Customer Reviews

Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a book that really resonated with me. Having grown up in a blue-collar family, it has helped me understand an uneasy, unnameable feeling I've carried with me my whole life. As a child, they called me "encyclopedia." When I graduated from college, my working class family and neighborhood seemed more distant than ever. People called me "Professor" and made fun of the way I spoke. When I began working, that turned out to be no picnic either. Everyone around me dressed and acted differently. They seemed to have all grown up in tennis whites, having "coming out" parties, and living a far easier life. I've never spent much time thinking about "class" in relation to my career, but "Limbo" gets to the heart of what I've been feeling all these years. It's been not only fascinating, but, in an odd way, liberating as well. (You know, once you no longer feel as if you're the only one....) Few books I've ever read have offered the kind of insight that Mr. Lubrano has brought to this important subject. I thank him for this book.

I have to agree with what lots of other people have written - this book is one of the most affecting I've ever read. Not so much because of any special power or artistry in the writing, but because of an empathy that comes from Lubrano's pen for all of us who've grown up and who still live between classes in the supposedly classless society that is America.

My parents grew up in dire poverty (from Newfoundland and Georgia respectively), and reacted against it by trying to "bleach" themselves - and me - to an impossible Ozzy & Harriet standard. They never lost many of those working-class values that Lubrano talks about, however, and so the pretenses of middle-class life always coexisted uncomfortably with their fundamental beliefs and experiences. Growing up, I rejected a lot of my upbringing and tried to blend in with what I saw as "sophistication". But for all my striving, I never was taught the "secret handshake" that my peers from middle and upper-class backgrounds used daily.

As a graduate student, those class differences between me and my peers and professors are even more obvious and acute, and it made graduate school, at least for a while, seem somewhat hostile. I heard about "Limbo" on NPR at exactly the time when I felt most disconnected, and it made me feel like I wasn't alone.

If nothing else, this book lets "Straddlers" know that no, we aren't alone. There's a lot more of us than anyone realizes. And we have overcome a lot - not only our upbringing, but the corners of society we most want to join but which demand as the price of admission an abandonment of everything we are.
Maybe the blue-collar world we grew up in still has something to give - the warmth, the humor, the strength, the straightforwardness - something that all the Thai restaurants, backpacking trips to Europe and Dave Matthews yuppie-fests can't replace.

Al Lubrano deserves the collective thanks of all of us who have crossed the formidable class divide for writing such a revealing exposition on class in America. This book is not some abstruse academic treatise on social conditions. It is a very readable insight on what it is like to cross from the working-class world to that of the college-educated professional, written by a keen-eyed, nose-to-the-ground news reporter.

The other reviews here capture well the essence of Lubrano's message on the challenges "Straddlers" face in their difficult journey across class lines. I particularly value his commentary on cultural capital -- "the collective
advantages of the middle and upper classes."

I, too, am an Italian-American rooted in the working class who transitioned to the Ivy League (also Columbia) and, from there, into the elitist, very WASPy, upper & upper middle class U.S. Foreign Service. I, too, have confronted obliqueness in professional relations and bureaucratic treachery, blatant self-promotion by colleagues and the assumption by my fellow diplomats that they are the heirs of success. But it is the class tribalism that has proven so fascinating and mysterious to me. Assignments to the choicest diplomatic posts (particularly in W. Europe) always seem to be traded among the same group of friends; fast promotions largely go a pre-selected cabal of fair-haired boys and girls who are inducted early on into a select circle of like-minded people largely from the same kind of social bacground: college-educated parents, suburban/urban-bred, upper middle class or higher, usually WASP.

I found that inclusion of "he marches to his own drum" in my personnel evaluations proved to be not commendatory, but damning in that peculiarly indirect way white-collar professionals can be. As a blue-collar type whose father didn't complete high school, I was clueless starting out as to the secret social codes, nuanced manner of speaking and honed, behind-the-scenes schmoozing required to be tacitly accepted as part of the Club. At the same time, my family regards me as some sort of mutant who has been transformed into something unrecognizable by a world that is very alien to them.

I have recommended Lubrano's book to the small handful of other diplomatic colleagues I know who are also "Straddlers." This has sparked a lively exchange sharing experiences and views. One reaction we all have in common is how much Lubrano's book has opened our eyes. The "Aha!" factor features prominantly in our discussions.

As Cassius said, "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves." The blue-collar denizen seeking to ensconce him/herself in the white collar professional world faces deeper obstacles than appears at first on the surface. While we face disadvantages in advancement by dint of our origins, we nonetheless greatly benefit from the down-home values with which we are brought up. It is a subject well worth further exploration and Lubrano has helped open up a new vista for us all.

