they disappoint her. This more broadly suggests that Stephanie has created a wall around herself for protection, perhaps in response to her circumstances.

“Having a kid and trying to date felt equivalent to hanging a wedding dress in my closet and bringing it out to show a person when they picked me up for the first time.”

It is extremely difficult to be a single mother, and Stephanie struggles with the societal expectations placed on women. These expectations make it difficult for a mother to allow herself to be desired in a socially acceptable way. The logistics are also very difficult, and Stephanie navigates trying to get to know potential romantic connections while still holding the time-intensive role of primary caregiver to a young child.

“It took about a year at U of M before I felt like I belonged at that college at all, like someone wasn’t going to point and stare or tap me on the shoulder and usher me out.”

Stephanie navigates debilitating impostor syndrome. As one of the older students in her class, she has a completely different set of worries and concerns that take up her time. The age difference and her socioeconomic standing cause her to feel that she does not belong there, and her determination to succeed academically demonstrates tremendous resilience.

“It was ridiculous to imagine that anyone would try to pull a fast one by spending hours at a government assistance office in the middle of the workday so they could possibly leave with a couple hundred bucks a month for food. But this was how I had spent hours and sometimes entire workdays of my life, convincing authorities that I wasn’t a criminal.”

As Stephanie navigates bureaucratic mazes to try and secure government assistance to feed her child, she ponders how these mazes are designed to weed out those who are trying to scam the government. It seems infeasible that anyone would attempt this, given the time-consuming boredom it requires.

“Long-term financial planning is for people who aren’t living in poverty.”

Stephanie repeatedly encounters situations in which people of privilege are able to succeed because they are not living paycheck to paycheck. There is tremendous privilege and requisite stability in being able to think ahead and plan financially.

“I fought to make sure that cleaning houses, a perfectly respectable job that society deemed ‘unskilled’ and therefore one where I felt less than, did not define me. I still believed that going to school was my real work.”

Stephanie encounters different definitions of “work” throughout the text. At times, she considers “work” to mean mere “labor”; at other times, she distinguishes work as specifically pertaining to an avocation, like Judy writing her book. Here, “work” shares the meaning of “purpose.”

“I knew that some people lauded us as an example of true resilience; it seemed to me that these people viewed living below the poverty line as a kind of strength-training program.”

Stephanie shows that “resilience” operates as a kind of backhanded compliment. When used to acknowledge someone’s relationship with poverty, praising them as resilient seems to show a superficial appreciation for the trauma they have endured without really taking the time to wonder if it is possible to prevent them from experiencing further trauma.

“Children didn’t have the communication skills or self-awareness to talk to adults about how stressful their lives felt, or that they couldn’t in fact handle it. That lack of ability, that silence, seemed to be confused with resilience.”

Praising children as resilient, Land argues, is especially tone-deaf. Children do not have the capacity to demonstrate the difficulties they are enduring; they are not demonstrating resilience so much as mere survival because they have no other option.

“Resilience as a virtue is assigned, especially to marginalized groups, when systemic structures have created countless invisible barriers to living what the privileged consider a normal life.”

Land’s critique of resilience is one of the sharpest sections of the text, and this cutting analysis demonstrates the extent to which the marginalized become the invisible.

“My anger had no use or value – it didn’t get me anywhere, so I had no choice but compliance.”

Stephanie reckons with the idea of anger. Anger is viewed as an inconvenient emotion that can result in the removal of the angry person from certain hierarchies of space. Stephanie does not feel that she is allowed to express anger.

“Immediate acceptance of any shitty situation was what most people seemed to mean by resilience, and they needed poor people like me to be that way. Otherwise, my suffering would be too visible to ignore, and they would have to deal with their feelings about that – whether helplessness or responsibility.”

Being entrenched in poverty means being expected to accept any living condition and any employment conditions. Stephanie is expected to deal with disgusting elements of people’s houses and accept that her house is not built to code or adequately insulated, and this inhumane treatment perpetuates the cycle of poverty. 

“I’m deeply aware they while our poverty put Emilia and me squarely in a marginalized group, our whiteness gave us camouflage.”

