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Renegade Dreams: Living through Injury in Gangland Chicago
Every morning Chicagoans wake up to the same stark headlines that read like some macabre “13 shot, 4 dead overnight across the city,” and nearly every morning the same elision what of the nine other victims? As with war, much of our focus on inner-city violence is on the death toll, but the reality is that far more victims live to see another day and must cope with their injuries―both physical and psychological―for the rest of their lives. Renegade Dreams is their story. Walking the streets of one of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods―where the local gang has been active for more than fifty years―Laurence Ralph talks with people whose lives are irrecoverably damaged, seeking to understand how they cope and how they can be better helped.
Going deep into a West Side neighborhood most Chicagoans only know from news reports―a place where children have been shot just for crossing the wrong street―Ralph unearths the fragile humanity that fights to stay alive there, to thrive, against all odds. He talks to mothers, grandmothers, and pastors, to activists and gang leaders, to the maimed and the hopeful, to aspiring rappers, athletes, or those who simply want safe passage to school or a steady job. Gangland Chicago, he shows, is as complicated as ever. It’s not just a warzone but a community, a place where people’s dreams are projected against the backdrop of unemployment, dilapidated housing, incarceration, addiction, and disease, the many hallmarks of urban poverty that harden like so many scars in their lives. Recounting their stories, he wrestles with what it means to be an outsider in a place like this, whether or not his attempt to understand, to help, might not in fact inflict its own damage. Ultimately he shows that the many injuries these people carry―like dreams―are a crucial form of resilience, and that we should all think about the ghetto differently, not as an abandoned island of unmitigated violence and its helpless victims but as a neighborhood, full of homes, as a part of the larger society in which we all live, together, among one another.
Going deep into a West Side neighborhood most Chicagoans only know from news reports―a place where children have been shot just for crossing the wrong street―Ralph unearths the fragile humanity that fights to stay alive there, to thrive, against all odds. He talks to mothers, grandmothers, and pastors, to activists and gang leaders, to the maimed and the hopeful, to aspiring rappers, athletes, or those who simply want safe passage to school or a steady job. Gangland Chicago, he shows, is as complicated as ever. It’s not just a warzone but a community, a place where people’s dreams are projected against the backdrop of unemployment, dilapidated housing, incarceration, addiction, and disease, the many hallmarks of urban poverty that harden like so many scars in their lives. Recounting their stories, he wrestles with what it means to be an outsider in a place like this, whether or not his attempt to understand, to help, might not in fact inflict its own damage. Ultimately he shows that the many injuries these people carry―like dreams―are a crucial form of resilience, and that we should all think about the ghetto differently, not as an abandoned island of unmitigated violence and its helpless victims but as a neighborhood, full of homes, as a part of the larger society in which we all live, together, among one another.
256 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2014
30 people are currently reading
481 people want to read
About the author
Laurence Ralph
10 books50 followersLaurence Ralph is a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. Before that, he was a Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology at Harvard University, where he taught for nearly a decade. He earned his Ph.D. (2010) and Masters of Arts degrees (2006) in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, and a Bachelor of Science degree (2004) from Georgia Institute of Technology, where he majored in History, Technology and Society. His research and writing explores how police abuse, mass incarceration, and crime make disease, disability, and premature death seem like natural outcomes for people of color, who are often seen as expendable by “polite” society.
Ralph is known for using careful and deliberate description rather than esoteric theory to ensure that his research findings are comprehensible to a broader range of intellectuals, experts, college students, and curious readers. In each of his research projects, he discusses experiences of violence, debilitating injury, and/or death to examine the stereotypes and prejudices associated with America’s inner-cities.
Ralph has been awarded a number of honors and prestigious fellowships for his research, some of which include: Cultural Anthropology grants from the National Science Foundation as well as the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a visiting fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, membership at the Institute for Advanced Study, a Ford Foundation Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Research Council of the National Academies, and the Du Bois-Mandela-Rodney Post-Doctoral fellowship from the University of Michigan.
