Synopses & Reviews
An extraordinary new work by the leading Marxian philosopher of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century,
The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time represents a breakthrough in the development of socialist thought. It can be seen both as a companion volume to his earlier pathbreaking
Beyond Capital and a major theoretical contribution in its own right. Its focus is on the "decapitation of historical time" in today's capitalism and the necessity of a new "socialist time accountancy" as a revolutionary response to the debilitating present.
Extending Mészáros's earlier analysis of capitalism as a social-metabolic system caught in an irreversible structural crisis, it represents a crushing refutation of the view that "there is no alternative" to the current social order. Mészáros's wide-ranging analysis explores the forces behind the expansion of world inequality, the return of imperial interventionism, the growing structural crisis of the capitalist state, and the widening planetary ecological crisisalong with the new hope offered by the reemergence of concrete socialist alternatives.
At the heart of his book is an examination of the preconditions of Latin America's historic Bolivarian journey, which is producing new revolutionary transformations in Venezuela, Bolivia and elsewhere. The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time is a work of great political as well as philosophical importance, one that defines the challenges and burdens facing all those who are committed to a more rational, more egalitarian future.
Review
“The circumstances of ‘Olivias true story--growing up in the servants quarters of a gated luxury suburb--may evoke Upstairs, Downstairs meets Beverly Hills 90210, but the narrative is infinitely more profound and subversive. A unique, autobiographical collaboration between two brilliant women, The Maids Daughter relentlessly interrogates every facet of privilege and subalternity to achieve a psychological complexity and irony worthy of a great novel.”
-Mike Davis,author of Planet of Slums
Review
“A compelling story of how a maid's daughter moves from a girlhood of rage and resentment to a level of empowerment, as a grown woman, that will make readers want to stand up and cheer. Blending life history and cultural analysis, Mary Romero shows that it is possible to do creative ethnographic work that is of service to both the academy and society. Although the identity of Romero's protagonist must remain anonymous, her struggle will live on in this memorable book.” -Ruth Behar,author of Translated Woman
Review
“A page-turner. The book's remarkable protagonist tells a compelling story...with each episode, the reader cannot wait for the next. How will she negotiate high school, dating, college campus politics? Mary Romero's more than two decades of research have produced a book worth waiting for.” -Renato Rosaldo,co-editor of The Anthropology of Globalization: Cultural Anthropology Enters the 21st Century
Review
"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."-Publishers Weekly,
Review
"A valuable case study and a dramatic life story, this oral history explores identity and illuminates race, class, and gender in America at a peculiarly intimate intersection between upper-middle-class white families and the women of color who provide domestic labor for them." -Library Journal,
Review
"While The Maid's Daughter: Living Inside and Outside the American Dream is an emotionally draining book at times - the reader is witness to the abusive treatment of others - it is well worth the depth of experience and knowledge one gains by reading it...Author Romero has successfully encapsulated the plight and struggles of domestic workers and given the reader a great deal to contemplate" -Laura Schultz,New York Journal of Books
Review
"A moving work that deconstructs the American Dream at the fraught intersection of race, class and gender."-Kirkus,
Review
"Readers who found the popular novel The Help annoyingly glib and superficial may find The Maids Daughter, an oral history and sociological study, astonishingly complex and often raw with emotion."-Washington Independent,Robin Talbert
Review
Today Mészáros's theoretical insights are becoming a material force, gripping the masses through various world-historical including Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. -John Bellamy Foster,editor, Monthly Review
Review
"In her new book, The Maids Daughter, Romero is again the perfect scholar -- respectful, curious, honest about her own orientation. Shes a listener, allowing the women she talks with to guide the way in which their stories are revealed... Its very moving work; thoughtful, sensitive, the best possible use of scholarship to open our eyes." -Susan Salter Reynolds,Los Angeles Review of Books
Review