When I heard Alfred Lubrano on NPR talking about his book, the topic and how he portrayed it was so riveting I stopped and pulled over my car so I could listen to what he had to say. The way he interspersed personal details of his upbringing - ones that were obviously painful to him - with the stories of others who felt the same way was compelling listening.
That interview prompted me to read the book, which I just finished. I found it hard to put down. Lubrano is such a wonderful writer that his prose draws you deeper into the tale and keeps you going until the very end. He calls those of us who come from blue-collar families and now live middle-class lives "Straddlers." If there's a more perfect way to describe this newly identified group, I don't know what it is.
In the book, Lubrano gives dozens of examples of the difficulties of straddling both worlds. He tells you why blue-collar values - i.e. blunt talk - doesn't play well in the white-collar world of doubletalk and indirectness. He shows you how in some cases it distances you even further from your relatives and the friends you grew up with yet still makes you feel like you don't quite belong with your middle-class neighbors and colleagues, who never had to worry about a part-time job or two while they were in college.
Lubrano doesn't pretend to have the answers. It's obvious he's still struggling with the dichotomy of his life now vs. his upbringing, as many of us are. What he does, though, is identify an issue that has been rarely written about or studied. By doing so he elicits an "Ah-hah" feeling from people like myself who were struggling with the same issues but didn't know what the problem was. Maybe it's enough to know that you're not alone.

Lubrano tells a story that has been largely ignored - well, ignored when it is not mythologized. U.S. culture loves the Horatio Alger myth, the idea of individuals who, despite lives spent in abject poverty, pull themselves up by the bootstraps and become wildly successful (and usually wealthy), more successful than the peers and naysayers who never had to grapple with such struggles.

Though we love the myth, we haven't talked much--until now--about what the class-straddling process is really like. This may be because the experience has not happened, or rather, that the conditions for the class-straddling experience have existed only rarely until now. A generation of blue-collar parents (many of them first-generation American-born or immigrants) have raised children who have attended college and/or graduate school, something of a new phenomenon.

It is fascinating to read Lubrano's work, because he describes the reality of the experience of upward mobility, but more aptly of class-straddling, and it is so different from the mythic version. Some of us knew this, but it's nice to see it in print.

"Limbo" stands on its own merits--great storytelling, poignant and critical without seeming whiney, and captured details that do more to convey an experience in one sentence than some writers can in an entire chapter--but I'd be remiss if I left my personal lens out of this review. I found this book just as I was completing my M.S. and beginning my Ph.D. I am not in the Ivy League, but do attend a very good, private university with a more-than-decent reputation. I wish Lubrano had written "Limbo" while I was in college, but am grateful that he wrote it at all.

My parents (a tool and die maker and an elementary school secretary) could not afford to pay for any portion of my undergraduate education - neither tuition nor living expenses. I qualified for scanty and sporadically available merit-based financial aid, but--despite earning just $18,000 per year before taxes--I never once qualified for need-based financial aid. I felt like an outcast in college: I had just one other friend (another girl from a working-class background just like mine, still one of my closest friends and now an M.A.) who worked fulltime and attended college fulltime, like I did.

I believed so much in a meritocracy, until I realized how a university's entire structure is based on the ability of its students to be there fulltime, and during the day - during working hours, for those of us who have worked since we were 15. As a college student who had to work fulltime in order to cover living expenses, buy textbooks, etc., having to select from limited evening and summer classes, or work from 6 PM until 3 AM in order to be able to attend classes during the day, made the college experience very, very different from the one most other people had.

I was constantly asked, by classmates as well as professors who enjoyed my enthusiasm and high grades in their classes, why I wasn't "more involved", why I couldn't attend brown-bag lunch lectures, late Friday afternoon faculty colloquia, and all the other fun meetings that make a college experience so truly intellectual and enjoyable (newspaper meetings, academic journal meetings, political clubs, etc.). And forget meetings - when you have to work, try even making it to a professor's "open office" hours. Though I graduated with honors within five years, several professors told me that I had to "find a way to stop working" so I could "focus more on school." It's a nice, well-intentioned sentiment, and believe me, there's nothing I would have liked more, but it also conveyed the idea that work and education should not or cannot co-exist, and that trying to make them both fit just couldn't work.

Dating was a miserable experience, meeting boys whose parents bought them houses on campus as investment properties, and who have no qualms about telling you that you're the smartest, coolest person they've met, but could never date you seriously, because, well, my parents "weren't anyone" to their parents. Like another reviewer whose father was a painter, I too remember aghast expressions when a boyfriend's mother (to my mind, a lazy stay-at-home, kept woman who frittered away her husband's earnings on daily trips to the salon and Botox injections and pretended to ignore his affairs with his interns) learned that my mother was an elementary school secretary. It was "so unfortunate" that my mother "had to work" because my "father couldn't support her properly". Funny, I used to think the rich had manners. No more.

