Goodreads | Gang Leader for a Day (Hardcover) by Sudhir Venkatesh

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Marci rated it:

04/22/08

There is so little information about and so many stereotypes within mainstream America about how ghettos function, even though thousands of Americans live in them, that this book is a welcome contribution to poverty literature. As a sociologist-in-training, Sudhir Venkatesh stumbles upon a unique opportunity to gain a lense into the inner workings of the American ghetto when he wanders into one of the worst housing projects in Chicago clutching pens and a survey that asks, "How does it feel...more There is so little information about and so many stereotypes within mainstream America about how ghettos function, even though thousands of Americans live in them, that this book is a welcome contribution to poverty literature. As a sociologist-in-training, Sudhir Venkatesh stumbles upon a unique opportunity to gain a lense into the inner workings of the American ghetto when he wanders into one of the worst housing projects in Chicago clutching pens and a survey that asks, "How does it feel to be black and poor?" He spends the night parked in a urine-stained, concrete stairwell guarded by gun-toting, teenage members of the Black Kings gang. (In answer to the survey's question, they explain that they're not black or African American, that they are niggers.) Sudhir's persistence pays off when, upon his return to the project, the gang's leader invites the impressionable young sociologist to write his biography, and he spends the next seven years immersing himself in this underclass.

I often wished while reading this book that its author was a better writer, so that he could have portrayed the emotional complexity of his characters, especially since these are people who are so often portrayed as stereotypes. The book reads like mediocre pulp fiction with the author's relationship to J.T., the gang's leader, providing weak emotional drama. Much like its title, Gang Leader for a Day exaggerates the author's own role. He spends his day as "gang leader" tagging along with J.T. and his henchman, who make him the butt of jokes for his inadequate decisions on gang issues while allowing him to hover out of range as they beat up miscreants. Later, we see the author pulling a wounded gang member out of the range of bullets in the middle of a drive by, but mostly he hangs around the projects eating J.T.'s mother's food and gaining the trust of tenant leaders, hustlers, and crack hos. His conversations with these people should have provided the raw material for the book, but he's so preoccupied with the lives of the gang members, especially J.T., that he shortchanges these characters, and, consequently his readers, to focus on the "action".

The book presents surprisingly little analysis of the obvious issues of race, gender, and, even, class. A South Asian Indian American, the author never addresses his own race, and its influence over how he is viewed by the project's exclusively-black residents. I wondered if it would have been possible for him to integrate himself as completely as he did with the project's residents, even being securely middle-class, if he had been white. Despite his character's reactions to his ethnicity - he is variously referred to in the book as "nigger," "white," and "Ay-rab" - Venkatesh writes the book as if he considers himself white. Similarly, while the book does not shy away from showing violence towards young women, and is open about the project's exchange economy based on acts of prostitution, the author never delves into issues of power and control over women. Finally, although many gang members, including J.T., have had some college education (J.T. actually has a college degree), there is no discussion about why their education was inadequate to propel them out of the projects. The author mentions former residents who now reside in nearby working-class neighborhoods, without providing a context for their movement out of the ghetto.

The book was ultimately disappointing, and didn't provide me with what I hoped for. I hope that the experiences recounted in the book did provide Venkatesh with a unique perspective on poverty to inform his academic work, but this book was mostly a failure. It did make me appreciate good literature. I ended it thinking about Sapphire's Push , a termendous work of fiction about roughly the same subject matter. It's not "true", but it's much, much more real....less

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Alex rated it:

03/21/08

Read in March, 2008

This is a book that I’m glad I heard about first on the radio, because it is not represented well by its title or cover. The Sudhir Venkatesh on the book jacket, in his vintage leather coat with the collar up, arms folded in tough guy stance in front of derelict seeming housing projects slightly out of focus in the back ground, seems like a wannabe bad ass. And that’s not at all the impression you get from the memoir inside the b...more This is a book that I’m glad I heard about first on the radio, because it is not represented well by its title or cover. The Sudhir Venkatesh on the book jacket, in his vintage leather coat with the collar up, arms folded in tough guy stance in front of derelict seeming housing projects slightly out of focus in the back ground, seems like a wannabe bad ass. And that’s not at all the impression you get from the memoir inside the book.

And the title—“Gang Leader for a Day”—makes it sound like you’re going to get a sensational fantasy trip into a criminal netherworld, like playing the Godfather on your Playstation. (Which is a good time in its own right.) But in fact, you get an interesting look into a world that exists in every major city in America, that we use as an avatar for all kinds of social ills, but that few people on the outside really go to lengths to understand.

In a way, the book recalls <a href="http://www.hbo.com/wire>The Wire</a>. The street gang running the drug trade is well represented here, and there are side trips into the worlds of the police and other mebers of the community: A pastor, a housing authority leader, the head of a community center, single mothers, older women, shopkeepers and unemployed (or marginally employed, or more often not-employed-in-any-legal-sense) men who occupied the Robert Taylor Homes and its surrounding precincts. But unlike The Wire (which is also great in its own right) which pits these factions against each other, Venkatesh paints a much more cooperative picture. There are multiple power structures, and different authority figures. The interaction and co-dependence of the groups are no less complicated that those of a small city or busy urban neighborhood, even if much of it goes on in a way that is invisible from the outside. It’s a picture that could only emerge by spending years in the projects, which Venkatesh does—the better part of the decade.

Maybe the best thing about the book that I can say is that it made me want to be a sociologist. (This happens to me from time to time—when I read Mountains Beyond Mountains, I had a brief infatuation with the idea of studying medical anthropology.) If you’ve ever worked in a job or been in a situation where you have to try and quickly ingratiate yourself with people who are not like you, you’ll identify with Venkatesh. Showing up with a clipboard and ponytail and interrupting a drug deal to ask what it feels like to be black and poor is hardly a show of bravado, but his earnestness, sincerity, and willingness to connect is palpable. Though he has published more scholarly works based on this field work (and clearly done well in the academy as a result) this book shows that he also recognizes the power and impetus of recording life in stories, not just statistics. It’s what brings humanity to his research subjects, and levels the playing field, both for Venkatesh (who comes to recognize himself as a hustler like most everyone else in Robert Taylor) to the rest of us who get not just a voyeuristic thrill out of his accounts, but a chance to drop the stereotypes and see the real human complexity of his subjects.
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