Here, Land briefly employs an intersectional lens to acknowledge the intersections of race and socioeconomic status. Because she and Emilia are visibly white, they benefit from antiquated prejudices. Land represents many people experiencing similar financial hardship, but there are limitations to the scope of her story. This suggests that stories beyond Land’s need to be heard.

“Whatever makes you an outsider is what makes you a writer.”

In Professor Kirn’s writing class, Stephanie is struck by this bon mot, or witticism. Kirn uses it to refer to an incident in which he received a speeding ticket in Utah. Stephanie knows that she can apply this to her own writing.

“This had always been the hardest part of co-parenting with an abuser: even though I got out and moved us away, I was still court-ordered to send my kid back three times a year.”

Stephanie encounters the unfair processes of shared custody every time Emilia has to go visit Jamie. Though Jamie does not have adequate space for Emilia and she has to share a bed, she is always excited to visit him and always sad to return to her mom.

“I decided that my cycle and all the symptoms that went with it were predictable and dependable enough. I knew to be cautious between day one and fourteen, or, even safer, not to have sex at all, which usually wasn’t an issue because I wasn’t in a relationship. So, I just kept track of things. This worked perfectly for me until it didn’t.”

Stephanie repeats the same mistake after her second pregnancy ends in an abortion. She had the confidence in her self-reliance to track her cycle and her sexual encounters instead of spending $30 a month on birth control; this results in a third unexpected pregnancy.

“Emilia’s teacher was happy with her learning progress, but I recognized the expression on her face when we talked: my kid had stopped testing my limits for the time being, and was testing her teacher’s instead, like horses sometimes do to electric fences.”

Stephanie compares her daughter to a horse, emphasizing Emilia’s wild nature and desire to test boundaries. Emilia encounters instability in every facet of her young life, and her teacher is another authority figure who treats her unpredictably.

“Whatever word I wanted to use for the pregnancy, be it situation or predicament or dilemma, I realized I did have some autonomy.”

When Stephanie realizes she is pregnant, she knows that she can choose to continue the pregnancy or have an abortion. She is not sure if the pregnancy is a good thing, and the word that she uses to mentally refer to the pregnancy will inevitably carry its own set of connotations; she is not ready to commit to this word yet.

“The first time I had gone to a local post office to inquire about it, a woman in front of me burst into tears and said that asking for child support would mean revealing her location to her abuser, but the woman behind the counter wouldn’t budge and repeated that it was a requirement of the program.”

Stephanie repeatedly demonstrates the complex labyrinth of bureaucratic incompetence. The systems that are supposedly put in place to help often actually cause further harm. Women in particular, especially women who are fleeing a domestic abuser, are often those most threatened by bureaucratic incompetence such as the instance described here.

“But I suspected that Emilia’s anxiety around food wasn’t just a stage. Food insecurity ruled our lives, and Emilia knew that it was somehow ‘bad’ if she didn’t like something I served her.”

Because Emilia has grown up with food insecurity, she is afraid of trying a new food in case she does not like it. She understands that wasting food has negative associations, and this creates tremendous guilt for a five-year-old to deal with.

“Emilia looked up at me and a feeling of helplessness washed over me like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on my head.”

As Daniel pounds on the door and threatens violence because Stephanie did not get an abortion, she is very aware that Emilia can hear everything. The simile here functions to emphasize the fear and vulnerability that Stephanie feels as she tries to protect her daughter.

“Generosity usually felt that way to me, like a scratch that satisfied an itch I didn’t know the source of.”

Stephanie adores her professor Katie Kane, who agrees to write a letter of recommendation for the MFA program. She is reluctant to ask for things but is very grateful to receive a bit of kindness.

“There was not a lot of hope in my life. I had preparation, constant guessing, and bracing myself for the worst. It made for an insecure existence that drained me with its relentless mental acrobatics.”

Stephanie’s life is a roller coaster of instability. The metaphor of “relentless mental acrobatics” emphasizes the exhausting, uncertain nature of her daily existence.

“There was one thing that troubled me about this: I couldn’t be sure if my motivation was to help my kid’s current strife or my future self in court proceedings.”

As Emilia goes to therapy for the first time, she addresses the tip of the iceberg of her problems. Her recent behavioral outbursts could be attributed to the many sources of instability in her life. While this will hopefully be cathartic for her, it will also be beneficial for Stephanie to use in court against Jamie.