Lubrano truly understands so much of the complexity of these experiences, and so much more. He is not afraid to write about the bittersweet experience of academic success in the face of families who may not understand it, or who have not had educational opportunities themselves. As I now pursue my Ph.D., still working fulltime and attending school on a part-time basis, but publishing and conducting research, I can't describe what it is like to talk with my father, still working at a factory, on his feet all day, with a small 401(k) and no possiblity of a pension - a MENSA member (no kidding) who is treated with nothing but disrespect by those who are not nearly as intelligent or hardworking as he is. How do I resign what, in comparison, seems to be a self-indulgent pursuit of education with the guilt I feel for doing well at it? It's absolutely unbearable sometimes, and now I know that at least a few other people understand it - Alfred Lubrano, my friend from college with her M.A., and a few reviewers of "Limbo" on Amazon.com.

While I of course recommend this book to everyone, it is nothing short of a Godsend for working-class students and academics from blue-collar backgrounds, at the undergraduate, graduate, and professorship levels of academic pursuit.

For the first time, someone has succeeded in explaining to me why I always felt so diffrerent from my middle class colleagues and friends. Those who grew up and moved up from a working class family will find themsevlves in this book.

thought provoking book
I heard an interview with Lubrano on NPR a few Sundays ago and immediately bought the book. It is excellent, written with insight and clarity. Class is a touchy subject in the United States. Americans like to think of this country as a meritocracy, where one advances by power of one's deeds, not one's parents. That isn't necessarily the case, as Lubrano makes clear. He nicely combines his personal story (his father was a bricklayer, he is a journalist) with comments from many, many white collar children of blue collar parents and a few experts. I found myself nodding in agreement in every chapter, and occasionally laughing out loud. Social mobility has many costs, many of which are hidden. Lubrano brings them out into the open and holds them up for discussion and analysis. Highly recommended.

Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams by Alfred Lubrano covers an area that has always interested me, but for which, I have never seen covered in any book before. I am from a working class background with a college education and I am presently an executive in a major corporation. Over my long and diverse career, I have encountered many of the situations described so well in this book. However, until I read this book, I always though they were unique to me. Now because of this excellent book I am starting to look at them from a different and much broader perspective. What I have always felt was a shortcoming on my part, my inability to adapted myself to become more like my fellow executives, is probably not a shortcoming, but a plus and one of the reason I have advanced so much further than many of them and further than I ever expected. I particularly enjoyed the autobiographical portion of the book.

I heard an interview with Lubrano on NPR last Sunday and immediately bought the book. It is excellent, written with insight and clarity. Class is a touchy subject in the United States. Americans like to think of this country as a meritocracy, where one advances by power of one's deeds, not one's parents. That isn't necessarily the case, as Lubrano makes clear. He nicely combines his personal story (his father was a bricklayer, he is a journalist) with comments from many, many white collar children of blue collar parents and a few experts. I found myself nodding in agreement in every chapter, and occasionally laughing out loud. Social mobility has many costs, many of which are hidden. Lubrano brings them out into the open and holds them up for discussion and analysis. Highly recommended.

Many Americans are either first-generation 'successes' or not far from their parents' modest accomplishments. That should provide enough of a primary audience for Alfred Lubrano's impressive study of the central journey of so many lives - a trip that isn't as simple as it appears while taking travelers from humble homes to prominent workplaces and the 'good' life. For those who embrace this book's pages, their investment of time will be well rewarded.

Lubrano, a longtime journalist who now writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer and provides commentaries to NPR, intersperses his own story with those of others, creating resonance where I didn't expect to find it. By sharing these varied stories of the move from homes where education is `understood' to be the ticket to a better station in life, through prominent colleges and universities where hard work is sometimes rewarded no more than a family resume, and finally to employers who prefer to work with their own kind, the author reminded me of many stories I'd heard and many more I'd told.

When Lubrano writes of parents whose achievements help them raise privileged children that they don't necessarily like, he adds a level of tragedy to what should be seen as lives filled with hard work and the success it brought.

I grew up in the same community as the author, in Bensonhurst, one of Brooklyn's alternately notable and notorious neighborhoods, and this book captivated me. I've shared its message with many friends and colleagues who came from similar backgrounds - finding, as the author did, that I've gravitated to those cut from this cloth. Those who've picked up the book have found it more compelling than anything they've read in quite a while.

Though the specifics of my upbringing and adulthood are somewhat different than Lubrano's, I recognized his anguish in telling of the celebrity child who was `awarded' a place on a New York newspaper that he sought, an editor choosing to honor privilege over all. If only there was a nickel for every such mishandled situation in life, someone would have a lot of money.

My advice is to spend some of that money on Limbo. Unless your successful place in life was secured at birth, you will likely find this book worth reading, and you'll be compelled to discuss it with your friends. Odds are that they'll recognize its themes and will marvel at the stories of others like themselves.