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

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2023

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-9

Chapters 10-14

Chapters 15-18

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

The Determination to Overcome Personal and Financial Obstacles

Many memoirs center around the author’s struggle to achieve a certain goal, and Class recognizes this genre convention. Though the text does not totally conform to the traditional notion of memoir, it does succeed in centering personal and financial obstacles.

Stephanie has a paradoxical relationship with the idea of resilience; she acknowledges that it can be a positive attribute but also shows how this concept is often idealized and reduces the lived experience of someone who has experienced considerable trauma.

Stephanie’s determination to graduate from college stems from several sources: She wants to make Emilia proud, she wants to prove wrong everyone who doubted her, and she wants to prove to herself that her lifelong love of writing is valid. Every day, Stephanie’s time with Emilia is reduced because of work, classes, and homework, and Stephanie is deeply motivated to prove to her daughter that this lost time is meaningful. On career day at school, Emilia expresses that she wants to be a writer like her mom; her impression of a writer is someone scowling at a computer. Stephanie initially thinks that getting into the MFA program will be an essential next step for making Emilia proud of her. However, when she is rejected, Emilia expresses that she is very pleased about this; since her mom won’t be spending as much time on homework, she can spend more time with her daughter.

Stephanie’s parents did not financially support her going to college for her undergraduate degree. She became pregnant with Emilia at 28, and now at 35, she is harangued by her daughter’s father about choosing to go to college and pay out-of-state tuition rather than working full-time, or waiting to go to college and paying in-state tuition. She is determined to prove that this was a good choice and that working for a year first would not have benefited her and Emilia.

Stephanie is determined to prove to herself that her lifelong love of writing is a valid and well-deserved goal. When she presents her project on obsession, she is eager to show the notebooks of her youth as proof of her lifelong dreams. Earning a BA in English will validate her dreams. Initially, she believed that earning an MFA was a necessary extension of this dream, but after her rejection from the program, she thinks differently. Stephanie is determined to prove that her personal, professional, and financial struggles were all worth overcoming for her dream of being a writer, representing a resilience to external obstacles that Land suggests is a potential product of her socioeconomic limitations.

The Challenges of Single Parenthood

Stephanie encounters the challenges of single parenthood and pursuing professional dreams, realizing that the dual spheres of motherhood and womanhood are limited by institutionalized inequalities.

It is extremely hard for Stephanie to date as a single mom, and Stephanie has several casual relationships and short-term boyfriends who are not willing to accommodate the “baggage” of a child. Evan and Theodore break up with her using nearly identical scripts, each professing not to be capable of offering what she needs right now (presumably, someone who is okay with frequently babysitting). Emilia becomes very attached very quickly to the new adults in her life, and even asks Seth, a new roommate, if he will be her dad (and if he is the dad of her unborn sibling). Stephanie relies on many babysitters to watch Emilia so that she can go on dates, and while she initially contents herself with casual sex, she wants guarantees from her partners that they are willing to take on a more permanent role: “I didn’t feel like I needed a romantic partner so much as I needed someone to provide backup in parenting. Though I probably wouldn’t admit how lonely I was” (31). The material conditions necessary to keep a child entertained, fed, and happy are extremely difficult to balance with the crushing time commitments of school and work.

Pursuing professional dreams is hard as a mom and hard as a woman, and Stephanie must divide her time in ways that unattached single male classmates do not. There is considerable freedom and privilege in being unattached; it allows for a kind of selfishness and single-minded pursuit of one’s dreams and leisure time. Showing that she does not have the bandwidth to be 100% committed to a goal might lead someone (like Judy) to assume that Stephanie is not up for a task that would be easier for an unattached male colleague, and she consciously “struggle[s] to appear more male” (48). Pursuing long-term dreams is a privilege only enabled when you are not bogged down by daily tasks and financial hardship, and Stephanie struggles to think in the long-term as she worries about food and housing insecurities:

I carried this list of fixed expenses and estimated income with me wherever I went… I would have been incalculably embarrassed if anyone had seen my rather dismal mathematics, but they were vital to my sanity, and to our survival. Those numbers signified the weight of my financial responsibilities, and keeping obsessive track was the only way I didn’t regularly spiral into panic. It was a constant dance, and rent always, always came first (54).

Stephanie is determined to show that she can overcome the challenges of being a single mom and achieve her professional goals.

Societal Attitudes Towards Poverty and Government Assistance

Stephanie encounters very judgmental attitudes towards poverty and government assistance. She must overcome tremendous adversity as she faces institutionalized obstacles and individual prejudice, and this is apparent in the more overt obstacles she encounters and in her behaviors in response to perceived obstacles.

Stephanie resents that many bureaucratic procedures exist for the purpose of preventing people scamming the government. She strives to show that she is not doing this as well; she is always prepared with her massive folder of documentation in order to show that she and Emilia really do need assistance: Because “the requirements for proof of need never seemed to be the same wherever you went” (21), Stephanie is prepared to show whatever document is necessary. However, despite this preparedness, she is often met with suspicion: “All government assistance programs operated on the assumption that every person who walked into their office brought with them the possibility of scamming them in some way” (45-46).

Occasionally, she encounters kindness or good luck that positively impacts her. For instance, the YMCA offers a tiered system of payments that enables her to pay $25 a week for Emilia to go to camp, which is far cheaper than the standard rate. The person who works there and makes this arrangement is extremely kind and nonjudgmental. The relatively safe space of fast food restaurants with kids’ play areas enables her and Emilia to work and play in the same space. McDonalds “… had become a reliable place for me to complete a decent amount of homework… everyone else was feeding their kids the same shitty food so I didn’t have to watch for judgmental side-eyes” (30).

However, needing assistance enables an inescapable sense of insecurity and instability. From the grocery store to the financial aid office, Stephanie encounters judgment: “People formed negative opinions when they found out how much assistance you’d accepted, and for how long. By that point I couldn’t shake a feeling like I’d overstayed my welcome and needed to move on” (24). As an English major and aspiring MFA student, Stephanie struggles to justify her life choices to snide critics who do not think that these degrees will financially support her and her daughter:

My ‘place,’ even as a registered, paying student entering a four-year institution, and a junior with good marks, made it feel like an MFA would not be possible. Like I couldn’t afford to dream about it unless I could somehow prove that it would result in a semi-decent job (47).

She feels that she is constantly watched and her choices constantly evaluated. Poverty seems like an impossible hole to climb out of:

After several years on government assistance, my value as a member of society no longer seemed to be my education, but rather the low-wage work I would potentially do to make life easier in some way for a person whose family could afford to pay for them to go to college (47).

As Stephanie demonstrates, the American Dream feels largely unattainable for those who do not start out at a point of privilege.