Memoirs about motherhood are exceedingly common, but Women’s Work dares to explore the labor arrangements that often make such books possible ... Stack writes sharp, pointed sentences that flash with dark insight ... ruthlessly self-aware [and] fearless.
Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

Women’s Work hit me where I live, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. The discomforting truths Stack reveals about caretaking and labor transcend cultural and national boundaries; this book is relevant to everyone, no matter how or where they live. Stack uses her reporting acumen to illuminate domestic workers' struggles, but also fearlessly reveals the most vulnerable details of her own life in order to make her point. The masterfulness with which she tells these intertwined stories makes this book not just a work of brilliant journalism but a work of art.
Emily Gould, Author of Friendship: A Novel and And the Heart Says Whatever

If Karl Ove Knausgaard himself were a woman and had given birth, he might have written a book a little like Women’s Work. Megan Stack’s mastery of language and attention to detail make magic of the most quotidian aspects of life. But the subject matter here is hardly banal. Stack goes beyond her own experience of motherhood to focus on the Chinese and Indian nannies who helped her raise her children at the expense of their own. She brilliantly dissects the contradictions of motherhood by analyzing how motherly love becomes a commodity in this modern, globalized word.
Barbara Demick, Author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Megan Stack is willing to confront hard questions that so many of us flinch from: the relationships between women and the women we hire to take care of our houses and our children, to do the traditional women’s work that gives “liberated women” the time to do traditional men's work. Women’s Work is a book of vivid characters, engrossing stories, shrewd insights, and uncomfortable reflections.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, President & CEO of New America, and author of Unfinished Business

Women’s Work is an incredible follow-up to Megan Stack’s celebrated book of war reportage, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar. It is a fierce and furious and darkly funny book about the costs of motherhood: the psychological costs, the costs in time and energy and spirit, and finally the costs imposed on other women, most of them also mothers, who leave their own children so they can take care of ours. I can’t think of a work that speaks more directly to our age of increasing inequality, starting with housework and child care, the oldest inequalities of all.
Keith Gessen, Author of A Terrible Country

A self-critical and heartfelt narrative ... beautifully written, informative, and sometimes harrowing as she recounts the joy, fear, and exhaustion of becoming a mother. What women — and men — can learn from Stack's story is that “women's work”, in all of its complexity and construction, should not be only for women. STARRED REVIEW
Kirkus

Megan Stack obliterates the silence that upholds one of our greatest taboos: our universal reliance on domestic labor that women — women of colour especially — are expected to supply freely or cheaply. With journalistic rigor, Stack centres the complicated lives of women who clean our homes and care for our children, but it’s her willingness to shine a light into the dark, typically untouched corners of her own family, privilege, and ambition that makes this book soar.
Angela Garbes, author of Like a Mother

Stack writes, unflinchingly, about what it was like for her world to shrink and her life to entwine with the lives of her hired help — who left their own kids behind in order to work in her home ... Stack’s writing is sharp and lovely, especially in the first section of the book as she deftly describes her plunge into new motherhood and year-long journey to find herself again.
Erica Pearson, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Stack truly becomes aware of the hardships facing the women she employs: alcoholism, domestic violence, poverty. She delves into their stories with searing honesty and self-reflection … Women’s Work is a brave book, an unflinching examination of privilege and the tradeoffs all women make in the name of family.
Amy Scribner, BookPage

Stack’s engaging style will have women everywhere nodding in recognition. FIVE STARS
Robyn Douglas, Adelaide Advertiser

Stack, who had stints in Jerusalem, Cairo, Moscow and Beijing for the Los Angeles Times, is a natural storyteller with an eye for detail ... This is a painfully honest investigation of what kind of compromises women make by hiring other women to do the grunt work ... Stack confronts a reality that many try not to think about: Who are the women who care for my children and clean my house? ... a double-edged indictment: of those, including Stack, who exploit domestic helpers in their desire to remain relevant in work but also of the men who abdicate responsibility ... In an unflinching way, Stack pulls the curtain back on the truths of women’s lives, especially the domestic part: how women make it work.
Debra Bruno, The Washington Post

Stack is admirably honest about her reactions and responses. Her prose is often a joy to read: sharp and full of insight.
Henrietta McKervey, The Irish Times