A Manual for Cleaning Women

Many of the characters in this story collection work in unappreciated, underpaid, and unseen labor: as caregivers, nurses, cleaners, switchboard operators, administrators, substitute teachers. The stories are rooted in Berlin’s own experience as a mother, worker, and alcoholic.

A lot of authors are famous for writing “working class” stories — but many of them are men. I love this collection because it centers the story on working-class women, who often happen to be mothers raising their children alone. 

Lucia Berlin didn’t receive much attention as an author in her lifetime, but she writes with a skill, shrewdness, and vulnerability that… show more.

Okay, honestly Lucia Berlin is my second cousin. But also, she is a fantastic storyteller with a seemingly infinite number of bite-sized memories, any of which could be adapted into a feature film. This particular collection is her most famous, but any of her collections will do the job. She’s a ruthlessly observant cultural interloper, traveling through the Southwest, Mexico, and California, taking on odd jobs, hearty love affairs, brief addictions, and small-town dramas. I feel like I knew her which is second-best to actually knowing her.