Gang Leader for a Day Blog

Chapter summaries and thoughts on the book after the break.

Chapter 1
This introductory chapter presents itself in a strangely matter-of-fact way that I found a bit at odds with the rest of the book. Even things that are terrifying for Sudhir, such as the foot soldiers brandishing knives and waving guns around at him as they corner him the very first time he enters the projects, seems oddly detached of true emotion but rather simply stating what happened with little emotional flavor. I consider this part of the book perhaps reflective of Sudhir's initial pedagogical viewpoint on his experience, a viewpoint that is quickly shed as he spends more time in the projects.

Chapter 2
In this chapter we begin to get a better picture of J. T. as a gang leader and what that entails. By far the most important thing to take away in my opinion from this chapter is the fact that he's definitely not the reliable fountain of information he seemed to be. This didn't seem to be an issue originally, but when Clarisse shows up and paints a picture of how J. T. firstly doesn't fill in Sudhir on her particular activities as well as the fact that he seems to profit off of prostitutes even though he repeatedly denounced them. We begin to first see J. T.'s cracks in his upright demeanor, even if said demeanor wasn't ever truly morally "correct".

Chapter 3
Probably the most fascinating part about this chapter is the voting segment, in which foot soldiers are asked to go door to door and jot down names. In my opinion, I think J. T.'s real desire is in getting a firm list of the people in the apartments for his own use. Voting in elections, as far as J. T.'s concerns seem to be, probably are pretty low in his list of priorities.

Chapter 4
Simultaneously one of the most and least exciting chapters in the book. I believe Venkatesh intended this chapter to be anticlimactic. Not only is the name "Gang Leader for a Day" immediately evocative of something unusual and exciting, he also used it in both the name of his book and this chapter. And yet Sudhir barely did anything at all and was practically babysat the entire time by J. T.. I think Venkatesh did this deliberately to show two things: that the life of a gang leader isn't at all what it is generally believed to be, and that in its own way it's also a very difficult and delicate operation far beyond Sudhir's comprehension.

Chapter 5
Easily the second most interesting, if not second most important, character in this book next to J. T. is Ms. Bailey. As orderly as she is corrupt, Ms. Bailey is very similar to J. T. in more than one way, especially in the rationalizations that they both employ. When asked about all the under-the-table deals that they carry out with them becoming the sole beneficiaries, they both evade the question and rationalize their behavior. According to them it's definitely about preserving the order of their operations, but at the same time they require these bribes/extortion/etc. for "the community". It's obvious that nobody in the projects rises to a position of power without entering any kind of moral gray areas, but despite Ms. Baily being a different person she mirrors J. T. in surprisingly abundant ways.

Chapter 6
We see another dimension of J. T. and Ms. Bailey in this chapter, in which we see them both trick Sudhir into divulging delicate personal information about the tenants so that they can respectively crack down on the people who avoid paying them required fees/bribes/extortions. The fact that Sudhir happily reported this information immediately presents the question of whether Sudhir knew what was going to happen. He, of course, plays a certain degree of naivete in the book, though it's extremely difficult to believe he had no idea what he was doing while passing on this information. He probably felt a need to "pay" J. T. and Ms. Bailey for being "useful" to him.

Chapter 7
We learn of the last "gang" in chapter 7, the cops. Crooked cops were obviously a part of the experience since day 1, since there was no possible way for there to have been 6 previous chapters in this book if there had been any cops efficiently cracking down on these illegal activities, so we had some idea as to what to expect from police officers. However, the idea that they flat out robbed people during parties and took their property when they were off-duty still managed to surprise me. It's intriguing that despite them not appearing that much in the book, they're by far the most influential and powerful group of the entire ecosystem, and they probably intended perfectly well to stay "in the background" in the projects' culture.

Chapter 8
This final chapter is like watching people abandon a sinking ship. In this do-or-die environment, people began to truly show their colors. Dorothy and her "Get-together gang" collaborated, Ms. Baily went on a seemingly full-on corruption mode, while J. T. remained paranoid as his gang crumbled before him. T-Bone by far was the most fascinating in this chapter, since he apparently knew very well how he was going to end up, confident enough in his prediction as to give Sudhir such sensitive financial information about the gang. He seemed to know fully well that not only was he going to go to jail, but that most likely he'd never get out of it alive and that there wouldn't be a Black Kings in that area anymore to have him worry about divulging their information.

General Thoughts on the Book

I found the book to be highly fascinating, especially in its portrayal of people and how similar the crack gangs of the Chicago projects are to many other tight-knight, fully legal groups in society. I think the most important theme of the book is that appearances can be deceiving. This theme appears in pretty much every single chapter in the book, with J. T., life in the projects, people like Autry, Ms. Bailey, Officer Reggie, the gangs themselves, the operations of the gang, how the high-ranking officers of the gang held their meetings, etc. Right down to the end of the book we see people change their demeanor and interactions with others time and time again depending on their circumstances, sometimes to do good and sometimes to be highly corrupt and borderline selfish.

This dual dynamic between the do-good and the greedy apathy is also evident within the actual lifestyle of the projects. One moment people are throwing a peaceful party and the next there's a shootout. One moment crack operations are going smoothly and the next the sales drop off. One moment the Black Kings are one of the most lucrative and efficiently run gangs in the nation thanks to their dominance of Robert Taylor and the next both the gang and the projects have been demolished. Despite the order that people like J. T. and Ms. Bailey enforce on the area, there's always a certain element of anarchy and chaos that turns around the dynamic of their lifestyles completely. Both J. T. and Ms. Bailey by the end of the book pretty much fade into obscurity, with no power left to their name and them simply melting into the rows of low-income housing.

There's always this element of depressing reality that strikes the pages of the book repeatedly, but I don't think this was played to as much effect as it could have, and maybe should have, been. In many cases, such as with T-Bone's death and where Ms. Bailey ended up, Sudhir describes them with the same detached, matter-of-fact style that he exhibited at the very beginning of the book. Was Sudhir rejecting the lifestyle completely? Was he simply "done" with the entire culture and couldn't be bothered to share more sympathy with these people? Was it done to simply express the harsh reality that life can force people into bad or even life-ending situations no matter their background and efforts?