Uneducated: A Memoir of Flunking Out, Falling Apart, and Finding My Worth

By Christopher Zara

Book Overview

2024 ASJA Book Award for Memoir/Autobiography

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.

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316268976
• ISBN13: 9780316268974
• Release Date: May 2023
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

An Education for the Schooled

My father always said not to confuse education and schooling. Zara may not be well-schooled, but he's incredibly well-educated--by the life he lived, the challenges he overcame, the heart he nurtured, the issues he still lives with. This is a memoir for us all, not just because Zara's life (and the lives of those around him) educate the schooled on what we don't know and need to grow compassion for, but because it's a rich, important life through which Zara offers his own well-homed point of view, incredible vignettes, insights and empathy... along with a number of valuable lessons. He's funny and smart, too.