The Tomorrow Game: Rival Teenagers, Their Race for a Gun, and a Community United to Save Them

by Sudhir Venkatesh

A New York Times bestselling author’s gripping account of a Chicago community coming together to save a group of teenagers from gun violence.

In the tradition of works like Random Family and Behind the Beautiful Forevers , Sudhir Venkatesh’s The Tomorrow Game is a deeply reported chronicle of families surviving in a Southside Chicago community.

At the heart of the story are two Marshall Mariot, an introverted video gamer and bike rider, and Frankie Paul, who leaves foster care to direct his cousin’s drug business while he’s in prison. Frankie devises a plan to attack Marshall and his friends—it is his best chance to showcase his toughness and win respect for his crew. Catching wind of the plan, Marshall and his friends decide they must preemptively go after Frankie’s crew to defend their honor. The pressure mounts as both groups of teens race to find a gun and strike first. All the while, the community at large—a cast that includes the teens’ families, black market gun dealers, local pastors, a bodega owner and a veteran beat cop—try their best to defuse the conflict and keep the kids alive.

Based on Venkatesh’s three decades of immersion in Chicago’s Southside, and as propulsive as a novel, The Tomorrow Game is a nuanced, timely look at the toll that poverty and gun violence take on families and their communities.

Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime

304 pages, Hardcover

Published June 28, 2022

About the author

Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh is William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology, and the Committee on Global Thought, at Columbia University in the City of New York.

His most recent book is Gang Leader for a Day (Penguin Press), which received a Best Book award from The Economist, and is currently being translated into Chinese, Korean, Japanese, German, Italian, Polish, French and Portuguese. His previous work, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor (Harvard University Press, 2006) about illegal economies in Chicago, received a Best Book Award from Slate.com (2006) as well as the C. Wright Mills Award (2007). His first book, American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto (2000) explored life in Chicago public housing.

Venkatesh’ editorial writings have appeared in The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post. He writes for Slate.com, and his stories have appeared in This American Life, WIRED, and on National Public Radio. His next book, under contract with Penguin Press, will focus on the role of black market economies—from sex work and drug trafficking to day care and entertainment—in the revitalization of New York since 1999.

Venkatesh is completing an ethnographic study of policing in the Department of Justice, where he served as a Senior Research Advisor from 2010-2011.

Venkatesh’s first documentary film, Dislocation, followed families as they relocated from condemned public housing developments. The documentary aired on PBS in 2005. He directed and produced a three-part award winning documentary on the history of public housing for public radio. And, he recently completed At the Top of My Voice, a documentary film on a scholar and artist who return to the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia to promote democracy and safeguard human rights.

Venkatesh received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. He was a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University from 1996-1999, and an NSF CAREER award recipient in 2000. He holds a visiting appointment in Columbia University’s Law School and he is a voting member of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies.

Reviews

[Joe Rice · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nauseatingly true story that reads like watching a movie - a really fucking good movie. Based on the sociological research of the scholar turned author, this riveting piece of narrative non-fiction comes at the perfect time, as ground-level movements of violence interruption and restorative justice take hold in the Chicago communities that need them the most. At no time does this story seem like a disingenuous ethnography, for it is far too ingratiated in everyday realities and the wide array of relatable characters, all of whom are introduced lovingly and under the widest possible lens. My urgent advice: take a look for yourself.

[Ann Herrold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grateful for a perspective that otherwise is dramatized in movies. This humanized a very hard topic.

[Hilmg · Rating 2 out of 5]

The publishers call this book a deeply reported chronicle, and it is in a few ways. I trust the author’s diligence to events & am not questioning his care for the community he studies. I have not read his other works, but as a stand alone book, this one leaves me so unsettled. All of the characters are people. To me, in 2022, we know our society’s systems are huge actors in peoples’ lives, but they are largely invisible and thus uncriticized in Tomorrow Game. This absence makes this book closer to trauma p*rn than sociology imo. Luck is more prevalent in the book than bootstraps meritocracy, and that is a bit redemptive. I will be honest tho that I was hoping to read more about community level organizing rather than individual family members working with each other and/or a good apple cop working with info shared by community members. I’ve learned so much from Chicago based author Mariame Kaba about how community-wide mutual care gets underneath & works to solve issues in real ways, and I’ll look for more stories like that. We already know the crises described here exist.

[Tori · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was obviously written by an non-native of Chicago, let along Chicago’s south side. Unless you want pre-existing biases to be confirmed, I would recommend reading any other book by authors from the South Side before this one. Professor Sudhir Venkatesh writes a story that feels factual in many of the broad strokes and character details. However, there are too many instances when his pity and (unconscious?) disdain of the community (and NOT the political and historical reality) shine through, meaning that he fails to humanize his subjects. Instead of feeling genuine love for the community, it reads as a detached-yet-judgmental listing of “this happened and then that did”.

Paired with the fact that I listened to the audiobook, whose reading was a dry, rhythmless slog to get through (Soneela Nankani is also a non-Chicago native), I never felt connected to these supposed characters and this real place filled with living, breathing humans.

It is technically a story, so one star. Another due to the author’s note; maybe I wouldn’t have noticed and been irked by the above thoughts the entire time if I had a different (or no) narrator.

[Katie Bruell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was probably a 3.5 for me. I'm not sure how I felt about the fictionalization of the events, and about the author making money from this book on the back of others' suffering. But it was good to see how complicated problems and solutions can be.

[Laura Hammdorff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great one from SV. Not only does my connection to Chicago and to the affected populations deepen the sentiment of his writing for me, but I love SVs approach to ethnography and applied sociology. He represents a path I wish I had taken.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written like engaging fiction, an interesting new style for Venkatesh, but couldn't put it down. The story of a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago trying to keep two kids from shooting each other.

[David R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Argues that gun violence is a result of socio-economic pathologies. Not an academic read, it is presented as a story but one based on true events given the author’s ethnographer background. Like his previous work, focused on Chicago’s South Side.

[Percy · Rating 3 out of 5]

My review of this book will be in an upcoming issue of Booklist Magazine.

[John McCaffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://www.easthamptonstar.com/books...

[Mark Rimelspach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many people question how gun violence continues in poor urban areas and this book shows how youth get pulled into it even when they are not trying to. A very enlightening read.

[Cook Memorial Public Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 2022 staff favorite recommended by Rob. Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore...

[University of Chicago Magazine]

Sudhir Venkatesh, AM’92, PhD’97
Author

From our pages, Winter/23: Columbia University sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh chronicles how members of a South Side Chicago community united to protect a group of teenagers from gun violence. The true story follows young people from rival crews who reach for guns as a conflict escalates. Venkatesh gives voice to the teens and other players—parents, gun dealers, clergy, and police—to reveal intersections between poverty and gun violence and how both upend lives and communities.

https://mag.uchicago.edu/university-n...

[Andrew Katsiris · Rating 5 out of 5]

While this reads like Oscar-worthy cinema, the real heartbreak lies in the fact that real people, in a real city facing real problems, are the main characters on these pages. In a country so desensitized to violence, the Tomorrow Game puts a microscope to a Chicago neighborhood that would have otherwise never be seen outside of distasteful headlines.

[Paige · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sudhir Venkatesh is my favorite sociologist, and as I read his works, I enjoy watching his growth as a professional. He makes you think critically about the systems that influence people's lives. Although this book wasn't what I expected it to be, I couldn't put it down.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a narrative about true events. Reads like fiction...if only it WAS fiction.