Alfred Lubrano: Up from the corner

LUBRANO, page 1 apart when a member of the bluecollar family decides to enter the world of white-collar individuals.

“I think most parents want the best for there kids, what they don’t always anticipate is that college can change your child,” Lubrano said. “It’s such a retro experience, education changes you, and it takes you further and further away from who you were as a working class member of your family, your still you, but there are differences and that’s what makes for a clash.”

Lubrano said he felt that more balanced people, people who felt best about themselves, as people in general, could find the duality, do a balancing act, and feel like they could draw the best from their working class culture and bring it into their middle class lives, and kind of strengthen themselves.

Lubrano concluded that for Straddlers, life’s ultimate goal is reconciliation: finding a peace with the past and present, blue collar and white, old family ways and the new middle-class life. Straddlers can then celebrate the blending of the past with the present. “Peaceful reconciliation comes to us when we can finally meld the two people we are,” Lubrano said.

“My father was a bricklayer. I am a newspaperman. He got his wish, that I graduate from college and not live the life of the outside man,” Lubrano said. “I got my dream, that I leave the neighborhood and get a chance to write about the world.”

The evening concluded with Cabrini honoring Lubrano with a citation and a book signing. First-year student John Disanto was also recognized for his essay on Lubrano’s story.

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