Domestic workers, or maids, may be no longer be a staple of North American homes. But she is a figure central to the running of many households around the world. The Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America are all regions where domestic workers cook, clean, and help with children.
I interviewed many maids/nannies in the research for my novel, The Dohmestics, about this intimate employee-employer relationship. (PS tell me what you think about this potential new cover for the novel in the comments below).
In real life, the Shelter Me project has developed a handbook for employers to handle those questions that first time employers often contemplate: how many hours should she work? What is a fair salary?
Here’s to everyone who puts in a hard day’s work receiving appreciation for their efforts.
I went to University in a red state (North Carolina).
I have lived in five states across our union and have laughed at the dinner tables of atheists, Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus alike. We debated whether a black man was electable; sent each other holiday cards in distance locations, and most of all, we listened. To each other. To others. We may have disagreed with the other side but we didn’t hate or ridicule or humiliate them.
I’ve been an expat now for ten years. So maybe this is why I find what I’m seeing online and hearing on TV incomprehensible.
Maybe it isn’t the Republican or Democratic parties that need changing. Maybe it’s me.
I want to know, especially from my Republican friends (if they’re still talking to me, a liberal independent): do you think it’s okay for everyone – particularly an aspiring leader – to spout racist epithets on international media? And please help me understand how “speaking your mind” without a filter is a qualification for leadership. In that case, as we know, due to my signature bluntness, I’m candidate number one!
Remind me when we decided it was okay to fabricate videos and rumors about non profit agencies that give vital medical services to women because we don’t agree with some of the procedures?
And while we’re at it, don’t our elected leaders have an obligation to fill an opening in one of the highest courts in the land? Or will we let them shirk their duties because they think it can wait?
What, in short, is going on with our country?
Please explain to me how any of this counts as democracy. Because from where I stand, fear mongering and a desire for power are making would be leaders out of people rapidly becoming experts at how to issue farcical sound bites.
In the America I remember, the one I made my second home, the one my immigrant parents eagerly sought out as a place of intelligence and opportunity, someone like that would have disappeared years ago, long before “Super Tuesday.”
But maybe, as they say, my memory is faulty. And were I to come home now, there would be no trace of the place or people I remember.
PS: Please let’s not blame the media. After all, don’t they show what their audience wants to see?
Race and racial inequality have become a part of everyday discussion. We may not have the words to talk about discrimination directly but the important thing is to keep trying.
Pop music icon Beyonce has entered intro the fray with her recent music video Formation which features images of New Orleans and police in riot gear. Her Super Bowl performance, with a nod to the Black Panthers’ movement, announced publicly her intention to politicize her art.
The ensuing confusion was immortalized by Saturday Night Live in the way only satire can in the sketch “The Day Beyonce Turned Black.”
What do you think? Clever hype raising marketing strategy or artist use of long game strategy towards social consciousness?
Domestic workers, or maids, may be no longer be a staple of North American homes. But she is a figure central to the running of many households around the world. The Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America are all regions where domestic workers cook, clean, and help with children.