Uneducated
A Memoir of Flunking Out, Falling Apart, and Finding My Worth
-
- $14.99
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
In this “hilarious and heartbreaking...must-read memoir” (Publishers Weekly), Christopher Zara breaks down his winding journey from dropout to journalist and the impact that his background had in the world of privilege.
Boldly honest, wryly funny, and utterly open-hearted, Uneducated is one diploma-less journalist’s map of our growing educational divide and, ultimately, a challenge: in our credential-obsessed world, what is the true value of a college degree?
For Christopher Zara, this is the professional minefield he has had to navigate since the day he was kicked out of his New Jersey high school for behavioral problems and never allowed back. From a school for “troubled kids,” to wrestling with his identity in the burgeoning punk scene of the 1980s; from a stint as an ice cream scooper as he got clean in Florida, to an unpaid internship in New York in his thirties, Zara spent years contending with skeptical hiring managers and his own impostor syndrome before breaking into the world of journalism—only to be met by an industry preoccupied with pedigree. As he navigated the world of the elite and saw the realities of the education gap firsthand, Zara realized he needed to confront the label he had been quietly holding in: what it looked like to be part of the “working class”—whatever that meant.
Book Riot's Eight New Nonfiction Books to Read in May
Book Browse's Best Books of May 2023
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Zara (Tortured Artists), a senior editor at Fast Company, takes an incisive, enlightening look at his trials and triumphs navigating the New York journalism world without a college degree. After completing 10th grade in Trenton, N.J., in 1986, Zara (who later obtained a GED) left high school and embarked on a series of minimum-wage jobs, picking up a heroin habit along the way. After getting clean and landing an unpaid internship at Show Business Weekly (which conveniently didn't inquire about his educational background), he secured a full-time position at the publication, later becoming a contributor to Condé Nast Traveler and Wired and a full-time reporter at Newsweek. All the while, Zara found himself just outside the industry's inner circle: "No matter how disparate and diverse my coworkers seem, they all share a collective experience—the college years and the college friends—that's completely foreign to me." Zara's tale is perfectly paced, told with powerful prose and invigorating candor. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, this must-read memoir offers hope to anyone who worries the weight of their past stands in the way of their future.