Limbo Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams [Hardcover]

In Limbo, award-winning journalist Alfred Lubrano identifies and describes an overlooked cultural phenomenon: the internal conflict within individuals raised in blue-collar homes, now living white-collar lives. These people often find that the values of the working class are not sufficient guidance to navigate the white-collar world, where unspoken rules reflect primarily upper-class values. Torn between the world they were raised in and the life they aspire too, they hover between worlds, not quite accepted in either. Himself the son of a Brooklyn bricklayer, Lubrano informs his account with personal experience and interviews with other professionals living in limbo. For millions of Americans, these stories will serve as familiar reminders of the struggles of achieving the American Dream.Introduction.

1. Bricklayer’s Son: The Birth and Clash of Values.

2. Crawling Out of the Black Hole: The Pain of Transition.

3. The Shock of Education: How College Corrupts.

4. Culture Conflicts: First Encounters with the Upper Classes.

5. Going Home: An Identity Changed Forever.

6. Office Politics: The Blue-Collar Way.

7. Class, Love and Progeny: The Ultimate Battle.

8. Duality: The Never-Ending Struggle with Identity.

Conclusion.

Endnotes.

Source Notes.

Acknowledgments.

Index.

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 hil³*