Black Boy Smile: A Memoir in Moments
Compare price from $0.00 ~ $27.13ADVERTISEMENT
Product Details
This is no doubt an origin story for the ages. --Jason Reynolds New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist 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. Watkins like many boys around him is thrust out of childhood and into a world where manhood means surviving by slinging crack on street corners and finding oneself on the right side of pistols. For thirty 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--beloved author college professor editor-at-large of Salon.com and devoted husband and father. Black Boy Smile lays bare Watkins s relationship with his father and his brotherhood with the boys around him. He shares candid recollections of early assaults on his body and mind and reveals how he coped using stoic silence disguised as manhood. His harrowing pursuit of redemption written in his signature street style pinpoints how generational hardship left raw and unnurtured breeds toxic masculinity. Watkins discovers a love for books is admitted to two graduate programs meets with his future wife an attorney--and finds true freedom in fatherhood. Equally moving and liberating Black Boy Smile is D. Watkins s love letter to Black boys in concrete cities a daring testimony that brings to life the contradictions fears and hopes of boys hurdling headfirst into adulthood. Black Boy Smile is a story proving that when we acknowledge the fallacies of our past we can uncover the path toward self-discovery. Black Bo... view more