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

"[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

a Window Into The Lives Of Two Young Urban Drug Dealers

kirkus Reviews

white Grad Student Inserts Himself Into The Lives Of At-risk Black Youth In A Part Of Detroit More Postapocalyptic Than Most. It's One Thing For Social Scientists To Parachute Into Bombed-out Urban Districts And Write Movingly Of The Ills They Discover, But Quite Another For Bergmann To Note About One Of His Adolescent Subjects That The Boy Was Locked Up For Possibly Shooting Someone On A Corner Not Far From Where I Lived. It's This Personal Engagement That Gives Such Resonance To His Account Of Several Years Spent Monitoring The Lives Of Two Teenage Drug Dealers. Bergmann Met Dude Freeman And Rodney Phelps In 2000 At A Detroit Juvenile Detention Facility Where He Had An Unpaid Internship [that] Allowed Me Virtually Free Movement Through The Highly Restricted Institution. Though He Had Little In Common With These Kids, He Easily Ingratiated Himself And Became Firmly Implanted In Their Chaotic Lives, Thanks To A Disarming Sincerity That Is Among The Text's Most Winning Traits. Bergmann Reports On A Fluid World, With A Sprawl Of Poor Youth Floating In And Out Of The Barely Structured Drug Trade Omnipresent In Their Napalmed Neighborhoods; Getting Ghost Is The Evocative Detroit Slang For Their Elusive Movements. Dude Is A Lesser Figure Here, Skipping Out On His Family And Probation Officer Not Long After Being Released From Detention. Rodney, The Kind Of Low-achieving Charmer Social Workers Gravitate Toward, Does A Good Job Of Seducing The Mostly Clear-eyed Bergmann. By The End, With Rodney Facing A Murder Charge, The Author Seems Oblivious To The Fact That His Subject Is Most Likely A Cold Killer. Bergmann Backdrops His Personal Narrative With Evocative Pocket Histories Of Detroit'surban Decline And The Racial Texture Of Its Modern Social Fabric-the Universally Arab And Albanian Shop Owners, The Faraway White Suburbs, The Tension Between Poor And Middle-class Blacks. Not Just Illustrative And Emotive, This Pummeling, Immersive Social Text Is Grounded In Street-level Reportage And Seeded With Wisdom.

When doing research inside Detroit's downtown juvenile detention facility, Luke Bergmann befriended Dude Freeman and Rodney Phelps--both petty drug dealers facing profoundly uncertain futures, living difficult lives in which chaos is always around the corner. Bergmann would end up living three years among the abandoned houses and desolate vacant lots of one of Detroit's most notorious neighborhoods. In telling their stories and those of their families, Bergmann brilliantly explores the complex contradictions of Detroit's status as a "chocolate city," as proudly and uniquely claimed by its predominantly black residents, where African Americans firmly hold municipal power but also suffer the legacy of lost manufacturing jobs and white flight. For young men like Dude and Rodney who strive to find ways toward "legal" jobs and straight lives, "getting ghost" is a rich metaphor--for leaving a scene, for quitting the trade, and for their own mortality.--From publisher description An intimate and revealing look at the lives of two young black drug dealers in Detroit, with bracing and orginal analysis of the forces that shape their world.