| Gang Leader for a Day |
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| Saturday, 19 April 2008 19:21 | |
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The book begins with Sudhir as a fresh faced young student in a tie-dyed Grateful Dead t-shirt, casually strolling up to some crack dealers with a clipboard and a survey. His first question: "How does it feel to be black and poor. A - Very Good, B - Good, C - Average, D - Bad, E - Very Bad". The gang members, mistaking this for a clever ruse from a rival mexican gang, respond by taking him hostage overnight. Having confirmed that Sudhir is not in fact mexican, the gang's leader develops an uneasy friendship with him and invites him to return the following day to get a more in-depth look at life in the projects. Over the next few years, Sudhir shadows gang leader JT's career, glimpsing a complex world of corruption, drugs and poverty while attemtping to reconcile his own roles as sociologist, ethnographer, biographer, friend and horrified bystander. I once met a girl from Chicago who described the city as "totally effed up", and at the time I found this quite amusing (particularly since we were in a rather seedy part of London at the time). Since then I have come to learn that, unlike British cities which are generally a bit dodgy wherever you go, Chicago's more homogeneous neighbourhoods can vary wildly in character. Even crossing a street can take you into a very different part of town, as I discovered myself when I escaped from a group of bottle-throwing youths to find myself in the car park of a pet psychologist. This book delves deeper into that environment and exposes the complex relationships between the gang, the residents, the Chicago Housing Authority and the police. But for me the most compelling aspect of this story is that Sudhir's initial naivety and inquisitiveness seemed to create a protective bubble which allowed him to live out the experience largely unscathed.
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