"This book highlights the issues facing workers in domestic work, including low wages, long hours, poor working conditions and lack of control over working conditions. Everyone interested in these issues should read the Tenth Anniversary edition of Mary Romero's classic work Maid in the U.S.A.."

--Linda Chavez-Thompson, Executive Vice-President, AFL-CIO

"An extremely effective look at the structural dynamics that shape domestic labor.. Drawing on the domestic servant's searing descriptions of their low pay and long hours, their insensitive or defensive employers, their worries about their own children and their personal strategies for survival, Maid in the U.S.A. offers a critically important corrective to the popular perception of domestic servants.."

--Mimi Abramovitz, author of Under Attack, Fighting Back:Women and Welfare in the United States

"Pathbreaking in its emphasis on understanding domestic work through the lens of employment, this classic text is as relevant as ever. It continues to reaffirm the importance of questioning both the way our society organizes cleaning and caring work, and the relations of race, class, and gender on which domestic work relies.."

--Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of Domestica:Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence

"This is exactly the moment to read or re-read Mary Romero's classic ethnography.. It is wonderful to have Maid in the U.S.A. freshly available again.."

--Cynthia Enloe, author of Bananas, Beaches, and Bases:Making Feminist Sense of International Politics

Routledge Web Site, December, 2002

When it was first published, Maid in the USA was one of the first books to show the struggles of female and immigrant domestic workers in the United States. The book quickly became a landmark in the field as a startling original and critical overview of domestic workers that combined a race, class, and gender analysis. Both critically and popularly praised, Mary Romero's work brilliantly brings to light the complexity of the lives of domestic workers, most notably explaining the rise of Latinas and other women of color into the ranks of domestic cleaners and maids. Through startling interviews with Latina private household workers, Romero provides a unique window into their working conditions, their relationships with their (mostly female and white) employers, and their personal lives. Romero also tells of her own experiences as a young woman working as a domestic alongside her mother and other members of her family.

The exciting 10th anniversary edition of this classic work includes a new introduction by Romero that updates the state of domestic work and provides an overview of the "Nannygate" scandals in the recent past. There is also a new afterward from legendary scholar Dorothy E. Smith discussing the importance of this book for the field.

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Intersection of Biography and History:My Intellectual Journey
2. Women's Work Is Never Done
3. Gender and Class in Domestic Work
4. Domestic Service and Women of Color in the United States
5. Bonds of Sisterhood - Bonds of Oppression
6. The Struggle to Transform Domestic Labor
7. The Housework Dilemma

Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index