Synopses & Reviews
Every morning Chicagoans wake up to the same stark headlines that read like some macabre score: and#147;13 shot, 4 dead overnight across the city,and#8221; and nearly every morning the same elision occurs: what of the nine other victims? As with war, much of our focus on inner-city violence is on the death toll, but the reality is that far more victims live to see another day and must cope with their injuriesand#151;both physical and psychologicaland#151;for the rest of their lives.and#160;
Renegade Dreamsand#160;is their story. Walking the streets of one of Chicagoand#8217;s most violent neighborhoodsand#151;where the local gang has been active for more than fifty yearsand#151;Laurence Ralph talks with people whose lives are irrecoverably damaged, seeking to understand how they cope and how they can be better helped.
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
Going deep into a West Side neighborhood most Chicagoans only know from news reportsand#151;a place where children have been shot just for crossing the wrong streetand#151;Ralph unearths the fragile humanity that fights to stay alive there, to thrive, against all odds. He talks to mothers, grandmothers, and pastors, to activists and gang leaders, to the maimed and the hopeful, to aspiring rappers, athletes, or those who simply want safe passage to school or a steady job. Gangland Chicago, he shows, is as complicated as ever. Itand#8217;s not just a warzone but a community, a place where peopleand#8217;s dreams are projected against the backdrop of unemployment, dilapidated housing, incarceration, addiction, and disease, the many hallmarks of urban poverty that harden like so many scars in their lives. Recounting their stories, he wrestles with what it means to be an outsider in a place like this, whether or not his attempt to understand, to help, might not in fact inflict its own damage. Ultimately he shows that the many injuries these people carryand#151;like dreamsand#151;are a crucial form of resilience, and that we should all think about the ghetto differently, not as an abandoned island of unmitigated violence and its helpless victims but as a neighborhood, full of homes, as a part of the larger society in which we all live, together, among one another.
Review
"The achievement of
Gang Leader for a Day is to give the dry statistics a raw, beating heart."
-The Boston Globe
"Compelling . . . Venkatesh gives readers a window into a way of life that few Americans understand."
- Newsweek
"Whether you enjoy fiction, history, or biography you'll be drawn to Venkatesh's gripping retelling of his experiences . . . Gang Leader for a Day poignantly reminds us that there continue to be separate and unequal Americas that ultimately impact us all."
-Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
Review
"Riveting." --
The New York Times "Compelling... dramatic... Venkatesh gives readers a window into a way of life that few Americans understand." --Newsweek
"An eye-opening account into an underserved city within the city." --Chicago Tribune
"The achievement of Gang Leader for a Day is to give the dry statistics a raw, beating heart." --The Boston Globe
"A rich portrait of the urban poor, drawn not from statistics but from viivd tales of their lives and his, and how they intertwined." --The Economist
"A sensative, sympathetic, unpatronizing portrayal of lives that are ususally ignored or lumped into ill-defined stereotype." --Finanical Times
Review
and#8220;Renegade Dreamsand#160;is aand#160;tour de forceand#8212;extremely well written and engaging, and replete with original insights. Once I began reading Ralphand#8217;s book I had a difficult time putting it down.and#160; His field research is fascinating. And his explicit discussion of the interconnections of inner-city injury with government, community institutions, as well as how it is related to historical and social processes, is a major contribution.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Too many scholarly and popular takes on African Americansand#8217; lives and life chances are predicated on assumptions about cultural inadequacies or even genetic inferiorities, on the idea that black people all around the world are little more than damaged goodsand#8212;to be pitied or punished.] Ralphand#8217;s thought-provoking book wonderfully demonstrates how and why human beings continue to surviveand#8212;and even thriveand#8212;in the face of incessant injury and attack.and#160;His Chicago is peopled by characters weand#8217;ve seen before (gangstas and grandmas, old heads and youth workers, pastors and principals, activists and addicts), but they breathe and bounce throughout his pages like more than just rehashed stock figures in some ongoing morality play about urban black pathology.and#160; Thoroughly researched and powerfully told, Renegade Dreams is a paradigm-shifting anthropological rejoinder to popular stereotypes and scholarly cant about and#8216;inner-city violence,and#8217; its causes, and its aftermath.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Astounding in its clarity and groundbreaking in its power,and#160;Renegade Dreamsand#160;is as miraculous as the efforts of its all-American characters to remake life and invent a future out of injury. The textures and rhythms of Ralphand#8217;s realist narrative are charged with critical insight and transcendental significance, making ethnography into a work of art.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;In
Renegade Dreams,and#160;Ralph has achieved what few ethnographers, investigative journalists, and drive-by sociologists ever do: a radical empathy for his subjects that refuses to impose a colonial worldview. At the heart of this book is a fierce utopian sensibility expressed by the dogged optimism of Chicago residentsand#8212;felled by bullets and injured in a thousand waysand#8212;but who insist on participating in our aspiration society. Young men in wheelchairs, bodies half-dead, glide like rolling zombies in our mindand#8217;s eye and yet leap from these pages with life and vigor. Their dreams carry forth in politics, play, poetry, and prose. They live in defiance of statistical narratives of the violent isolated ghetto. Theoretically rich and superbly written, this book exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the full humanity of people whose lives are greater than the sum of their pain and peril and far more connected to ours than weand#8217;d like to believe.and#8221;
Review
“Remarkably original. No Way Out is deeply infused with knowledge of the ethnographic literature that has identified today’s still acute policy issues in poor, urban, mostly black—and often crime-ridden—communities. To read this book is to be assaulted by the realities of Bristol Hill—and other places like it—and to become aware of the fine lines binding the heroic to the tragic in the lives of its people. No Way Out does what few other books of its kind do. It makes multiple contributions to the scholarship, while telling the stories of Bristol Hill in a way that is plain for anyone to understand.”