Ralph currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife and daughter.
Ralph is known for using careful and deliberate description rather than esoteric theory to ensure that his research findings are comprehensible to a broader range of intellectuals, experts, college students, and curious readers. In each of his research projects, he discusses experiences of violence, debilitating injury, and/or death to examine the stereotypes and prejudices associated with America’s inner-cities.
Ralph has been awarded a number of honors and prestigious fellowships for his research, some of which include: Cultural Anthropology grants from the National Science Foundation as well as the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a visiting fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, membership at the Institute for Advanced Study, a Ford Foundation Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Research Council of the National Academies, and the Du Bois-Mandela-Rodney Post-Doctoral fellowship from the University of Michigan.
Ralph currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife and daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
April 30, 2025
Yea, this book lived up to the hype. Really important work about Chicago and Black urban spaces in general. Post 2020 and post 2024, I think a lot more can be done with this book in mind.
May 13, 2017
4.5 stars
I read this for an essay i was writing for social anthropology and i am so glad that i choose this ethnography. It gave me an insight into a part of society that is often looked down upon as well as a new perspective on gang dominated areas. I feel like this ethnography is incredible relevant in terms of the United States today and the current political climate. If you have any interest in gangland chicago or the dynamics of gang culture in general this is a great read.
I read this for an essay i was writing for social anthropology and i am so glad that i choose this ethnography. It gave me an insight into a part of society that is often looked down upon as well as a new perspective on gang dominated areas. I feel like this ethnography is incredible relevant in terms of the United States today and the current political climate. If you have any interest in gangland chicago or the dynamics of gang culture in general this is a great read.
April 25, 2023
Too good (delicate writing) to be true
October 4, 2016
Heartbreaking, specific and especially enlightening to the extent disability is foregrounded and analyzed for its symbolic and cultural valence in communities plagued by gang violence, this slim volume provides a detailed and multifaceted snapshot of community leadership and individual agency in North Lawndale. The anti-violence speeches of elder church leaders may be familiar enough from mainstream media coverage, but these voices are contextualized thoughtfully by the author, and stand in contrast to residents who recall (and, at times, romanticize) the civic-minded past of their street gang, and even younger residents who are either resolutely still with or no longer in gangs. A rare clear-headed conversation with various parties affected by street gangs, Renegade Dreams both convincingly depicts some of the limits of "interventions" from without, and celebrates the possibility of change from within.
July 9, 2022
"My argument is straightforward. We should not allow the specter of urban violence--made more palpable with each news special and each viral video--to reify the notion of the "isolated" ghetto"...Instead, we should embrace the opportunities to reframe seemingly familiar narratives that [...] impede our understanding of how injury is experienced....Attention to how multiple frameworks on the inner city collapse upon one another and become conflated will lead us to ask new questions: What are the ways in which the cell phone, in this instance, proves critical to disseminating images of (and frameworks about) gang violence?"
This is my second Laurence Ralph book after having read The Torture Letters a couple years back. Through a lens focused on the Eastwood neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, Ralph shares with and questions readers to broaden their understanding beyond the acute, flash-in-the-pan specter of nightly news stories or viral videos shared across social media by looking toward contextual clues that subtly shift these narratives into deeper understandings of the hows/whys violence and injury are generated, maintained, and repackaged/redistributed with such apathy in our modern age.
Reading through some of the comments, I sort of get some of the dissatisfaction here, though I think some people missed the forest for the trees, getting hung up on why a writer would choose a tiny Chicago neighborhood when so many others have similar experiences. There were times when I felt the academic qualities of the book draping the stories of Eastwoodians were mere summaries recapitulating elements seeming plain as day (ie, senseless gang violence contribute to alienating the minds of disaffected youths, disabled gang members often lament their injuries, some musical artists rely on a notion of authenticity that belie their artistic impressions, etc). However, I also get that he's building on work like that of William Julius Wilson or Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mike Davis, etc, in attempting to attune greater understanding of "socially isolated" neighborhoods, the kinds of places that eventually get gentrified and resold as communities suitable for residents who have yet to experience the kind of downward mobility that comes along when a major mode of business dries up (or your town transitions from one of manufacturing to that of a service / gig or consumer economy).
