67% of Americans do not have a college degree. Christopher Zara is one of them.
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.
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Whatever happened to that weird-looking introverted kid in high school who just disappeared one day? An engrossing read, honestly told and at times both hilarious and heartbreaking, Uneducated is a universal tale of defying the odds, of proving to yourself and to others that, yes, there is a place in the world for people who fit outside the mold.
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Angela Di Carlo, comedian/singer-songwriter