"Mary Romero, sociology professor at Arizona State University, transforms twenty years of recorded interviews with a woman referred to as “Olivia Sanchez” into a highly readable book which juxtaposes Olivias story, as told to Romero, with sociological commentary, research and selected interviews with other children of domestic workers. This thought provoking study raises many questions to wrestle with on both individual and societal levels."-Leslie Starasta,Englewood Review of Books
Review
"For this sequel to her groundbreaking study on the social inequity of domestic work, Maid in the U.S.A., Romero spent two decades following Olivia, who was raised in between two worlds, living in an upscale Los Angeles house where her mother worked as a maid."-Ms. Magazine,
Synopsis
2012 Americo Paredes Book Award Winner for Non-Fiction presented by the Center for Mexican American Studies at South Texas College Selected as a 2012 Outstanding Title by AAUP University Press Books for Public and Secondary School Libraries This is Olivia's story. Born in Los Angeles, she is taken to Mexico to live with her extended family until the age of three. Olivia then returns to L.A. to live with her mother, Carmen, the live-in maid to a wealthy family. Mother and daughter sleep in the maid's room, just off the kitchen. Olivia is raised alongside the other children of the family. She goes to school with them, eats meals with them, and is taken shopping for clothes with them. She is like a member of the family. Except she is not. Based on over twenty years of research, noted scholar Mary Romero brings Olivia's remarkable story to life. We watch as she grows up among the children of privilege, struggles through adolescence, declares her independence and eventually goes off to college and becomes a successful professional. Much of this extraordinary story is told in Olivia's voice and we hear of both her triumphs and setbacks. We come to understand the painful realization of wanting to claim a Mexican heritage that is in many ways not her own and of her constant struggle to come to terms with the great contradictions in her life.
In The Maid's Daughter, Mary Romero explores this complex story about belonging, identity, and resistance, illustrating Olivia's challenge to establish her sense of identity, and the patterns of inclusion and exclusion in her life. Romero points to the hidden costs of paid domestic labor that are transferred to the families of private household workers and nannies, and shows how everyday routines are important in maintaining and assuring that various forms of privilege are passed on from one generation to another. Through Olivia's story, Romero shows how mythologies of meritocracy, the land of opportunity, and the American dream remain firmly in place while simultaneously erasing injustices and the struggles of the working poor.
A happy ending for the maid's daughter Hector Tobar's profile of Olivia for the
LA Times Synopsis
At a very young age, Olivia left her family and traditions in Mexico to live with her mother, Carmen, in one of Los Angeless most exclusive and nearly all-white gated communities. Based on over twenty years of research, noted scholar Mary Romero brings Olivias remarkable story to life. We watch as she struggles through adolescence, declares her independence and eventually goes off to college and becomes a successful professional. Much of her extraordinary story is told in Olivias voice and we hear of both her triumphs and her setbacks.
In The Maids Daughter, Mary Romero explores this complex story about belonging, identity, and resistance, illustrating Olivias challenge to establish her sense of identity, and the patterns of inclusion and exclusion in her life. Romero points to the hidden costs of paid domestic labor that are transferred to the families of private household workers and nannies, and shows how everyday routines are important in maintaining and assuring that various forms of privilege are passed on from one generation to another. Through Olivias story, Romero shows how mythologies of meritocracy, the land of opportunity, and the American dream remain firmly in place while simultaneously erasing injustices and the struggles of the working poor.
About the Author
István Mészáros is a world-renowned philosopher and critic. He left his native Hungary after the Soviet invasion of 1956. He is professor emeritus at the University of Sussex, where he held the chair of philosophy for fifteen years. Meszaros is author of
The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time,
Beyond Capital,
The Power of Ideology,
The Work of Sartre, and
Marxs Theory of Alienation.
John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review. He is professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and author of The Ecological Revolution, The Great Financial Crisis (with Fred Magdoff), Critique of Intelligent Design (with Brett Clark and Richard York), Ecology Against Capitalism, Marxs Ecology, and The Vulnerable Planet.
Table of Contents
1 Who Is Caring for the Maids Children?2 Becoming the Maids Daughter3 Being the Maids Daughter4 Passing and Rebelling 5 Leaving “Home” 6 Making a Home