Kazira

Oh my God - What an awesome book!! Professor Sudhir Venkatesh who is currently a sociology professor at Columbia University and a past Harvard Fellow; recounts his experience living with the gang members in a housing Project in south Chicago.

The timeline for the book starts at the beginning of his doctoral degree at University of Chicago and ends at his joining as a professor at Columbia University. The book is written so well that I just couldn’t put it down. It’s especially entertaining because the author has honestly described his reactions and emotions dealing with the crack dealers (The author, by the way, comes from a very protective, semi-affluent and predominantly white neighborhood background from San Diego, CA). And he describes the experience with such honesty that it makes you laugh! And just when you think the author has used up all the ammunition from his memory bank (or his journal from those days), he recounts another story, more chilling or outrageous than the one before.

The book contains author’s recollection on the Gang wars, interviews with gang leaders, gang members, hustlers, prostitutes, crack addicts, and other street and small vendors. The author paints such a vivid storyline between these rogues that it really makes you stop and wonder. The book shoots down all the conventional wisdom about the poor African American families living in the housing projects and weaves very interesting story with a lot of likable characters. Specifically, it conveys the life of a charismatic Chicago cracked cocaine dealing gang leader (the gang is called ‘Black Kings’) JT, who is a college graduate himself and with whom the author spent more than 7 years as a close friend. The author recognizes his meeting JT to be THE key factor in getting him accepted into the projects and to performing his research. There are a couple more folks who, in turn (after JT’s head nod) helped him out with other major ‘experiences’.

The book revolves around the project building where JT lives and all the folks living in and around the building. The storyline moves very rapidly between specific characters from the gang members, other hustlers in the building, the Police and the politicians – and the author sprinkles various stories on domestic abuse, police abuse, bribery, corruption, drive by shooting and the Black King gang hierarchy. The book also conveys a sense of this professor’s guilt – since he gathered most of the information written in the book playing on JT’s emotions – deceiving him into thinking that the author is doing this research to write his biography. By the time you finish this book, you have a good clue about the life of a person (be it homeless, squatters, drug addicts, etc.) in the projects and their day-to-day challenges.

Let me borrow a line from the book that very appropriately describe my views about this author and this particular project of his – This is during his first meeting with JT – when JT tells him – “You’ve got balls man, I have to give you that ….”. Now, you may remember a reference to this research in the book Freakonomics (by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner) where the authors mention about Sudhir’s research on underground economy of drug trafficking and how sophisticated it can get. Well, this book is the journal that connects the dots from where, why, and how the author collected all his information and subsequent storyline of the contacts that he dealt with in getting this information.

A DEFINITE MUST READ. The only caution I would like to throw is that the author has written down the book in a very real (graphic) language (that he heard first-hand in the projects) and some folks may have difficulty with that.