This study analyses how poor women – working as cleaning ladies at a private university at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – organize their life, social and work experiences in life story narratives. In recent times, the Humanities and Social Science have become increasingly more interested in narrative studies as action in the social world, in processes of identity construction. In this sense, the data, produced in interview situation, were analyzed based on a qualitative and interpretative methodology, from a socio-interactional discourse perspective. The analysis uses labovian categories in order to identify narrative episodes, focusing on evaluative resources, and observes, from the narrative/identity performances of the women interviewed, the meanings constructed in (re)telling past experiences, current situations or future or hypothetical projections. Thus, the narratives studied have made it possible to observe some dimensions of the world of the women interviewed and how they construct meanings and connections with regards to their lives (family and education) and jobs. In this world, the life experiences are presented with very little access to education and to the family support, which is reflected in the women’s identity constructions. The family’s role is crucial in the process of organizing meanings. Children help these women to tolerate the hardness and the humiliation in/from their job. Their identity constructions are based on their experiences of motherhood and the hope of a better life.