Making a Metaphor out of Nothing
In a discussion with Lester, a get-out-the-vote activist, the man mentions that he also has another job: gang leaders pay for the privilege of having him teach other members a little self-control and regulation of temperament. In creating a metaphor, Lester also coins a new word:
“Disciplination is an art form”
Projects, as Seen from the Outside
The author begins by describing his first visit to the dangerous and forbidding world of Oakland projects in language rich with metaphorical imagery. Fire soot makes windows look like tombstones. Disembodied shrieks from the floors above makes the lower floors feel like quivering catacomb. Most poetic of all, however, is the author’s description of what these low-cost housing developments for low-wage (or no-wage) workers from the outside looking in:
“housing projects, at least from the outside, seemed to be a study in joyless monotony, the buildings clustered tightly together but set apart from the rest of the city, as if they were toxic.”
Projects, as Seen from the Inside
The Johnson brothers—Kris and Michael—once entertained dreams of professional sports and music, respectively, as a ticket out of the projects. Injury, lack of opportunity, drugs, crime and jail destroyed those dreams and now they look at the projects in which they appear to be trapped quite differently from those looking in:
“For them, and other underemployed men like them, the projects were a refuge: a familiar home turf with at least a few slivers of opportunity.”
That Feeling of Isolation and Superiority
This book grew out of the author’s academic pursuits in the discipline of sociology. Unlike others pursuing the same goal, however, the author dove head first into the real world of the sociological factors he was studying. The juxtaposition with the alienated, scholarly research being done by others puts the author in a familiar metaphorical mood to describe the sensation of being alone among others who didn’t get it simply because they couldn’t get it under the conditions they were applying:
“I felt as though the other scholars were living in a bubble”
"Raw Product"
The book is educational in many ways; one of the most surprising, perhaps, existing in the way it provides some of the inside skinny of underworld life of drugs and crimes which dominates everyday life. Under certain circumstances, for example, should you find yourself among people you do not know too well who are having a lively discussion about something they obliquely refer to only as “raw product” then you might want to beat hasty retreat. “Raw product” is a metaphorical moniker for powdered cocaine about to be cooked into a more refined version of the drug.
