A New York Times Best Seller! Baltimore, one of our country's
quintessential urban war zones, is brought powerfully to life by
literary talent, D. Watkins
To many, the past 8 years under President Obama were meant to usher in a
new post-racial American political era, dissolving the divisions of the
past. However, when seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by a
wannabe cop in Florida; and then Ferguson, Missouri, happened; and then
South Carolina hit the headlines; and then Baltimore blew up, it was
hard to find any evidence of a new post-racial order.
Suddenly the entire country seemed to be awakened to a stark fact:
African American men are in danger in America. This has only become
clearer as groups like Black Lives Matter continue to draw attention to
this reality daily not only online but also in the streets of our
nation's embattled cities.
D. Watkins. fought his way up on the eastside (the "beastside") of
Baltimore, Maryland--or "Bodymore, Murderland," as his friends call it.
He writes openly and unapologetically about what it took to survive life
on the streets while the casualties piled up around him, including his
own brother. Watkins pushed drugs to pay his way through school, staying
one step ahead of murderous business rivals and equally predatory
lawmen. When black residents of Baltimore finally decided they had had
enough--after the brutal killing of twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray
while in police custody--Watkins was on the streets as the city erupted.
He writes about his bleeding city with the razor-sharp insights of
someone who bleeds along with it. Here are true dispatches from the
other side of America.
In this new paperback edition, the author has also added new material in
a section title "Bonus Tracks", responding to the rising tide of racial
resentment and hate embodied by political figures like Donald Trump and
Ted Cruz as well as the heartbreaking killings of Alton Sterling and
Philando Castile, and the impact this has had on issues of race in
America. This book is essential reading for anyone trying to make sense
of the chaos of our current political moment.