I think the short of it is this: instead of becoming enamored with the way we conceive of and communicate stories that perpetuate and contribute to a narrow understanding of neighborhoods that most rarely seek to visit, along with the people that are often economically/socially confined to those spaces, we should try to accumulate the details surrounding the conditions that lead to such events in the first place in order to spark clearer narratives. In doing so, we may be better predisposed to developing plans of action to tackle issues facing many cities across the country.
This is my second Laurence Ralph book after having read The Torture Letters a couple years back. Through a lens focused on the Eastwood neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, Ralph shares with and questions readers to broaden their understanding beyond the acute, flash-in-the-pan specter of nightly news stories or viral videos shared across social media by looking toward contextual clues that subtly shift these narratives into deeper understandings of the hows/whys violence and injury are generated, maintained, and repackaged/redistributed with such apathy in our modern age.
Reading through some of the comments, I sort of get some of the dissatisfaction here, though I think some people missed the forest for the trees, getting hung up on why a writer would choose a tiny Chicago neighborhood when so many others have similar experiences. There were times when I felt the academic qualities of the book draping the stories of Eastwoodians were mere summaries recapitulating elements seeming plain as day (ie, senseless gang violence contribute to alienating the minds of disaffected youths, disabled gang members often lament their injuries, some musical artists rely on a notion of authenticity that belie their artistic impressions, etc). However, I also get that he's building on work like that of William Julius Wilson or Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mike Davis, etc, in attempting to attune greater understanding of "socially isolated" neighborhoods, the kinds of places that eventually get gentrified and resold as communities suitable for residents who have yet to experience the kind of downward mobility that comes along when a major mode of business dries up (or your town transitions from one of manufacturing to that of a service / gig or consumer economy).
I think the short of it is this: instead of becoming enamored with the way we conceive of and communicate stories that perpetuate and contribute to a narrow understanding of neighborhoods that most rarely seek to visit, along with the people that are often economically/socially confined to those spaces, we should try to accumulate the details surrounding the conditions that lead to such events in the first place in order to spark clearer narratives. In doing so, we may be better predisposed to developing plans of action to tackle issues facing many cities across the country.
October 24, 2014
For the actual words of the people he interviewed I give a 4 star. For all the rest of the book, I wanted to give it a 2 or even a 1. So I gave it a 3 for the voices he quotes verbatim and their words put into quotes/italics at the beginnings of the chapters. (Although he does change their expressions of English words and much else of context when he changes the language itself that he quotes, he admits this.) His interpretations of what he actually sees with his own eyes and hears- and his answers to actions he views that are absolutely illegal? They are in majority "off" is one polite way to say it. And more than off are most of his solutions and some of his conclusions. Most of those last are just straight out wrong. He should have given the quoted narrators a complete voice in the manner and exactness of their speech and topics, without interpreting and correlating data to parse the misery he sees, so it made sense to himself and his own worldview and slanted ethnology. He attempts to do analysis for the cultural importance of such things as shoes and foot ware. And how this outward sign and importance to nuance translates to a nearly suicidal loyalty to a gang/tribe and the symbols of support for that gang's neighborhood entity and power of self-identity. Or why that entity of gang replaces all other societal units to a gang member. Or how and why a neighborhood or a government "could" possibly or adequately support combine programs to replace family units as monetary, emotional or nurturing foundations for the development of human children.
