Showing results by narrator "D. Watkins" in All Categories

The critically lauded author of The Beast Side and The Cook Up returns with an existential look at life in low-income Black communities, while also offering a new framework for how we can improve the conversations occurring about them.

At nine years old, D. Watkins has three concerns in life: picking his dad’s Lotto numbers, keeping his Nikes free of creases, and being a man. Directly in his periphery is east Baltimore, a poverty-stricken city battling the height of the crack epidemic just hours from the nation’s capital. For 30 years, Watkins is forced to safeguard every moment of joy he experiences or risk losing himself entirely. Now, for the first time, Watkins harnesses these moments to tell the story of how he matured into the D. Watkins we know today.

The smartest kid on his block in East Baltimore, D. was certain he would escape the life of drugs, decadence, and violence that had surrounded him since birth. But when his brother, Devin, is shot - only days after D. receives notice that he's been accepted into Georgetown University - the plans for his life are exploded, and he takes up the mantle of his brother's crack empire. D. succeeds in cultivating the family business, but when he meets a woman unlike any he's known before, his priorities are once more put into question.