Gang Leader For a Day

“Just another day as an outsider looking at life from the inside”

This quote, taken from the book’s preface, points to the strange position Venkatesh occupies during his time conducting research in the Chicago housing projects. As a middle-class, Indian-born graduate student, he is very much an outsider. However, his friendship with J.T. grants him access to center of the Robert Taylor Homes, where he can observe what life is really like. 

“It turned out that the ivory tower was also an ivory fortress”

Venkatesh makes this comment in response to the repeated warnings he receives at university to stay in the “safe” parts of Chicago. The idea that academia is a fortress is interesting because it suggests that academics are removed, even protected, from the world outside, from the very things that Venkatesh is interested in: poverty, race, and gangs.

“But as alien as I was to these folks, they were just as alien to me”

Here, Venkatesh is referring to the black people who watch him closely as he walks through their neighborhoods. They are both utterly strange to each other. At the same time, the word “alien” is suggestive of how they are viewed in American society more generally.