The author should explain TIF to those who do not understand Chicago budgets and creative financing. But then he doesn't himself understand TIF in the broader sense, either. Nor what that means to poor or striving service workers in numerous other 74 Chicago neighborhoods who actually pay into the systems and have gang or physical or school issues of vast deficiencies too of their own. Nor the arguments for or against leaders' and adults' gang support by either side in "Eastwood" itself, or the argument for those who are stuck in the middle (like the Grandma's)of WHY this particular neighborhood of this size (1/2 mile by nearly 1-1/2 mile only) is entitled to keep its integrity and sacrosanct identity when more than 50% of the physical housing or buildings of any type (commercial or non) are unlivable, half destroyed, or mostly in burn out condition. Other entire areas 2 or 3 times that size, in better condition with more central access $$ value and citizen active property rights have been put into domain and taken repeatedly over the last 4 or 5 decades. The maintained Old Italian neighborhood was completely decimated and taken for U. of I. Chicago. Vintage and unique Maxwell Street and that whole market area taken, as well. Most high rise death trap public housing gang warfare grounds have been knocked down too. Sometimes replaced with affordable and mixed costs housing ranging to gentrified higher costs combined. And, yes, many of those people displaced no longer live in Chicago, but had to go farther from city center to public housing in wider Cook County. What was wrong with that? Why is "Eastwood" more important as an entity? It's a question never asked here by anybody, nor considered by the author because that might lead to an unequal answer. My family has been moved by domain once, many others I know twice in two generations. It's better to shoot it out, in order to "stand" your neighborhood as intact? Huh!
I did not read the ebook. I read the paperback edition.
If you are condoning and supporting the gang leadership and power in your neighborhood (by using facilities that they supply and which you could not afford at any age of your life) which is almost entirely coming out of money that is being taken from illegal activities, how can you forbid their operational methods (owning the streets and killing police OFTEN) and their larger culture of hierarchy or intimidating habits? Sitting and lecturing from a wheelchair has little effect, when that same person who is "wise" lecturer is race baiting and still using gang associations and compliance for various personal and individual advantages. It's a DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO example to the max. Which doesn't work for humans in behavior change consequence. And it works the least when there are no jobs or incentives to learn skills for jobs elsewhere out of "the neighborhood" when style and culture and method of gang and neighborhood are the perceived "home" and "safe" identity.
Gangs use violence of every sort and illegal guns to achieve their paths of power and money grab associations. Constantly. Nearly all the "Renegade Dreams" were voiced in ideologies and idealist emotional verbiage deemed "empathetic" and first person inspirational. Yet it is all words and almost no actions. Work teams for tear down or physical labor base carpentry did not get far as working models for these dreams to become any portion of reality. Nor did actuation of apprentice programs in three or four fields develop. We worked in one program for truck tire service training that did work into a partial successful end for a hand full of diligent dreamers. Dream talk is so much easier than real movement into a patterned action of steady and more skilled labor.
The voice of the injured should be telling the uninjured to disdain this cultural acceptance of violence completely by aspiring to a change of living location over the insistence on neighborhood integrity, at the least. Didn't hear much of that at all in this book. Even if they can't manage to contemplate this leaving option, at least they could reject the style and vocal signaling messages of visual/audio gang culture and affinity for violent power play. Some neighborhoods or institutions or towns need to conclude district identity for valid reasons. To go to something better and safer with role models who don't hold codes in which violence is the prime defining unit could be one very valid reason.
The author should explain TIF to those who do not understand Chicago budgets and creative financing. But then he doesn't himself understand TIF in the broader sense, either. Nor what that means to poor or striving service workers in numerous other 74 Chicago neighborhoods who actually pay into the systems and have gang or physical or school issues of vast deficiencies too of their own. Nor the arguments for or against leaders' and adults' gang support by either side in "Eastwood" itself, or the argument for those who are stuck in the middle (like the Grandma's)of WHY this particular neighborhood of this size (1/2 mile by nearly 1-1/2 mile only) is entitled to keep its integrity and sacrosanct identity when more than 50% of the physical housing or buildings of any type (commercial or non) are unlivable, half destroyed, or mostly in burn out condition. Other entire areas 2 or 3 times that size, in better condition with more central access $$ value and citizen active property rights have been put into domain and taken repeatedly over the last 4 or 5 decades. The maintained Old Italian neighborhood was completely decimated and taken for U. of I. Chicago. Vintage and unique Maxwell Street and that whole market area taken, as well. Most high rise death trap public housing gang warfare grounds have been knocked down too. Sometimes replaced with affordable and mixed costs housing ranging to gentrified higher costs combined. And, yes, many of those people displaced no longer live in Chicago, but had to go farther from city center to public housing in wider Cook County. What was wrong with that? Why is "Eastwood" more important as an entity? It's a question never asked here by anybody, nor considered by the author because that might lead to an unequal answer. My family has been moved by domain once, many others I know twice in two generations. It's better to shoot it out, in order to "stand" your neighborhood as intact? Huh!
