The maid narratives

The Maid Narratives shares the memories of black domestic workers and the white families they worked for, uncovering the often intimate relationships between maid and mistress in Louisiana and Mississippi. Based on interviews with over fifty people?both white and black?these stories deliver a personal and powerful message about resilience and resistance in the face of oppression in the Jim Crow South.

The housekeepers, caretakers, sharecroppers, and cooks who share their stories in The Maid Narratives ultimately moved away during the Great Migration. Their perspectives as servants who left for better opportunities outside of the South offer an original telling of physical and psychological survival in a racially oppressive caste system.