Book Review: Gang Leader For A Day

The book I chose for this reaction paper is “Gang Leader For a Day” by Sudhir Vankatesh. The book’s premise was about a young graduate student who frequently hung out with gang members. Going into detail, there is much more to the story. Vankatesh visits the projects almost every day, if not every day. He learns of many people who live there, such as gang members, people who were essentially homeless, prostitutes, pimps, cops, and other community leaders. Vankatesh soon learns that it was difficult to stay neutral in a place such as the projects. This causes him to get in trouble with multiple members of the Robert Taylor community. “Gang Leader For a Day” highlighted things such as prostitution, gang interaction, and other powerful community leaders that I enjoyed.

I feel like one of the biggest things I learned from this book is how prostitutes worked. The book explains that for the most part, it’s better to be with a pimp than be freelance, which I did not expect. I thought that being with a pimp was a horrendous experience with frequent beating and rape galore. Though, according to the book, you are less likely to be beat up if you are with a pimp and

Near the end, he stated that he felt guilty he would be leaving the projects soon because everyone else can’t leave. In the Forward, Stephen J. Dubner stated that Vankatesh spent the “better part of a decade” in the projects. Looking back, I am unhappy with that wording since he didn’t actually live i the projects. He visited the projects. He would write about the apartments not having a lot of their utilities not working, but he didn’t actually live through that. I almost feel like his work would be more effective than it already was if he lived there for a time-- even if only six months. If he himself had to barter for goods. If he experienced it, he might have been better able to understand the barter system in the projects