Sans-culottes in the Promised Land

Lena's days as a nanny seem numbered. Her new job is much more difficult than she'd hoped, and she struggles to keep her composure, and her secrets, while battling with the state-of-the-art washing machine that devours all of her young charge Greta's clothing; the long- suffering housekeeper, Carrmel, who is angling for Lena's position in the family; and the peculiar needs of Greta's parents. Carol, a high-powered attorney, and Greg, an architect, whose African-inspired designs are finding no takers in the corporate world to which his wife wishes he would cater, are beginning to show signs of wear as they strive to maintain the affluent lifestyle they have worked hard to achieve. And then there's Charlotte, Greta's teacher, whom Lena meets while retrieving Greta from one of her numerous after-school activities. Consumed with contempt for materialism and an admiration for the sans-culottes, militant revolutionaries associated with the French revolution, Charlotte promises to help Lena improve herself so she can quit nannying. Meanwhile, very little attention is being paid to Greta, who has picked up mixed and startling messages about being black and begins to retreat into an imagined utopia influenced by Disney's standards of female beauty. However, Charlotte's promises to Lena begin to falter as Carol's prejudices concerning class and ethnicity emerge and her demands on Lena spiral out of control. Sans-culottes in the Promised Land careens to a chilling end, where each member of this African-American household is forced to come to terms with the conditions in which each lives in the promised land of America.