Chicago Adult Entertainment: Gang Leader for a Day

These objections feel like small-hearted quibbling to me. One of the more devastating passages in Venkatesh’s memoir describes a run-in with a retired gangster who still lives in the Taylor Homes. The gangster recalls prior generations of hoodlums in the projects, of madams and pimps running girls out of their apartments, and of, at the fringes, the leering menace of the up-and-coming young guns. Venkatesh, as an outsider listening in, feels as if only a few peripheral details have changed over the years: the particular drugs sold; the names of the gangs and the gangsters; and, perhaps, the intensity of the violence. But he suspects that there is a quasi-permanence to this culture—a culture that operates across the line distinguishing what is legal from what is not—that extends all the way back to the Great Migration. The enormous strength of Venkatesh’s work is that he makes this account resonant and believable. In this light, it is hard to charge him with dwelling too excessively on a moment in the recent past. It’s no great sin for Venkatesh to repeat the truth, particularly when the truth is so committed to repeating itself.

See the full article from “Washington Monthly”