Getting Ghost: Two Young Lives and the Struggle for the Soul of an American City

by Luke Bergmann

"[Bergmann] chronicles the drug trading, the risks and rewards, and the demarcations between the city and suburbs even as he witnessed suburbanites come into the city to buy drugs."---Booklist

"Not just illustrative and emotive, this pummeling, immersive social text is grounded in street-level reportage and seeded with wisdom."---Kirkus Reviews

"In prose that is equally eloquent and enlightening, Luke Bergmann brings to the surface the lives of two young men living in a place that is regarded by too many people as a forgotten city."--- Alford A. Young, Jr., Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Associate Professor, Sociology and Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan

"Luke Bergmann sometimes risks life and limb to bring us firsthand the lives of young people who mainstream media and academic research have ignored---except for the occasional crime story or impersonal policy brief. Getting Ghost is a journey worth taking . . . It sets a new standard for documentary reportage."--- Sudhir Venkatesh, author of Gang Leader for a Day and Off the Books

"Postapocalyptic" Detroit---infamous for its abandoned buildings, empty lots, and blighted streets---may be the only American city to have earned such an epithet. As a teenager who frequently visited Detroit with his father, Luke Bergmann saw the devastation caused by the collapse of the automobile industry. Years later, he returned to the city as an anthropologist to study the incarceration of inner-city youth, and his research connected him with two teenaged drug dealers, Dude Freeman and Rodney Phelps. For nearly three years Bergmann lived on the city's West Side, hanging out with Dude and Rodney, driving around, hearing their stories and dreams, and witnessing the intricacies of Detroit's urban drug trade. Bergmann is soon more than an observer, as he intervenes with Dude's probation officer when he misses a hearing and becomes Rodney's only contact when he flees the city to escape criminal charges. Through it all, he strives to understand their lives, their families, and the neighborhoods they call home.

In an effort to break through the conventional wisdom about who sells drugs and why, Bergmann chronicles the unsettling alchemy of choice, force of habit, structural inequality, and political neglect that combine to restrict the horizons of too many young people in America's cities. As Rodney and Dude spin through the revolving door of juvenile detention, "getting ghost" becomes a rich metaphor---for leaving a scene; for quitting the trade; and, ultimately, for mortality. With stunning insight, courage, and even humor, Getting Ghost illuminates complex inner lives that are too often diminished by empty stereotypes as it reveals the common yearnings in all of our American dreams.

Luke Bergmann is a research director at the Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion and an adjunct faculty associate at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Cover photo © Simon Wheatley, Magnum Photos

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Cities, School, History

334 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 4, 2009

Reviews

[Reggie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a bit disappointing. Having picked this book up after listening to an interview with the author on NPR, I really expected more.

I am not sure why, but lately I find the life cycle of major urban areas to be an interesting topic. Detroit arguably provides the most fertile ground for a case study (albeit one that is still in process) on the topic. At the outset, this book does provide some insight and historical context on this topic, but that story quickly gives way to fairly disjointed and unequally developed stories about the incarceration of African American juveniles and the Detroit drug trade at its lowest levels. In my opinion--and even though all three phenomenon are undoubtedly and inextricably linked--Bergmann never really does enough to pull all three stories together. In short, Bergmann tries to accomplish too much and all three stories suffer as a result.

My other big criticism of this book is the fact that I was never quite sure if this was intended to be a doctoral dissertation or a biographical/historical narrative. I am not a sociologist, a historian, or a reporter, but in my opinion the book suffers greatly from Bergmann's apparent attempt to do both. It doesn't help when Bergmann uses very narrow anecdotal evidence in support of his primary thesis that the relationships between the community, legitimate small businesses (almost none of which are owned by African Americans), and the illicit drug trade are both "resistive and reconciliatory." Things get even dicier when Bergmann includes a simile invoking Lewis Carroll's looking glass.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

10 years on, and as I think about this book, I wonder how the stories have changed. My perception of the city has certainly changed in that decade, but I know that my experience is privileged. Now, this book might feel "historical." If things haven't changed for these people, that would be very scary. Here's what I wrote back then:

https://annarborobserver.com/articles...

