Joshua Belknap Response: David Borkowski, Chapters 9-11

[joshua]

#689

In Borkowski’s final chapters, I found certain parallels to my own (sometimes uneasy) experience navigating my way through academia (though my story is contains fewer extremes than his); working my way through school, trying to get scholarships, coming from a working class family, etc. My family is/was not nearly as opposed to the idea of higher education as Borkowski’s, but many of the impediments he faced, and the time his educational journey spans, resonated with me. With some of my friends, I also witnessed similar class-based conflicts wherein parents, siblings, friends and others pressured people to “know their place” and stay there, and would resort to ridicule if any my friends deviated in any way from class-related social norms. This pressure can be quite intense, and quite self-defeating and constrictive, in the name of “keeping it real” and not being a traitor to one’s class.
I grew up in a small college town in Western Massachusetts though, in a bucolic, somewhat provincial but liberal and tolerant too– if somewhat homogenous on all levels (culturally, racially, socioeconomically, etc)– hamlet. Staten Island may as well be another planet from where I grew up. Nonetheless, I could recognize certain aspects of Borkowski’s story in my own.
Also, I found it interesting that Borkowski seeks to distinguish his own educational evolution narrative from other working class academic narratives. Many of these working class academic narratives share certain themes, such as “abandoning” or “escaping” one’s class-connected roots via the process of ascending through the academic ranks, and Borkowski seeks to tell an alternative version, a more meandering tale in which he did not feel as alienated or disconnected from his working-class roots. There is some tension, though, between Borkowski’s contention that he never lost a sense of belonging with his working-class family and neighborhood, and the details of how people reacted to his news that he was contemplating graduate school, etc… particularly his family, who seem ardently resistant to the idea of his continuing his education.

[Author]

Posts