Review
“Original, thickly described, and well-written, No Way Out powerfully represents a world that outsiders rarely view up-close. Duck is the consummate urban ethnographer; he puts you there. Nothing short of brilliant—this book is a remarkable achievement, and will become an enduring contribution to the urban literature.”
Review
“With skill, sagacity, and sensitivity, Duck delves beneath the hype that dominates perceptions of neighborhoods with street-based drug markets and sheds new light on the residents of one such area with evocative depth and complexity. Through this lucid portrait of daily life forged under the unfathomably harsh conditions of poverty in America, we come to understand the individual and collective strategies people develop to bear the unbearable by creating a sense of order and community. Yet resilience and fortitude cannot conquer the powerful societal forces that keep generation after generation confined to these oppressive territories. No Way Out is a haunting, thought-provoking read that lingers long after we turn the final page.”
Synopsis
In this "riveting"(The New York Times) work of nonfiction, a sociologist infiltrates the world of Chicago's crack-dealing gangs First presented in Freakonomics, the story of a young sociologist who embedded himself in Chicago's most notorious gang and captured the world's attention. Gang Leader for a Day is the fascinating full story of how Sudhir Venkatesh gained entrance into the lives of a group of drug-dealers and went on to witness-and participate in-events that have rarely been described in print. A brazen, page-turning, and fundamentally honest view of the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, often corrupt struggle to survive in an urban war zone, it is also an emotional and complicated look at the friendship that develops between the sociologist and a gang leader, two ambitious men a universe apart.
Synopsis
A
New York Times Bestseller
A rich portrait of the urban poor, drawn not from statistics but from vivid tales of their lives and his, and how they intertwined. --The Economist
A sensitive, sympathetic, unpatronizing portrayal of lives that are ususally ignored or lumped into ill-defined stereotype. --Finanical Times
Foreword by Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomics
When first-year graduate student Sudhir Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects, he hoped to find a few people willing to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty--and impress his professors with his boldness. He never imagined that as a result of this assignment he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of a decade embedded inside the projects under JT's protection. From a privileged position of unprecedented access, Venkatesh observed JT and the rest of his gang as they operated their crack-selling business, made peace with their neighbors, evaded the law, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang's complex hierarchical structure. Examining the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, and often corrupt struggle to survive in an urban war zone, Gang Leader for a Day also tells the story of the complicated friendship that develops between Venkatesh and JT--two young and ambitious men a universe apart.
Sudhir Venkatesh's latest book Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York's Underground Economy--a memoir of sociological investigation revealing the true face of America's most diverse city--is also published by Penguin Press.
Synopsis
First introduced in "Freakonomics," here is the full story of Sudhir Venkatesh, the sociology graduate student who infiltrated one of Chicago's most notorious gangs.
Synopsis
A New York Times Bestseller Foreword by Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomics
When first-year graduate student Sudhir Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicagos most notorious housing projects, he hoped to find a few people willing to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty--and impress his professors with his boldness. He never imagined that as a result of this assignment he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of a decade embedded inside the projects under JTs protection. From a privileged position of unprecedented access, Venkatesh observed JT and the rest of his gang as they operated their crack-selling business, made peace with their neighbors, evaded the law, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gangs complex hierarchical structure. Examining the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, and often corrupt struggle to survive in an urban war zone, Gang Leader for a Day also tells the story of the complicated friendship that develops between Venkatesh and JT--two young and ambitious men a universe apart.
