The Maid's Daughter

Romero, professor of justice and social inquiry at Arizona State University, offers the culmination of two decades of research in her scholarly sociological portrait of class, race, and family as she follows Olivia Salazar, daughter of a maid, Carmen, employed by a wealthy family in Los Angeles. Romero examines Olivia's tenuous place in the family, both the employers' and Olivia's own. Olivia is "the maid's daughter," yet the employers have her eat at the table while Carmen serves the food, and sleep in an upstairs bedroom while Carmen inhabits the maid's quarters. Olivia's confrontations with issues of class, race, and identity saturate typical coming-of-age issues such as dating: her mother's employers want her to date white boys from the private school for which they sign tuition checks, while Olivia, seeking her place in the Mexican-American community, favors Chicanos. Romero interviews Olivia through childhood and college life and social activism through adulthood, shows how the girl who started out as "maid's daughter" crossed perceived class boundaries; her story represents "a microcosm of power relationships in the larger society." Although Romero's choice to remain a presence in the text and to intersperse her voice with Olivia's, lends the book some choppiness, this detailed, intimate investigation of domestic work from the perspective of a domestic worker's child is a significant achievement that reads like a more academic Random Family. (Sept.)