It’s not often that an academic finds their area of expertise bound up inextricably with their personal life, affecting the people they love. But for Princeton University anthropology professor Laurence Ralph, a noted expert on the conditions and systems that perpetuate gangs and youth violence in the U.S., a phone call in the middle of the night in September 2019 did just that.
In his book SITO: An American Teenager and the City That Failed Him (Grand Central Publishing; on sale February 20, 2024; hardcover; $30.00), Ralph writes about the short life and tragic death of his wife’s 19-year-old family member, Luis Alberto Quiñonez, Read more…
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Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander John Burge. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. The Torture Letters chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Read more…
Every morning Chicagoans wake up to the same stark headlines that read like some macabre score: “13 shot, 4 dead overnight across the city,” and nearly every morning the same elision occurs: 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. Read more…
Laurence Ralph is a professor of anthropology at Princeton University. He is the author of a number of journal articles as well as the award-winning book Renegade Dreams: Living with Injury in Gangland Chicago, published by the University of Chicago Press. Laurence writes on a variety of topics, some of which include: police violence, gangs, disability, medicine, gender, race, popular culture and hip hop. Read more…
@SimonBalto @prisonculture When we had our event a couple years ago, I liked what you said about putting your hope in social movements and activist communities…rather than hoping institutions will recognize their mistakes & transform themselves.