Assignment #7: Gand Leader for a Day

Chapter 1:

This chapter details the author's first experience attempting to connect with the underprivileged class in urban Chicago and the first meeting between the author, Sudhir Venkatesh, and the Black Kings gang. The details given in this book make the reading so simple and easy. It is almost as though Sudhir Venkatesh is trying to paint a picture with words from the book. The imagery is simple and straightforward, but he leaves you hanging wanting to know more. I don't know if I will be able to stop reading this book to do my other homework. This book is less like a description of an ethnography and more like a novel.

Though I believe this book is intended to be a sort of ethnography, its novel like characteristics make it more challenging to read for the information. The author is telling his story, but explaining in detail what he is learning about each of the people he is meeting. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Chapter 2:

This chapter was really interesting. It covered the days from Sudhir's first return to the gang all the way through his realization that all of his interactions with the gang and community were controlled by T.J. I was surprised by the amount of time that Sudhir spent with the gang, from his description it appeared that he spent most of his time there. How could his classmates and professors not notice? I also noticed that while spending time with the gang, he didn't spend a lot of time outside of with T.J. Some of this was because T.J. was keeping him somewhat isolated, but did Sudhir ever consider the idea that he could just show up and NOT talk to T.J.? I mean there were hundreds of people around, surely he didn't have to talk with T.J.

Chapter 3:

This chapter was basically a description of Sudhir’s realization that he needed a “sponsor” whenever he interacted with people in the community. His choice of sponsor was T.J., but that could have caused some problems. I found the entire interaction between the gangs with regard to reparations for the shooting of gang members to be interesting. The first meeting was clearly just a way for community members to get their anger expressed while the second meeting was the way for the two gangs to settle their differences without resorting to a gang war. I was not surprised that the gangs settled their differences without a war, but that the community just accepted the results of the gang’s being present. Hopefully all of the future problems between the gangs can be settled this way, but I have a feeling that later chapters will not show the same results.

Chapter 4:

This chapter was the inspiration for the name of the book “Gang Leader for a Day” because Sudhir gets the opportunity to spend the day as a gang leader. He realizes that there is no way he could do this job day after day. I was surprised by the fact that Sudhir seemed to take his role so seriously. I would not have been able to do that. There was so much associated with the idea of being a gang leader that I would not understand. I am surprised by the amount of jobs that, despite being gang leader, Sudhir was not able to do. I can understand though. I’m glad that we are able to see this side of the gang and realize there was so much more than can be seen on an average day.

Chapter 5:

This chapter detailed Sudhir’s interaction with Ms. Bailey. Ms. Bailey tried to make the best of a bad situation for everyone. She helped people get on their feet when something bad happened, but she was also a source of comfort for those who are less fortunate in the building. She was willing to help anyone who needed it, but they had to be willing to work with her and stay clean. Sudhir still doesn’t realize the impact that he has on the building and Ms. Bailey is attempting to help him understand that his actions will reflect on him whether he means them to or not. Helping one person will make it harder for him to say that he cannot help another.  The relationship between the gang and the building in complex, but T.J. seems to manage it in a way that prevents the amount of conflicts from increasing. Hopefully, Sudhir is able to realize that even his pittance of employment payments is far higher than the average person in Robert Taylor is able to make.

Chapter 6:

Sudhir begins talking to the local people to try and determine how much income is made in Robert Taylor and accidentally tells T.J. and Ms. Bailey what occurs that they don’t know about. Because of this, he is isolated from ALL of Robert Taylor until he decides to start a writing group. This group allows women to write about their experiences and discuss them with other women. The idea behind this group is to help the women with their writing and to get on the good side of the tenants again. I can’t see that Sudhir doesn’t know his conversations with Ms. Bailey and T.J. are being used to gain additional information about the tenants. It is incredibly stupid of him to think that they just want to know for the sake of knowing as he does. The more of this book that I read, the more I begin to think that Sudhir has taken the general concepts from what he observed but changed them into a novel. I guess I’ll have to wait and see what happens now.

Chapter 7:

Sudhir finally begins to realize the conflicts that he is placing himself into in this chapter. He has to interact with gang members, people doing illegal activities, people doing legal activities, and police and still justify his actions to himself. The gangs don’t trust him because he is not a gang member, the illegals don’t trust him because he can turn them in if he needs to, the legals don’t trust him because he isn’t from around there and the police don’t trust him because of the amount of time he spends in Robert Taylor. As Sudhir begins to finish his experiment in social injustices, he begins to realize that there are people there that might actually miss him and that this wasn’t the smartest thing he could have done. Sudhir’s interactions with the police and limited interactions with T.J. begin to show him that there will always be a much larger portion of the projects that he will never see.

Chapter 8:

This chapter ended the relationship between Sudhir and T.J. The projects that the Black Kings had been operating in (Robert Taylor) were assigned to be torn down and therefore the whole operation seemed to suffer. I think that Sudhir finally realized the impact that meeting T.J. and the gang had in his academic career. He was able to understand many of the things that occur in the projects, but successfully distance him from them in both actions and thoughts. This chapter really tried to tie the entire book together, but I feel that it failed in this regard. There were many questions brought up by this book that were never answered and because of that, there are many things which I would still like to know. What happened to T.J.? Did Sudhir ever get in touch with the gangs of New York? Those are two of the questions I have, but there are many more.

Gang Leader for a Day:

Overall, Gang Leader for a Day was a good read. The author, Sudhir, attempted to make an interesting topic even more interesting by turning it into a novel style document. This book showed sides of the Chicago gangs that had never been seen before. The gang was portrayed as a company and not just a group of people looking to get into a fight over drugs. The actual display of drugs in this book was extremely limited. There was much more time devoted to the other ways in which gangs make money.

Sudhir seemed to be incredibly naïve when this book started, but as I continued reading it I began to think that because this book was not going to be a technical report, it needed to be more interesting and therefore Sudhir made himself look even more naïve than usual. He is constantly doing things without seeming to think about the possible problems that will occur from them. He tries to blend in, but sticks out like a sore thumb. Basically, Sudhir does some of the dumbest things that are possible and blames the actions on his naïveté.

This book seems to be a screaming request for ethnographies. The differences between what Sudhir sees and what his professors think occurs is tremendous. There is an entire group of people who according to the government and its census have no jobs and no form of income. But within this group of people, some of them have actual part time jobs and just don’t claim them while others work within the community to make money in less upstanding ways. These people barely make enough to get by even with the subsidies that the government provides. But without spending huge amounts of time with these people, there is no way that anyone would ever figure it out. Ethnographies allow the researcher to immerse themselves in the group they are studying to try and determine what exactly they are seeing.

For anyone that lives in an aera where there is a large population of less well-off people, I would recommend reading this book. It is an incredibly helpful read and explains many things that are less obvious in reality.