[Alyah Moscoso · Rating 3 out of 5]

very boring and slow paced

[Sheldon Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good read I couldn’t really lock in because I read this for a paper that was due very close to when I actually started reading😭 some grace please.

[Persephone Abbott · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Getting Ghost" Poetic title. Romantic title. And then a dull read through the lives of many unfortunately largely inarticulate citizens living through high stress traumas on a daily basis. I'd wish the Americans living in dire conditions in Detroit had the opportunity to escape the tragedy that surrounds them, and I'd prefer to read a sociological work on positive programs on the rise, people succeeding and people being safe from harm. In fact I'd prefer to read a poetic piece of fiction about this tragedy, and this is what bothers me when I hold "Getting Ghost" in my hand. This is not a novel, it's a attempt at a depiction of real life and it's a damn sad read. I'm not happy I can glimpse absolute bottom and then go back to my cosy life. Who else is going to read this? How many African American citizens (of all classes) want to know the low down on Detroit life? I hardly think that this is a large part of the readership of this work. So why? Why even write it then? To titillate better off American citizens, let them speculate on the underworld where people are homeless, isolated, uneducated, high, and lost, as part of an unhappy hip social document that can't rap and aims to be show responsible manners? This book is dead irritating.

[Walter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A disturbingly moving portrait of the alternate universe that is the urban wasteland of contemporary inner-city Detroit. This story is troubling on so many levels mainly because it is well told by its author. For example, it is a tad repetitive and boring at points, not because of the writing, but because the lives of its protagonists - circumscribed as they are by their nihilistic environments - are repetitive and boring. In demonstrating this, the author manages to engender empathy for two protagonists who are, when evaluated at arm's length, basically sociopaths. Further, when it ended, I was happy to be able to return to my world and more appreciative of it because of the harrowing journey that I had just taken in this book. It's a hard read, but a good one ... and a must read for anyone seriously interested in the pathology of modern cities and their residents, urban poverty, etc.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had trouble rating this book. The narratives are engrossing and thought provoking. The author's interludes of anthropological analysis were occasionally interesting but mostly annoying, breaking the sense of intimacy you began to feel with the people he was following and their stories.

The author's voice is inconsistent - he parenthetically explains that Albania is a country in eastern Europe in a book that frequently refers to decerteauian walks - what audience can follow the latter that is unfamiliar with the former? He tries to maintain objectivity with regards to his subjects, but provides biased commentary on their circumstances... I tended to agree with the commentary, but it felt out of place.

Also, I'm not sure he accomplishes what he set forth as his goal in the introduction... which is not to say I didn't enjoy what the book did accomplish.

For all its flaws, I've never wanted so badly to meet the author of a book, learn what material didn't make it.

[Mjackman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sociological and anthropological types like Luke Bergmann go where journalists don't, ask what journalists can't and listen where most journalists would put their pen away. That's what makes this book so interesting and personal, as Bergmann gets up close and personal, getting to know the drug dealers he writes about. He intertwines their family sagas with the history of Detroit -- something Thomas Sugrue, frankly, does much better. But Bergmann also has a novelist's ear for dialogue, which makes this book that much more compelling. A nonfiction book by a researcher that should probably be read by any writer embarking on a novel about drug dealing in Detroit? Maybe. But it's also a compelling story all its own.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I heard Mr. Bergmann interviewed on the Leonard Lopate show and decided to read his book. It reminded me a bit of the Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx. I liked Mr. Bergmann's book, particularly the sections in which he spoke directly of the Rodney's and Dude's lives and his interactions with them. Perhaps this is because I love memoir. The more historical sections were also interesting, in which the author set the stage and established a context for Detroit's decay. I liked least the theory-laden sections, because I felt that I was reading someone's dissertation, which, in a way, I probably was.

[Don Healy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is well written both as a scholarly anthropological-sociological study of the street drug culture in Detroit and a compassionate story about the young men involved in it, particularly two who befrinded the author. This book provides an unsentimental and unpatronizing glimpse into not just what's happening in Detroit, but also into the alternative universe that's expanding throughout the U.S.

[Michele · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting book about Detroit and the social structure of the city.