Women’s Work: A Reckoning With Home and Help

　　身為女性，如何身兼一位妻子、一位母親？

　　身為女性，如何捍衛女權、又非享用特權？

　　國家書卷獎決選作家，以自己的親身經驗，省思當代的關鍵問題



　　本書作者Megan Stack在北京生活時，因為有了孩子，而辭去了外電記者一職，成為在家寫作的專職主婦。然而，在家帶小孩及打理家事並不是件容易的事，更佔用了她的寫作時間。



　　卡在這種蠟燭兩頭燒的狀況，Stack像多數小康家庭一樣，選擇雇用費用低廉的中國幫傭，來減緩自己的負擔。Stack因此雇用了一位來自鄉下，為了賺錢而離開自己的孩子，來到都市的幫傭。



　　後來，Stack的家裡越來越多人，並隨著她丈夫職業調動而舉家遷居至德里，並雇用了更多華裔及印度裔的婦女來為他們操持家事及照顧孩子，Stack也漸漸發覺，這些受僱於她的婦女們的生活是多麽艱辛，被諸如家庭暴力、酒精成癮及未預期懷孕等情況折磨著。



　　雇用這些困頓的幫傭們，Stack得以兼顧家庭與事業，但她是不是在無意識的情況下，也剝削了這些幫傭生而為人的價值，與身為母親的時光？



　　Stack下定決心，要直視自己的所作所為可能造成的影響，因此遠行到她的幫傭們的家鄉，與她們的父母、孩子碰面，用她身為記者的洞察力去探查這些母親們為了有更好的工作報酬妥協了什麼，而這些被迫沒有母親陪伴的孩子，又失去了什麼。提問了關於當代社會與身為女性深刻而值得深思的重大問題──社經地位的剝削、親職外包的影響，更思索當我們呼籲女性追尋自己的夢想，社會對母職的想像又是否有改變，女性該如何在之中尋求平衡。（文/博客來編譯）

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019

From National Book Award finalist Megan K. Stack, a stunning memoir of raising her children abroad with the help of Chinese and Indian women who are also working mothers

When Megan Stack was living in Beijing, she left her prestigious job as a foreign correspondent to have her first child and work from home writing a book. She quickly realized that caring for a baby and keeping up with the housework while her husband went to the office each day was consuming the time she needed to write. This dilemma was resolved in the manner of many upper-class families and large corporations: she availed herself of cheap Chinese labor. The housekeeper Stack hired was a migrant from the countryside, a mother who had left her daughter in a precarious situation to earn desperately needed cash in the capital. As Stack's family grew and her husband's job took them to Dehli, a series of Chinese and Indian women cooked, cleaned, and babysat in her home. Stack grew increasingly aware of the brutal realities of their lives: domestic abuse, alcoholism, unplanned pregnancies. Hiring poor women had given her the ability to work while raising her children, but what ethical compromise had she made?
Determined to confront the truth, Stack traveled to her employees' homes, met their parents and children, and turned a journalistic eye on the tradeoffs they'd been forced to make as working mothers seeking upward mobility--and on the cost to the children who were left behind.
Women's Work is an unforgettable story of four women as well as an electrifying meditation on the evasions of marriage, motherhood, feminism, and privilege.

Author

MEGAN K. STACK

　　MEGAN K. STACK is the author of Every Man in This Village Is a Liar, a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award. As a war correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, she reported from dozens of countries and was posted to Jerusalem, Cairo, Moscow, and Beijing. She was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting.