Lubrano, Alfred. Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004. Meghan Johnson
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Lubrano’s mission in this book is to expose the myth that the United States is “classless.” This country is known for its freedoms and endless possibilities, or what is commonly called the “American dream.” Lubrano argues, however, that class issues exist and they limit or confine individuals depending on which class they are born into. To do so, Lubrano chronicles his own experiences growing up as a young Italian-American male in Brooklyn, NY and the struggles he encountered when he attends college and leaves his working class roots for a life in the middle class. He supports his own experiences with input from working-class studies scholars and anecdotal evidence he received from 100 interviews over a nine-month period with other “straddlers.” Lubrano defines a straddler as those who “were born into bluecollar families and then, [like him], moved into the strange new territory of the middle class. “They are the first in their families to have graduated from college. As such, they straddle two worlds, many of them not feeling at home in the either, living in a kind of American Limbo” (2). Lubrano feels that studying and examining social classes is beneficial to people, “By ignoring class distinctions, people may be overlooking important parts of themselves and failing to understand who they really are” (5). It can be difficult for Straddlers because they were “trained” in one world, but need to survive and function in another. Those raised in a blue-collar family have different life tools and ways in which they interact with family and friends, but when they receive their college education and begin learning the ins and outs of middle-class life, they may encounter emotional conflicts. Lubrano summarizes it best when he says that Straddlers and their families are related by blood but separated by class (7). This statement, coming first-hand from a first generation college grad from a blue-collar family does wonders to prove that, in fact, class does exist in the United States and can cause rifts between not only different classes, but members within the same family as well. In an effort to further illustrate the differences between white- and blue-collar families, Lubrano addresses the issue of communication—“the number of words spoken in a white-collar household in a day is, on average, three times greater than the number spoken in a blue-collar home (especially the talk between parents and kids)” (9-10). Basically, Lubrano summarizes that in blue-collar homes, the parents come home from a hard day of laborious work and expect children to be seen and not heard. On the other hand, in white-collar homes, parents converse with their children and encourage them to voice their opinions and emotions. This major difference is what attributes to the courage and “belongingness” children of white-collar families carry into their college experience and white-collar jobs (9). Along with this “belongingness,” Lubrano also addresses the fact that we “begin in different places” and the differing journeys that white-collar and blue-collar children make “makes all the difference in how one ultimately views the world” (11). Also, those from middle-class families
