{"id":2411,"date":"2011-06-01T01:00:28","date_gmt":"2011-06-01T05:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/info-libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/?p=2411"},"modified":"2023-07-12T16:20:27","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T16:20:27","slug":"2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/2011\/06\/01\/2006\/","title":{"rendered":"Year 146 – 2006: Orange County Housecleaners by Frank Cancian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published: Albuquerque, 2006\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This photo documentary profiles seven women, largely through their own words, all of them currently or formerly housecleaners in Orange County, CA. There\u2019s Sara Velazquez, an immigrant who crossed the river into Laredo on an inner tube and nearly cried when asked during her first interview about her children back in Mexico. There\u2019s Tina Parker, an Orange County native whose mother pulled her out of school when she was a child (ostensibly to be home schooled, but really to be taken door to door as a Jehovah\u2019s Witness).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Leidi Mejia, originally from Guatemala, enrolled in a cosmetology program \u2013 with classes offered only in English \u2013 and earned straight A\u2019s. Victoria Rua left an abusive father in Mexico, only to find that the shame of her mother\u2019s infidelities had followed her to the States. Sharon Risley, born and raised in Laguna Beach, earned her BFA twenty-six years after an unexpected teen pregnancy derailed her original plans. Esperanza Mejia, Leidi\u2019s sister, took up housecleaning after two very unpleasant stints as a nanny. Julieta Noemi (Mimi) Lopez stopped cleaning houses just before giving birth to her son. Then, unable to afford their Orange County apartment on her husband\u2019s salary alone, the family eventually moved in with a relative here in Boston.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nAll seven of these women rank among what Frank Cancian calls \u201cthe elite of domestic workers.\u201d While he does profile two white Orange County natives, he makes it a point to underscore the dramatic increase in the number of Latina domestic workers in recent decades. \u201cIn the Los Angeles area Latinas were 86 percent of female household employees in 2000,\u201d he writes. \u201cThey were 23 percent in 1970.\u201d<\/p>\n

The women generally live within the same county as the families whose houses they clean, but they dwell in starkly different worlds. Cleaners live inland in places like Santa Ana; their clients live along the coast in Newport Beach. It comes as no surprise to read that \u201cper capita income in Newport Beach is more than five times that in Santa Ana.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Find it in the library<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published: Albuquerque, 2006 This photo documentary profiles seven women, largely through their own words, all of them currently or formerly housecleaners in Orange County, CA. There\u2019s Sara Velazquez, an immigrant who crossed the river into Laredo on an inner tube and nearly cried when asked during her first interview about her children back in Mexico. There\u2019s Tina Parker, an Orange County native whose mother pulled her out of school when she was a child (ostensibly to be home schooled, but really to be taken door to door as a Jehovah\u2019s Witness). Leidi Mejia, originally from Guatemala, enrolled in a cosmetology […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":false,"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-years"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2411"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4339,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions\/4339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}