I did not read the ebook. I read the paperback edition.
If you are condoning and supporting the gang leadership and power in your neighborhood (by using facilities that they supply and which you could not afford at any age of your life) which is almost entirely coming out of money that is being taken from illegal activities, how can you forbid their operational methods (owning the streets and killing police OFTEN) and their larger culture of hierarchy or intimidating habits? Sitting and lecturing from a wheelchair has little effect, when that same person who is "wise" lecturer is race baiting and still using gang associations and compliance for various personal and individual advantages. It's a DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO example to the max. Which doesn't work for humans in behavior change consequence. And it works the least when there are no jobs or incentives to learn skills for jobs elsewhere out of "the neighborhood" when style and culture and method of gang and neighborhood are the perceived "home" and "safe" identity.
Gangs use violence of every sort and illegal guns to achieve their paths of power and money grab associations. Constantly. Nearly all the "Renegade Dreams" were voiced in ideologies and idealist emotional verbiage deemed "empathetic" and first person inspirational. Yet it is all words and almost no actions. Work teams for tear down or physical labor base carpentry did not get far as working models for these dreams to become any portion of reality. Nor did actuation of apprentice programs in three or four fields develop. We worked in one program for truck tire service training that did work into a partial successful end for a hand full of diligent dreamers. Dream talk is so much easier than real movement into a patterned action of steady and more skilled labor.
The voice of the injured should be telling the uninjured to disdain this cultural acceptance of violence completely by aspiring to a change of living location over the insistence on neighborhood integrity, at the least. Didn't hear much of that at all in this book. Even if they can't manage to contemplate this leaving option, at least they could reject the style and vocal signaling messages of visual/audio gang culture and affinity for violent power play. Some neighborhoods or institutions or towns need to conclude district identity for valid reasons. To go to something better and safer with role models who don't hold codes in which violence is the prime defining unit could be one very valid reason.
February 4, 2023
I have some mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I think clarifying the institutions and environments that perpetuate "isolated" ghetto communities in inner city Chicago is incredibly important. Recognizing that youth violence and gang culture is an issue created by America (and not Chicago or blackness or however politicians justify ignoring these neighborhoods) deserves to be emphasized. With that being said, this book is a bit of a mess. Lots of people flow in and out of the text with no reason. I hesitate even calling this a "narrative" given its choppy, unstructured nature. I wish Ralph had written this more as a memoir than an ethnography, as the freedom to insert himself in a more personal way probably would have served him better. Some of the ideas are strong, but I think a change in genre (or honestly a longer and more comprehensive look into the subjects) would have made this book more successful.
March 20, 2021
This book sort of has three separable parts. There's the interviews with gang members, there's the accounts of what gang life in the West Side of Chicago is like, and there's the actual ostensible point of the book. Admittedly many people might read the book for the first two---and that part of the title might be why I got this from the library.
But, the main contribution of the book, which is specifically looking at how paralyzing injuries caused by gang violence influence life in those neighborhoods, is a bit underpedaled throughout, to the point that it feels like an afterthought. So it's hard to tell what the book is doing, and it seems like the desire to write an ethnography appealing to a certain fetishization of poverty gets in the way of saying what the author wants to.
