Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams

[MountainLaurel]

by Alfred Lubrano

I've only just started this one, so I can't review it, but I'm already overwhelmed at how on-target this author's research and personal history is. Essentially, this book is about adults who were raised in blue-collar environments and have moved into the white-collar world, and the problems then have in reconciling this new status and adjusting to the middle- and upper-class world in which they now live. As a coal-miner's daughter about to receive a master's degree, and who doesn't fit in at home or here in DC, I think this is hugely relevant.


Here's a book review from Publishers Weekly:

Lubrano's view of the challenges that upwardly mobile children of blue-collar families (he calls them Straddlers) face in establishing themselves in white-collar enclaves could spark lively debates among Straddlers themselves, not to mention those Lubrano views as having a head start based on birth into a white-collar family. In this combination of memoir and survey, the Philadelphia Inquirer staff reporter recalls his freshman year at Columbia; he'd expected classmates to regard him as sophisticated because he was a New Yorker. However, this son of a Brooklyn bricklayer found himself on the outside of elite cliques populated by men he characterizes as "pasty, slight fellas-all of them seemed 5-foot-7 and sandy-haired." This was only the beginning for Lubrano, who came to see entry into a select educational institution as a harsh cultural dividing line between his blue-collar upbringing and his white-collar future. Becoming a journalist cost him emotionally when he felt torn between abandoning cherished values from his youth and accommodating his new profession's demands. Lubrano's interviews with other Straddlers have convinced him that ambition puts many of them in positions fraught with similar ambivalence and unexpected culture shock. With quotes from Richard Rodriguez and bell hooks, Lubrano illustrates his thesis: "Limbo folk remain aware of their `otherness' throughout their lives perpetual outsiders." Yet he's quick to recognize individual Straddlers who've persevered in the face of those outsider feelings (though, regrettably, he doesn't share self-reflection). Straddlers' ultimate challenge, Lubrano opines, is to be as steadfast and self-possessed in reconciling their white-collar present with their blue-collar heritage as they have been in achieving their professional goals.

[LWolf]

1. I heard him interviewed on NPR last spring,

and this book's been on my list ever since. I just didn't want to part with the $$ for the hardcover.


I, too, live in this Limbo.

[MountainLaurel]

2. Try your local library

You shouldn't have to wait until it comes out as a trade paperback.

[LWolf]

3. Good idea;

I'll stop by. It is a city library, not a county library with other branches to borrow from, so the selection is more limited. That doesn't mean I should always assume that if it interests me, they won't have it, though!

[Nikia]

4. I skimmed it in Barnes and Noble

I think that this book is good for discussing class issues which are still very real in America and the issues of those who may face conflict within themselves because of that. The issues that keep people within their class are not just access to good education or natural ability but also this social class conflict.