Gang Leader for a Day - a disappointing read

I just finished reading Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day, his third book detailing the lives of the poverty-stricken residents of Chicago's housing projects. I became a big fan of Venkatesh after reading his previous volume Off the Books, which meticulously detailed the ghetto's grey markets and illuminated in brilliant detail the economic lives of the poor. While Off the Books presented a largely objective account, albeit colored by vivid personal description, the present volume promised a rare personal account of what it's like to be an outside observer and documenter of lives so stunted by violence and poverty and a challenge to the very notion of academic objectivity in social studies.

But while the book is written in the first person and personal reflections about moral ambiguity and academic responsibility, with few exceptions the book carries the emotional heft of a college admissions essay. While Off the Books revealed penetrating insights through thorough documentation of the facts, Venkatesh is far less skilled at bringing to life the subtleties of his relationships with people of the Robert Taylor homes (admittedly, not a skill which is well-nurtured in the ivory tower).

Giving Venkatesh the benefit of the doubt, at first I thought he was being clever by narrating his first experiences venturing into the gang-controlled netherword in the voice of the naive, suburban-raised nerdy grad student he was at the time. However, the refrain "Naively, I thought X. I was wrong." continues to crop up throughout the book. Instead of taking the reader through his journey toward a truly formidable understanding of the community (which I don't doubt he has), he opts to flatly state (and restate) the fact that he used to be naive and leaves it at that. For example, in one of the book's critical passages describing the beating of an elderly squatter by Venkatesh's friend and key contact J.T. (who is also the central figure of the book and the leader of a local gang), Venkatesh states that he was disturbed but never lets the reader inside to really feel the suspense or revulsion of watching street justice meted out on the weak and defenseless.

Although Venkatesh may have started out as a naive grad student, it's evident that he became at least a partial insider and participant in the community he studied. Unfortunately, the the book's flat, detached reveals little evidence of this transition, and it contains embarrassingly artless passages such as his characterization of himself as an "edgy young Ivy league professor".

Aside from the book's frustrating lack of emotional insight, I found Venkatesh's own exploitation of the community quite troubling. While he explicitly addresses his selfish motives of obtaining material for his dissertation and openly admits that his quest for information made him as much of a hustler as any of the Robert Taylor residents, admitting to wrongdoing is not the same as owning up to it. Near the end of the book he does describe his gratitude to his subjects and his work on a writing class for a group of young women, but his efforts seem half-hearted for a community that has so little (even compared to his position as a graduate student) but yet so warmly welcomed and accepted him.

He mentioned several times the tight budgets he faced as a graduate student paying his way through loans, and during the several years he observed the community he ate countless free meals made by the community's matrons (most notably a woman named Ms. Mae). Although Ms. Mae refused monetary payment for his meals, I can't help but think that he could have found a way to repay her gratitude if he really tried. In the end, he seems truly saddened that although his work might someday help improve the lives of the poor, it would probably have little impact on the lives of the individuals he personally studied. Although this may very well be my idealism getting the best of me, also I can't help but think that he couldn't use his status, fame, and authority to try to remedy that injustice.

In the end, Gang Leader for a Day was a big disappointment relative to the high standards of Venkatesh's previous work. Although it may have fallen well short of what it could have been, however, it still represents an invaluable addition to the short catalog of books that treat the poor as real people instead of problems to be solved and seeks to gain a real understanding of their lives and their challenges. I remain a dedicated fan of this outstanding scholar and can't wait to read what he writes next.