But, the main contribution of the book, which is specifically looking at how paralyzing injuries caused by gang violence influence life in those neighborhoods, is a bit underpedaled throughout, to the point that it feels like an afterthought. So it's hard to tell what the book is doing, and it seems like the desire to write an ethnography appealing to a certain fetishization of poverty gets in the way of saying what the author wants to.
April 12, 2021
Insightful, but I think I'm left with more questions than answers with this one. I don't necessarily have an issue with that, but I'm still unclear as to whether the author thinks gangs are a thing that needs to be changed. Am I to believe this is just a tragic reality we have to live with?
Either way, I think this does a wonderful job of educating the public on what a gang actually is, and humanizing its members.
Either way, I think this does a wonderful job of educating the public on what a gang actually is, and humanizing its members.
April 19, 2022
It is usual to read about the dead relate to the urban gangs, but the relevance of this ethnography is in asked about the "invisible" people and their circumstances: the survivors in the Chicago's black neighborhoods. How they resolve their daily life. What are their dreams. How they struggle day after day with their problems. What are their scars and suffering, and how their attend its.
July 28, 2022
i had to read this for my anthropology class. some parts i found were super slow, others had me very invested. overall not the most entertaining book but one that has many important messages that everyone should know about.
December 11, 2023
What a beautiful ethnography. Laurence Ralph weaves stories and themes in and out of focus, while centering a community. At its core, the book is about how a community comes together for its injured and differently abled members. It creates a framing of hope in support and community.
December 17, 2017
This was a required book for my college. However, I found it to be very intriguing and informative. It gives the reader a new perspective on gang life, and allows us to view victims as people.
December 19, 2019
my chosen ethnography for my anthro class. really in depth and well written
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March 7, 2020Not the book I was expecting, but a great look into a part of Chicago few privileged people see.
November 7, 2024
very good and wholly american
December 9, 2024
read this for class and found it very interesting. very theoretical while still being accessible and well written.
January 4, 2025
molto bello, vorrei leggere altri libri scritti come questo ma non saprei dove trovarne.
October 13, 2025
4⭐ I had to read this book for my anthropology class. Very interesting read and very fitting for the class.
July 22, 2019
Eye-opening and unique approach! The final chapter packs many punches, even as it is published right before the events surrounding the rise of the Black Lives Matter moment.
April 20, 2021
Excellent ethnography that provides perspectives based upon a multi-faceted examination of contexts and characters. A very important work that emphasizes humanity and challenges simplified understandings of inner cities, gangs as institutions, and disability as a second chance.
January 23, 2022
I loved this book! I read it for one of my Anthropology courses in university and couldn’t put it down. The stories hit you hard, the writing is so real and raw. I have nothing but good things to say about this novel. It allowed for an insight of a world I have never been apart of!
March 3, 2017
Great take/view from on the ground and in the community.
February 8, 2017
This is a very thoughtful and thorough ethnography by someone who took the time and was able to integrate into the community. (While the distinctions between the author and subjects was clear, it is still important to recognize that Ralph came from a background that allowed him access to the subjects in a way that a less familiar grad student (who would come across as a looky-loo) could not.)
Still, the book lacked a bit of the emotional connection that would make the tendency to respond to injury with injury more understandable, particularly when that is a theme that resonates throughout the book. I don't think it is the role or the job of either the author or the subjects to explain that level of injury. Still, when the last chapter revolves around Derrion Albert, it does beg for a bit more context than we have gotten, because it hurts that much.
Still, the book lacked a bit of the emotional connection that would make the tendency to respond to injury with injury more understandable, particularly when that is a theme that resonates throughout the book. I don't think it is the role or the job of either the author or the subjects to explain that level of injury. Still, when the last chapter revolves around Derrion Albert, it does beg for a bit more context than we have gotten, because it hurts that much.
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February 26, 2016364.1066 R1637 2014
December 1, 2016
Important information, wasn't terribly fun to read.
August 26, 2025
I read this for class for cultural anthropology and it was really helpful to my understanding of the field.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews