Rating: 
Summary: An apt description of an ignored story
Review: Lubrano tells a story that has been largely ignored - well, ignored when it is not mythologized. U.S. culture loves the Horatio Alger myth, the idea of individuals who, despite lives spent in abject poverty, pull themselves up by the bootstraps and become wildly successful (and usually wealthy), more successful than the peers and naysayers who never had to grapple with such struggles.Though we love the myth, we haven't talked much--until now--about what the class-straddling process is really like. This may be because the experience has not happened, or rather, that the conditions for the class-straddling experience have existed only rarely until now. A generation of blue-collar parents (many of them first-generation American-born or immigrants) have raised children who have attended college and/or graduate school, something of a new phenomenon. It is fascinating to read Lubrano's work, because he describes the reality of the experience of upward mobility, but more aptly of class-straddling, and it is so different from the mythic version. Some of us knew this, but it's nice to see it in print. "Limbo" stands on its own merits--great storytelling, poignant and critical without seeming whiney, and captured details that do more to convey an experience in one sentence than some writers can in an entire chapter--but I'd be remiss if I left my personal lens out of this review. I found this book just as I was completing my M.S. and beginning my Ph.D. I am not in the Ivy League, but do attend a very good, private university with a more-than-decent reputation. I wish Lubrano had written "Limbo" while I was in college, but am grateful that he wrote it at all. My parents (a tool and die maker and an elementary school secretary) could not afford to pay for any portion of my undergraduate education - neither tuition nor living expenses. I qualified for scanty and sporadically available merit-based financial aid, but--despite earning just $18,000 per year before taxes--I never once qualified for need-based financial aid. I felt like an outcast in college: I had just one other friend (another girl from a working-class background just like mine, still one of my closest friends and now an M.A.) who worked fulltime and attended college fulltime, like I did. I believed so much in a meritocracy, until I realized how a university's entire structure is based on the ability of its students to be there fulltime, and during the day - during working hours, for those of us who have worked since we were 15. As a college student who had to work fulltime in order to cover living expenses, buy textbooks, etc., having to select from limited evening and summer classes, or work from 6 PM until 3 AM in order to be able to attend classes during the day, made the college experience very, very different from the one most other people had. I was constantly asked, by classmates as well as professors who enjoyed my enthusiasm and high grades in their classes, why I wasn't "more involved", why I couldn't attend brown-bag lunch lectures, late Friday afternoon faculty colloquia, and all the other fun meetings that make a college experience so truly intellectual and enjoyable (newspaper meetings, academic journal meetings, political clubs, etc.). And forget meetings - when you have to work, try even making it to a professor's "open office" hours. Though I graduated with honors within five years, several professors told me that I had to "find a way to stop working" so I could "focus more on school." It's a nice, well-intentioned sentiment, and believe me, there's nothing I would have liked more, but it also conveyed the idea that work and education should not or cannot co-exist, and that trying to make them both fit just couldn't work. Dating was a miserable experience, meeting boys whose parents bought them houses on campus as investment properties, and who have no qualms about telling you that you're the smartest, coolest person they've met, but could never date you seriously, because, well, my parents "weren't anyone" to their parents. Like another reviewer whose father was a painter, I too remember aghast expressions when a boyfriend's mother (to my mind, a lazy stay-at-home, kept woman who frittered away her husband's earnings on daily trips to the salon and Botox injections and pretended to ignore his affairs with his interns) learned that my mother was an elementary school secretary. It was "so unfortunate" that my mother "had to work" because my "father couldn't support her properly". Funny, I used to think the rich had manners. No more. Lubrano truly understands so much of the complexity of these experiences, and so much more. He is not afraid to write about the bittersweet experience of academic success in the face of families who may not understand it, or who have not had educational opportunities themselves. As I now pursue my Ph.D., still working fulltime and attending school on a part-time basis, but publishing and conducting research, I can't describe what it is like to talk with my father, still working at a factory, on his feet all day, with a small 401(k) and no possiblity of a pension - a MENSA member (no kidding) who is treated with nothing but disrespect by those who are not nearly as intelligent or hardworking as he is. How do I resign what, in comparison, seems to be a self-indulgent pursuit of education with the guilt I feel for doing well at it? It's absolutely unbearable sometimes, and now I know that at least a few other people understand it - Alfred Lubrano, my friend from college with her M.A., and a few reviewers of "Limbo" on Amazon.com. While I of course recommend this book to everyone, it is nothing short of a Godsend for working-class students and academics from blue-collar backgrounds, at the undergraduate, graduate, and professorship levels of academic pursuit.
Rating:
Summary: How most of us got to where we are
Review: Many Americans are either first-generation 'successes' or not far from their parents' modest accomplishments. That should provide enough of a primary audience for Alfred Lubrano's impressive study of the central journey of so many lives - a trip that isn't as simple as it appears while taking travelers from humble homes to prominent workplaces and the 'good' life. For those who embrace this book's pages, their investment of time will be well rewarded. Lubrano, a longtime journalist who now writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer and provides commentaries to NPR, intersperses his own story with those of others, creating resonance where I didn't expect to find it. By sharing these varied stories of the move from homes where education is 'understood' to be the ticket to a better station in life, through prominent colleges and universities where hard work is sometimes rewarded no more than a family resume, and finally to employers who prefer to work with their own kind, the author reminded me of many stories I'd heard and many more I'd told. When Lubrano writes of parents whose achievements help them raise privileged children that they don't necessarily like, he adds a level of tragedy to what should be seen as lives filled with hard work and the success it brought. I grew up in the same community as the author, in Bensonhurst, one of Brooklyn's alternately notable and notorious neighborhoods, and this book captivated me. I've shared its message with many friends and colleagues who came from similar backgrounds - finding, as the author did, that I've gravitated to those cut from this cloth. Those who've picked up the book have found it more compelling than anything they've read in quite a while.
Though the specifics of my upbringing and adulthood are somewhat different than Lubrano's, I recognized his anguish in telling of the celebrity child who was 'awarded' a place on a New York newspaper that he sought, an editor choosing to honor privilege over all. If only there was a nickel for every such mishandled situation in life, someone would have a lot of money. My advice is to spend some of that money on Limbo. Unless your successful place in life was secured at birth, you will likely find this book worth reading, and you'll be compelled to discuss it with your friends. Odds are that they'll recognize its themes and will marvel at the stories of others like themselves.
Rating: 
Summary: A book that resonates
Review: Reading this book was like looking at my own life. As with many other reviewers, the more I read the book the more I felt was explained about my own life; a family that stressed work over academics, dating people who assumed jobs were only worked during the summer and not while in school, and many other facets of my upbringing that are markedly different from other people not only at my job (in my gut, still think of having a job rather than a "career" ) but also in my social circle. All these facets of my life have their roots in a blue collar upbringing. "Limbo" discusses what many of us have had on their minds but was never able to articulate or discuss with people from our past and our present lives.
Rating: 
Summary: Save your Money
Review: Save your money !! Limbo will either put you to sleep or bore you. Either way you're out real money !!!!!!!!! Check out horrible sales rank !!!!!!!! Bad sales rank equals bad read...seems like people agree with me. They are keeping their wallets shut when it comes to Limbo.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant look at class in America
Review: Some people write with their heads. Others write with their hearts. Lubrano has a unique ability to write with both in this powerful, touching and thought-provoking book. Not until I read "Limbo" did I understand that class, more than gender, race or religion, defines who we are and how we relate to those around us. Anyone with working-class roots who climbed into the middle or upper class will say, "Now I get it." By weaving his own poignant story with others who broke through the class barrier, Lubrano speaks to millions of Americans. This is a seamless, witty and intelligent examination into our roots and our dreams. With "Limbo," you'll learn about yourself and have a great time doing it. Don't miss it.
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Summary: America it seems, has a caste system of its own
Review: This book awakened me to the many times in my life I have been oblivious to a class struggle Lubrano and his fellow straddlers experience throughout their lives. Not until reading this book did I gain a new awareness of the keen disparities that still exist in the U.S. between classes. Lubrano's insight into his bricklayer father and his disdain for the archiac but widely accepted paths for the children of his blue-collar, Bensonhurst Brooklyn neighborhood -- and his desire to find his own path, not the one widely taken -- is portrayed with skill and sensitivity. Keenely written and heartfelt, this book provides a new outlook on life in a country of immigrants. Highly recommended!
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Summary: For those of us who lived this...
Review: This book is one of the first I have read that explores this topic of "straddlers". These are people who left (or escaped, depending on perspective) their blue collar backgrounds and moved on up into white collar, professional occupations. The book has interesting vignettes. I was interested in the topic because I felt it had resonance in my life. This is not a scholarly book, and the conclusions are not always justified by the evidence the author gives, but I think this will be an interesting read for many who grew up in similar circumstances.
Rating:
Summary: At long last...
Review: This is a book that really resonated with me. Having grown up in a blue-collar family, it has helped me understand an uneasy, unnameable feeling I've carried with me my whole life. As a child, they called me "encyclopedia." When I graduated from college, my working class family and neighborhood seemed more distant than ever. People called me "Professor" and made fun of the way I spoke. When I began working, that turned out to be no picnic either. Everyone around me dressed and acted differently. They seemed to have all grown up in tennis whites, having "coming out" parties, and living a far easier life. I've never spent much time thinking about "class" in relation to my career, but "Limbo" gets to the heart of what I've been feeling all these years. It's been not only fascinating, but, in an odd way, liberating as well. (You know, once you no longer feel as if you're the only one....) Few books I've ever read have offered the kind of insight that Mr. Lubrano has brought to this important subject. I thank him for this book.
Rating:
Summary: thought provoking book
Review: thought provoking book
I heard an interview with Lubrano on NPR a few Sundays ago and immediately bought the book. It is excellent, written with insight and clarity. Class is a touchy subject in the United States. Americans like to think of this country as a meritocracy, where one advances by power of one's deeds, not one's parents. That isn't necessarily the case, as Lubrano makes clear. He nicely combines his personal story (his father was a bricklayer, he is a journalist) with comments from many, many white collar children of blue collar parents and a few experts. I found myself nodding in agreement in every chapter, and occasionally laughing out loud. Social mobility has many costs, many of which are hidden. Lubrano brings them out into the open and holds them up for discussion and analysis. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: DROP WHATEVER YOU'RE READING AND PICK THIS BOOK UP!!
Review: What is fascinating about Alfred Lubrano's "Limbo" is how well he "gets it." This is untrodden territory, this business of the emotional aspects of social mobility. No one has written about it before. (I know because I've searched for something that expresses this all my life.) And yet, Lubrano seamlessly weaves interview, observation and personal experience to talk about the lives of people who are the first in their families to go to college. First, they experience what Lubrano calls the "bridge burning" of becoming educated and alienating themselves from their families (this is SO MUCH my experience!). Then, they find themselves in the white-collar office place, unable to talk to the natives, seemingly paralyzed by it all. That's the limbo part. ...
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