Maid to BE BROKEN
AN UNFLINCHING TALE OF CLASS DIVIDE HITS HARD
This book has a serious point to make and does so stridently. It tells of the unhappy plight of foreign domestic workers in Singapore and, while fictional, is very much based on fact.
The two maids at the centre of the story, Dolly and Tala, are sisters. Both have left the rest of their families behind in the Philippines, and are supporting them with money they earn cooking and cleaning for expats.
Life for these women is tough. They have no rights, work long hours and sleep in broom cupboards. Every six months, they have to take a pregnancy test and if it’s positive, they’re deported. Their employers can take away their passports and set up cameras to spy on them. And some maids don’t even get enough to eat.
Dolly works for the spoilt, unhappy Amber, looking after her children while desperately missing her own small daughter back in the Philippines. She has found a way to make some extra money – an unpleasant and demeaning way that seems to have increased her problems.
Meanwhile, Tala has become obsessed by a blog being written anonymously by one of the expats. It details life as the employer of a domestic helper and sets out some essential (and mostly inhumane) rules. Riled up by the posts, feisty Tala retaliates with an anonymous blog of her own called Maidhacker, telling how it really is. She’s well aware that if she’s caught, she’ll be in trouble.
A new expat, Jules, arrives on the scene and her outsider’s view of life in the luxury condo makes it seem less than attractive. The women there are saddled with dysfunctional kids and awful husbands, and they’re bored and gossipy.
Then disaster strikes and naturally a maid gets the blame.
There are parallels here to
The Help by Kathryn Stockett, a novel about AfricanAmericans working in white households in the 1960s. This book, though, is set in the current century, which makes the world it describes all the more shocking.
While it’s a real eye-opener, I did have a few issues with
The Maid’s Room. Every single character in it is unhappy, which seems unrealistic – someone in Singapore must be having fun! And surely the book’s moralistic tone could have let up every now and then, without detracting from the message the author is clearly so passionate about?
It’s a great novel for book clubs, though. There’s heaps to discuss here!