"Riveting." --The New York Times
"Compelling... dramatic... Venkatesh gives readers a window into a way of life that few Americans understand." --Newsweek
"An eye-opening account into an underserved city within the city." --Chicago Tribune
"The achievement of Gang Leader for a Day is to give the dry statistics a raw, beating heart." --The Boston Globe
"A rich portrait of the urban poor, drawn not from statistics but from viivd tales of their lives and his, and how they intertwined." --The Economist
"A sensative, sympathetic, unpatronizing portrayal of lives that are ususally ignored or lumped into ill-defined stereotype." --Finanical Times
Sudhir Venkateshs latest book Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New Yorks Underground Economy--a memoir of sociological investigation revealing the true face of Americas most diverse city--was published in September 2013 by The Penguin Press
Synopsis
Given the way news is reported these days, the image of the inner city many of have is that of drug-infested ghetto plagued with crack houses and roaming addicts. Waverly Duck is here to tell a different story and give us a new image of the inner city. He conducted fieldwork in a medium-size East Coast city where the drug scene is controlled by a local group of black men who sell cocaine to white suburbanites. In this community, located outside Philadelphia, the drug dealers are not outsiders, but long-term residents, integrated with their neighbors (a diverse lot, some old, some young, some long-time homeowners, many working-class families, but many others without jobs or external social support). Duck considers their survival strategies, living in a place where they feel accepted and which they understand, like no other place. They have no way out. Duck shows us the kind of social order and morality that holds sway on Lyford Street, and that enables people to survive. He introduces a cast of characters in Bristol Hill, his citys pseudonym, highlighting the viewpoints of these residents and their codes of interaction with each other. That code ensures a daily life lived in relative safety, despite risks from the embedded drug trade (and Duck also shows us the particular pathway by which young men become drug dealers). Duck himself grew up in poverty (in Detroit), and his own life story contrasts rather dramatically with that of Alice Goffman, the well-heeled young white woman whose account of drug dealers on the run from police created a sensation, and with that of Scott Jacques, the coauthor of our forthcoming book on drug-dealing in the suburbs (in an all-white milieu). What emerges in No Way Out is an important new perspective on the culture of the urban poor, comprehensive in the range of issues it considers and revelatory in the interaction orders it uncovers.
Synopsis
In 2005 Waverly Duck was called to a town he calls Bristol Hill to serve as an expert witness in the sentencing of drug dealer Jonathan Wilson. Convicted as an accessory to the murder of a federal witness and that of a fellow drug dealer, Jonathan faced the death penalty, and Duck was there to provide evidence that the environment in which Jonathan had grown up mitigated the seriousness of his alleged crimes. Duck’s exploration led him to Jonathan’s church, his elementary, middle, and high schools, the juvenile facility where he had previously been incarcerated, his family and friends, other drug dealers, and residents who knew him or knew of him. After extensive ethnographic observations, Duck found himself seriously troubled and uncertain: Are Jonathan and others like him a danger to society? Or is it the converse—is society a danger to them?
Duck’s short stay in Bristol Hill quickly transformed into a long-term study—one that forms the core of No Way Out. This landmark book challenges the common misconception of urban ghettoes as chaotic places where drug dealing, street crime, and random violence make daily life dangerous for their residents. Through close observations of daily life in these neighborhoods, Duck shows how the prevailing social order ensures that residents can go about their lives in relative safety, despite the risks that are embedded in living amid the drug trade. In a neighborhood plagued by failing schools, chronic unemployment, punitive law enforcement, and high rates of incarceration, residents are knit together by long-term ties of kinship and friendship, and they base their actions on a profound sense of community fairness and accountability. Duck presents powerful case studies of individuals whose difficulties flow not from their values, or a lack thereof, but rather from the multiple obstacles they encounter on a daily basis.
No Way Out explores how ordinary people make sense of their lives within severe constraints and how they choose among unrewarding prospects, rather than freely acting upon their own values. What emerges is an important and revelatory new perspective on the culture of the urban poor.
Video
About the Author
SUDHIR VENKATESH is William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. He has written extensively about American poverty and is currently working on a project comparing the urban poor in France and the United States. His writings, stories, and documentaries have appeared in The American Prospect, This American Life, The Source, PBS, and National Public Radio. Venkatesh's latest book, Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York's Underground Economy, was published in September 2013 by The Penguin Press.
Table of Contents
Dramatis Personae
Preface
PART ONE and#8224; The Injury of Isolation
INTRODUCTIONand#160; and#8225;and#160; THEand#160; UNDERSIDE OF INJURY OR, HOW TO DREAM LIKE A RENEGADE
Field Notes: Late Death
1 and#8225; Development
OR , WHY GRANDMOTHERSand#160; ALLYand#160; WITH THE GANG
Field Notes: early Funerals
2 and#8225; Nostalgia
OR, THE STORIES A GANG TELLS ABOUT ITSELF
Field Notes: Inside Jokes
3 and#8225; Authenticity
OR, WHY PEOPLE CANand#8217;T LEAVE THE GANG
PART TWO and#8224; The Resilience of Dreams
Field Notes: Getting In
4 and#8225; Disability
OR, WHY A GANG LEADER HELPS STOP THE VIOLENCE
Field Notes: Resilience
5 and#8225; Disease
OR, HOW A WILL TO SURVIVE HELPS THE HEALING
Field Notes: Framing
CONCLUSION and#8225; THE FRAME
OR, HOW TO GET OUT OF AN ISOLATED SPACE
POSTSCRIPT and#8225; A RENEGADE DREAM COME TRUE
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index