Growing up as the daughter of a live-in domestic worker, the subject of this study occupied a unique position between two worlds — the affluent household where her mother worked and the working-class community where she was raised. Mary Romero’s ethnographic exploration of these everyday boundary crossings reveals how race, class, and gender are negotiated in the most intimate spaces of American life.
The article traces how a child learns to navigate radically different social worlds, developing a double consciousness born of daily immersion in privilege that is not her own. Through careful observation and narrative analysis, Romero illuminates the emotional labor, identity conflicts, and strategies of survival that define this experience.
This research laid the groundwork for Romero’s acclaimed book The Maid’s Daughter: Living Inside and Outside the American Dream (NYU Press, 2011).
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Cite This Work
Mary Romero (1995). Life as the Maid’s Daughter: An Exploration of the Everyday Boundaries of Race, Class, and Gender. Feminisms in the Academy.
