Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams

The writing is pretty straightforward (read not the most riveting) but really interesting points and discussion on a topic that doesn’t get enough attention.

I read a lot, but admittedly rarely give books like this a second look. "Limbo" was recommended to me by a friend who knew my background and urged me to pick it up. I did so almost as a courtesy. I wasn't expecting the sobering "look-in-the-mirror" experience it delivered.I'm nearing 40-years-old and have spent most of my career in executive positions at leading technology firms in Silicon Valley, often surrounded by the sons and daughters of the American aristocracy, those who boast the type of academic degrees and the amazing life experiences that most can only dream about, who seem to glide through life on a silk ribbon of confidence and entitlement, hopscotching from one gilded achievement to the next as effortlessly as a chimpanzee swinging from tree-to-tree. My world couldn't be more alien. I was raised in a mid-sized, mainly working class New England town, the son of a used car salesman and factory worker. Our annual summer vacations were a predictable 90 minute drive to a campground in Rhode Island. I was a teenager before I experienced air travel or read a full length book.For years, in retrospect, I've struggled with a certain uneasy feeling, an unshakeable sense of "otherness" in my personal and professional life. No matter how many times my success and worthiness has been validated, either by admission to elite academic institutions or selection to prestigious organizations or promotion to corporate positions, there remains a distinct pall of fraudulence, as though my life and achievements are a lie and the authorities will soon hunt me down, just like Frank Abagnele, the con-man character in the DiCaprio-Hanks film "Catch Me If You Can.""Limbo" is a book about me, or those like me. If you haven't personally traversed the working class to middle class divide (or are married to someone who has) this book isn't likely for you. However, for those who find themselves in a highly educated, professional setting after a childhood in a rough urban neighborhood or middle-of-nowhere farm or some hardscrabble ethnic town you need to read this book. It is, or can be, a journey of self discovery, although I'm sure it will speak to everyone differently.Here are a few examples how it spoke to me.I married a daughter of the middle class; we met in graduate school at Johns Hopkins. Her father went to West Point and her grandfather (!) had a masters degree in chemical engineering. My father was a grunt during Vietnam and my grandfather was semi-literate. I marveled at the genteel manner in which her parents dealt with one another. In my house and in my neighborhood it was rare for a week to go by without a blood curdling, expletive-laced exchange between married couples, my parents in particular. After we were married, I informed my mother that my in-laws never "fight" and that my wife said that she never once heard her parents raise their voices with one another. My mother's reaction was one of typical working class incredulity: "Well, that's just not normal!" It took time -- and reading "Limbo" -- for me to realize that it was all part of being a Straddler, that lonely "no man's land" that Alfred Lubrano claims all class crossers are inevitably marooned.This book also helped me identify how my working class roots influence my perspective and style to this day. For instance, I always physically size up any man in a business setting, calculating my likely ability to prevail in a street fight. I had always assumed that all men did this, the result of some deep-seated, involuntary, primordial reaction of the amygdala. Evidently, it's only manifest in guys from neighborhoods where pugilistic prowess once mattered. Also, I have zero tolerance in the workplace for what I perceive of as niceties and candy-coating. I like to think that I'm a candid, sincere, honest executive who "tells it like it is." However, I've learned from 360 performance appraisals (and "Limbo" has further explained) that what I consider an asset and virtue, my middle-class reared colleagues see as too direct and combative, often threatening.Finally, although I didn't grow up in anything approaching material poverty, "Limbo" demonstrated how lucky I am to have landed (after years of hard work) in my professional position. Unlike Lubrano, I was never a good student before age 20. My mother never took me to museums and fostered an interest in learning. My father never told me "stay in school so you don't end up like me." My high school guidance counselor told my mother that I wasn't "college material" and that verdict was quietly accepted. For me, this insight has been inspiring and motivating.That leads me to a final, perhaps more controversial, point. For all of my relative "success" I'm not at all convinced that my life -- the life of a highly educated, well compensated, Silicon Valley executive -- is any better or happier than my cousins who remained "true blue" back in New England, who make a living cutting hair, checking-out shoppers and putting out fires, but who also enjoy a tight family circle, lots of close friends and (from the Facebook looks of things) a non-stop weekend party lifestyle, living life to the fullest, with no inhibitions or regrets. I know that I can't go back, after all that I've learned and been through. But is an evening at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City really "better" than a night out drinking in Boston and cheering for the Bruins? I'm not so sure.This is an important book for those who need it. Lubrano writes with clarity and wit and can cleverly turn a phrase. However, "Limbo" can also get repetitive and, at times, a little too "woe-is-me" -- but that just might be my working class intolerance for self-pity coming through...

