MADreads

Not a job I’d want

June 13th, 2008 Sarah - Alicia Ashman

Even for a day.

Every now and then I read nonfiction books which just make me shake me head and wonder at the authors who write them, as well as how and why they do.  Sudhir Venkatesh’s latest book, Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets is one such book.

While a graduate student at the University of Chicago in the 1990s, Venkatesh was repeatedly told not to venture into certain neighborhoods around the campus (for safety reasons).  Confused because the neighborhoods didn’t look all that dangerous to him, he started exploring his surroundings…which eventually led to his walking into the projects (specifically, the Robert Taylor Homes) to “study urban poverty.”  This is what happened, after he was taken to meet J.T., one of the project’s gang leaders:

“I explained the project as best as I could.  It was being overseen by a national poverty expert, I said, with the goal of understanding the lives of young black men in order to design better public policy.  My role, I said, was very basic: conducting surveys to generate data for the study. There was an eerie silence when I finished.  Everyone stood waiting, watching J.T.

He took the questionnaire from my hand, barely glanced at it, then handed it back.  Everything he did, every move he made, was deliberate and forceful.

I read him the same question that I had read the others.  He didn’t laugh, but he smiled.  How does it feel to be black and poor?”

If you want to know the answer to that, and to many other questions as well, you’ll just have to read the book. 

Entry Filed under: Nonfiction