Gang Leader for a Day: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

Sudhir, after speaking with his professors, learns that some of his research might require him to share his notes with law enforcement, if he’s ever subpoenaed. This is because JT and others in the BKs speak to him about events like drive-by shootings, and Sudhir has no “protection” or “privilege” in his interviews with the gang members (as would, say, a lawyer). This causes Sudhir to think more about the way he studies the BKs. He also hopes to gain a more systematic economic picture of the gang, so that his dissertation can contain a quantitative as well as descriptive component.

Sudhir meets with Ms. Bailey and JT and tells them what he’s learned about the legal status of some of his research. Both Ms. Bailey and JT are not surprised to hear this. Ms. Bailey, in particular, had assumed that Sudhir would eventually be asked to show his notes to someone – another professor, a law-enforcement officer – and tells Sudhir that he’s always had a “hustle,” that he’s always been looking out for his own research while working in the projects. JT says the same thing – that Sudhir is “one of the gang” in that he’s done a good job of listening to people and letting them describe their own lives. But JT has seen, too, that Sudhir has to protect the value of the data he collects, and that he is doing it for his own professional advancement.

Sudhir begins interviewing pimps and prostitutes within the buildings – the interviews are arranged by JT and Ms. Bailey, and Sudhir is surprised to hear that many pimps and prostitutes are willing to talk about their work. In general, prostitutes are either “affiliates” or “independents,” meaning they have a pimp or they do not. Affiliates are “protected” by their pimps, often from physical harm at the hands of johns, but they also make less money than “independents,” who don’t have to pay protection. Sudhir talks to an older woman named Cordella, who has run many businesses in Robert Taylor. She tells Sudhir that she used to work for Ms. Bailey’s mother, who ran a brothel in the Homes. Cordella says that the prostitution business was better “without men involved.”

Sudhir learns other interesting facts about Robert Taylor: that unemployment is listed at 96 percent, but is actually much lower, since many have under-the-table but legal jobs part-time, but do not share this income with the CHA, since they would exceed public housing limits and be forced to leave. He also learns that most side hustles are not especially lucrative (especially those selling goods and services), but that taking on tenants (“boarders”) in one’s apartment is. Further, there is “exchange economy” on top of the gray market, in which bartering is used to swap goods without money being involved at all.

Sudhir continues his research. He interviews C-Note and some of the other “hustlers,” finding out that a lot of their “manual working,” like the automotive repairs they did in the lots of the Homes, was fairly lucrative. One day, Sudhir meets with Ms. Bailey to catch up, and finds JT with her in her office. Sudhir, unthinking, shares a good deal of information with both of them about the economic exploits of the “hustlers” and other gray marketeers in the Homes, not worrying about this information-sharing one bit.

But after a few days, Sudhir realizes that he’s angered nearly everyone he normally speaks to in the homes. JT and Ms. Bailey have gone around to tenants with boarders, to people like C-Note, and to prostitutes like Clarisse, asking them for more money, since they’re apparently making more (according to Sudhir’s notes) than they’d been reporting to the Black Kings and to Ms. Bailey’s office. Sudhir apologizes to C-Note and Clarisse in person, and they grudgingly accept that he’s sorry. But C-Note says that Sudhir was only “thinking about his own work” and not about other people’s lives in the Homes. Sudhir realizes this is at least partially true.

Sudhir attends a funeral later that summer for Catrina, Ms. Bailey’s assistant. Sudhir, like many in the buildings, is deeply upset at her death; she was killed by accident in the middle of a fight between her estranged father and other family members. Sudhir decides that, based on Catrina’s love of writing, he can perhaps use her death to do some good in the community, by starting an essay-writing and discussion group for women in the homes. Sudhir begins having these events in a diner nearby.

In the group, young women talk about a great deal of material difficulty. They describe the violence they experience at the hands of men in their lives, and worry, too, about how their children will deal with cycles of poverty. They also talk about, in writing and in discussion, the compromises they must make in negotiating with authority figures like the CHA and Ms. Bailey – some women, for example, have had to “let” their boyfriends or husbands sleep with Ms. Bailey or others in the Homes in order to keep their apartments or gain other material advantages. Sudhir is upset to hear this, and he wonders how the women have managed to “get by” in their lives making these sorts of difficult choices each day.

Finally, Ms. Bailey tells Sudhir to come to another community meeting, where angry residents ask Sudhir why he’s meeting with the women. He tells them all that they’re engaged in a writing group, but notes that, until clearing the air, many assumed he was having sex with people in the group, or “pimping them out.” Ms. Bailey confirms that Sudhir is “helping the girls with their homework,” and community members seem to accept this as plausible. Sudhir wonders whether, even in his attempts to do good, he doesn’t just wind up angering people, as when he accidentally caused others in the Homes to be “taxed” by JT and Ms. Bailey.