Gang Leader For A Day Essay

Sometimes I believe that we as people, specifically college students, forget how lucky we actually are. My eyes were opened up to this upon reading Sudhir Venkatesh’s remarkable story entitled Gang Leader for a Day. Through this novel, which I really enjoyed, I found myself going through an array of emotions. If I could pick one word to best describe the novel it would be a rollercoaster. At points I would laugh hysterically, while at other times I felt sorry for people, constantly my feelings going up and down. Personally I believe that Sudhir did an excellent job with his book along with the research that he conducted. Sudhir was able to grasp me and almost made me feel like I was in his shoes, as part of the gang. Just as Sudhir states
Wilson sent Sudhir on his way with a box of old questionnaires. But these questionnaires did not fare well for his research. When he first went on his research he found himself at the Robert Taylor apartment complex where he was held up on multiple occasions by multiple different people. Little did he know he was stepping on to Black King gang territory. Sudhir was in a lot of trouble for coming on to the complex unexpected, and blatantly, unwanted. He was threatened on multiple times as many of the members didn’t believe he was there for a study. But rather spying on the Black Kings for another gang. Eventually they allowed him to ask a question which came off very bad as Sudhir said “How does it feel to be black and poor?” (Venkatesh, 14). The question was directed to, little did he know, one of Suhir’s most important new ally. His name was J.T., the leader of the gang, in this territory. J.T. went on to tell Sudhir ‘”You ain’t going to learn shit with this thing.”’ (Venkatesh, 16). Which led Sudhir to believe that to really get a grasp of what it’s like to be “black and poor” he would have to observe the gang’s, and mostly J.T.’s behavior. This is