This book is more of a history book than something that's relatable to anyone that came after baby boomers. Women were strongly discouraged from any kind of college which has completely reversed as women strongly outnumber men in education for a couple decades now. White doctors refused to treat little black girls. I suppose blue collar manual labor was not considered a career then but still paid enough to take care of a family. Today being a plumber or welder could be considered a career path. I guess I was expecting more of a poor existence to top 10%. Actual rags to riches.The author's style is easy to read though. If he wrote other books I wouldn't be dissuaded from reading them. I was bored with this book because I could not relate to a large enough chunk of it.

This book struck a cord with me and obviously strikes a cord with many readers. It is not a page turner in the sense of a suspense novel, however, I did find myself looking forward to each reading. It is mostly a compilation of anecdotes and conclusions from anecdotes. There's little statisical or "scientific" data. Nevertheless, the individual stories are quite compelling.The book focuses almost exclusively on first generation college/professional whites from working class/skilled labor backgrounds. Most of these folks would be at least one economic class removed (higher income) than most working class minority families in that thier jobs appear to be in the heart of "blue-collardom", that is union jobs and similar skilled factory or labor wage work with relative employment stability. The success of the subjects is still remarkably laudable and certainly in thier eyes and in the eyes of the author, exceptional.Particularly interesting were the discussions of familiy reluctance to "let go" of the subjects and family resistance to the subjects refusal to buy into their cultural/socio-economic inheritance. A little more insight into the conflicting feelings (if any) experienced by the parents (who might say something like "I want my kids to do better than me without thinking that they are better than me") would have added a nice balance. Unfortunatley, given the age of many of the subjects (approaching middle age) maybe many of the parents were no longer available to be interviewed.Interesting also was the abscence, on the whole, of any larger social "make the world a better place" motivation on the part of the subjects. My thought is that this factor would play a much larger part in the motivation for similar class jumping minoritites. For these folks though it seemed to be all about "self actualization." Also missing was any discussion about them sharing financial burdens with thier "left behind" family members. This too would play a much larger part in a description of class changeover among minorities. More discussion of so-called racial minorities as subjects would have been an added strength but, maybe there's another book to be written in this regard.This book would have benefitted from more statistical data in the manner of "Nickeled and Dimed" but it is more of a "voice" piece than an advocacy piece. Overall, it is well worth reading as an enlightening look at the ramifications of class jumping and the subtle and not so subtle subtexts to life in the class change over lane.

I really appreciated this book, it was extremely insightful and also a really good read, if at times emotionally difficult. The part that I found really heart-breaking was the one about child-rearing. In it, various Straddlers discuss their methods for avoiding (or attempting to avoid) raising 'entitled middle-class brats'. The sad part is that none of them seem able to conceive of how to do this without somehow recreating aspects of their own struggle in their kids, without seeming to realise how fundamentally flawed this approach is - a Straddler cannot be artificially created. Even if the kids have to pay for their own school, it won't be 'Mom and Dad couldn't afford to help me', it'll be 'Mom and Dad decided not to help me', which, right or wrong, is a whole different dynamic. In any case, it won't work. Even if Kid has to pay for school (or whatever), they'll still be every bit as middle-class as they ever were, because that's what their parent(s) struggled so hard to raise them in. And it's very telling that none of the parents even consider the idea that there might be good middle-class role models to emulate (sad in itself - after all that work to get there, they haven't met one middle-class person that they respect, not one?), they work from the notion that the only way a kid could ever grow up to be a decent person that they can respect is by growing up blue-collar. One actually mentions making sure their kids treat everyone with the same respect as a working class thing, apparently not realising that this is something good parents of *all* classes teach their children. They don't hide their feelings from their kids, and yet the kids are and will remain, as I said, middle-class. So what the parents are effectively telling their children is that no one who grows up the way they are can ever really be a good person, certainly never as good as their grandparents, who worked so hard for so little (and who would probably have sold their souls for their grandchildren not to have to live the same way). That can't make for good parent-child relations.I say all this as the child of a Straddler myself, one who I am pleased to report had far more sensible views on child-rearing, ones which focused on recognising ones own privilege, appreciating it for the lottery win it is, and using it to help others (not to mention realising that those who are not fortunate enough to have it are no less human than anyone else, and deserve to be treated as such).

This book is wonderfully written, and I'm pretty sure it will deeply resonate with any first-generation college/university student.

Great book! Still reading it.