Fireside Chat at Planet Word, 925 13th Street, NW, Washington, D.C.
Friday, June 3, 2022 at 6:00 p.m. ET
In-person and virtual option
You're invited to an inspiring conversation on education, poverty, and family with Nicole Lynn Lewis, Generation Hope Founder & CEO; CiCi Felton, a proud Generation Hope alumna and Family Program Coordinator at Generation Hope; Jarixa Mejia Canales, a Generation Hope Scholar; and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Washington Post Higher Education Reporter, who will serve as our moderator. This exciting discussion will take place in Planet Word’s auditorium, followed by a book signing of the just-released paperback version of Nicole’s memoir PREGNANT GIRL: A story of teen motherhood, college, and creating a better future for young families. During the PREGNANT GIRL book signing, we will enjoy refreshments in the museum's lobby.
Unfortunately, previously scheduled panelist and speaker Stephanie Land, author of MAID and inspiration for the NETFLIX series, will not be able to join us due to a medical emergency. She is currently recovering, and we are sending her our best wishes for a smooth and speedy healing process. All attendees will have the opportunity to receive a complimentary signed copy of Stephanie’s book, to be mailed following the event.
This is part of our 2022 Spring Events Series. Want to attend all three of our Spring Events? Purchase a premium ticket today!
Stephanie Land:
Stephanie Land’s bestselling debut memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive recounts her harrowing saga as a single mom navigating the poverty trap. Her unflinching testimony exposes the physical, economic, and social brutality that domestic workers face, all while radiating a parent’s hope and resilience.
At age 28, Land’s dream of attending college and becoming a writer is deferred when she and her seven month-old have to move into a homeless shelter, fleeing a violent home and lacking any form of reliable safety net. She begins the bureaucratic nightmare of applying for food stamps and subsidized housing, and starts cleaning houses for $9/hour. Mired in patronizing government processes and paltry wages, she illustrates the trauma of grasping for stability from a rigged system, and demonstrates how hard work doesn’t always pay off. In a constant state of scarcity, a single unexpected cost–as simple as a car repair–jeopardizes Land’s carefully calculated budget, and shows the impossible slipperiness of escaping poverty.
“Land nails the sheer terror that comes with being poor, the exhausting vigilance of knowing that any misstep or twist of fate will push you deeper into the hole.” – The Boston Globe
Land’s memoir offers a unique and essential perspective from the frontlines of struggle, but the deeply personal, intimate details of her story paint a larger picture. The physical pain of her own poverty–like the mold in her apartment, and the “constant burn” and “shooting pain” from cleaning houses–clarifies systemic class inequalities, dispelling the myth that poor people are responsible for their own predicament and just need to try harder. Instead, she reveals the real culprits of her situation: domestic violence, untenable minimum wages, high housing costs, and government assistance programs that fail the people they ostensibly serve.
After years of barely scraping by, Land graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Montana in 2014, and started a career as a freelance writer. Her viral essay for Vox, “I spent 2 years cleaning houses. What I saw makes me never want to be rich.”, later was expanded to become the New York Times bestselling memoir. The Boston Globe says of the book, “Land nails the sheer terror that comes with being poor, the exhausting vigilance of knowing that any misstep or twist of fate will push you deeper into the hole.” Maid was named as a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Time and The Washington Post, among others, and was listed among President Obama’s summer reading list for 2019.
Land’s story serves as the inspiration for Netflix’s Golden Globe Award-nominated original series Maid, starring Margaret Qualley, alongside Andie MacDowell, Nick Robinson and Anika Noni Rose. A “story both captivating and relatable” (Fresh Air), Maid boasts an impressive 94% Certified Fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes and has drawn praise for its nuanced depictions of the realities of poverty. Writing in Rolling Stone, critic Alan Sepinwall observed “little things that would be forgettable elsewhere — a small job going well, a friend opening her door without judgment — land with thunderbolt force.… This is a great one.” Land serves as an executive producer on the project in addition to showrunner Molly Smith Metzler, John Wells (ER, The West Wing, Shameless), and Margot Robbie, among others. The show is one of Netflix’s most watched series ever with over 469 million hours viewed that have reached over 67 million households in its first month.
For more information about Stephanie Land, please visit her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and at stepville.com.
Nicole Lynn Lewis:
Nicole Lynn Lewis is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Generation Hope, a nonprofit organization that engages education and policy partners to drive systemic change and provides direct support to teen parents in college as well as their children through holistic, two-generation programming to ensure all student parents have the opportunities to succeed and experience economic mobility. Generation Hope surrounds motivated teen parents and their children with the mentors, emotional support, and financial resources that they need to thrive in college and kindergarten, thereby driving a two-generation solution to poverty. A former teen mother who put herself through the College of William & Mary with her three-month old daughter in tow, Nicole now works every day to change the statistic that less than 2% of teen mothers will earn their degrees before age 30. Generation Hope rallies around teen parents to help them earn college degrees and forge a path to economic opportunity and is now expanding its work nationally to help colleges and universities and policymakers across the country better meet the needs of the nearly 4 million parenting students who are working toward their degrees.
Nicole is a member of the board of trustees of Trinity Washington University and a National Advisory Board member of The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice. Most recently, she was honored as a 2021 Luminary in Economic Mobility by The 1954 Project alongside four other innovative Black leaders in educational equity. She has been recognized with various awards, including being honored as a CNN Hero, being named one of the inaugural Black Voices for Black Justice Award, which “recognizes incredible leaders who have been on the frontlines working to dismantle the deep-rooted, racist systems that have plagued our country for centuries,” and receiving the Boulder Fund award through Education Leaders of Color, which “supports the innovations of leaders of color in education.” She was the national grand prize winner of the Roslyn S. Jaffe Award, and has been featured on major news outlets including “Good Morning America,” CNN, “NBC Nightly News,” and The Washington Post. Nicole is also a nationally-known author and speaker with her critically-acclaimed book, Pregnant Girl, released by Beacon Press in the spring of 2021, which was named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2021.
"[T]his book is so much more than a memoir . . . . Her prose has the power to undo deep-set cultural biases about poverty and parenthood."--New York Times Book Review
Nicole holds a Master’s degree in Social Policy and Communication from George Mason University and a Bachelor’s degree in English from the College of William & Mary. Nicole and her husband, Donté Lewis, live in Maryland with their five children.