49 pages 1 hour read

Philippe Bourgois

In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1995

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Important Quotes

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“Before I even was able to establish my first relationship with a crack dealer I had to confront the overwhelming reality of racial and class-based apartheid in America.” 


(Chapter 1 , Page 29)

Bourgois’s first challenge was the fact that he was white and middle class, traits that automatically coded him as different than his Puerto Rican subjects.

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“Violence cannot be reduced to its statistical expression.” 


(Chapter 1 , Page 35)

Bourgois repeatedly states that even though East Harlem is rife with violence, looking solely at numbers or statistics doesn’t paint a comprehensive picture of society’s problems.

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“The intimate details of the lives of the crack dealers and their families revealed in this book cannot be understood in a historical vacuum


(Chapter 2, Page 48)

The plight of the author’s subjects shouldn’t be viewed without understanding the history that their problems have been born from.