D. Watkins has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is We Speak for Ourselves.
We Speak for Ourselves
Summary
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. While author D. Watkins is pleased about the number of books exploring issues of race that are being published, there’s one crucial aspect of contemporary Black life that doesn’t get enough attention: the hood. The Baltimore native knows firsthand what it means to live in poverty, where violence and drugs are inescapable. As he sees it, the perspective of people who live in poor Black communities is largely absent from the work of many of the top intellectuals who speak and write about race. Now, D. Watkins is here to tell his truth. Built upon Watkins's own experiences, We Speak for Ourselves eases us into the bigger conversation about race and the various issues affecting poor Black neighborhoods in America. Unapologetic and eye-opening, We Speak for Ourselves identifies and addresses a range of issues affecting these low-income communities - such as the trouble with misrepresentation and why we need more than one Black voice - and sheds light on the harsh realities of daily life. Additionally, Watkins examines various crucial activist movements, including the civil rights movement, and asks what it means to be a model activist in today’s world. Through the personal retelling of his journey, Watkins aims to illuminate the lessons he’s learned navigating through two very distinct worlds - the hood and the elite sanctums of the prominent Black thinkers and public figures - in hopes of providing actionable solutions.
©2019 D. Watkins (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
The Cook Up
Summary
Reminiscent of the classic Random Family and The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace but told by the man who lived it, The Cook Up is a riveting look inside the Baltimore drug trade portrayed in The Wire and an incredible story of redemption. 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. Equally terrifying and hilarious, inspiring and heartbreaking, D.'s story offers a rare glimpse into the mentality of a person who has escaped many hells.
©2016 D. Watkins (P)2016 Hachette Audio
The Beast Side
Summary
To many in the age of Obama, America had succeeded in "going beyond race", putting the divisions of the past behind us. And then 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by a wannabe cop in Florida; and then 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and then Baltimore blew up; and then gunfire shattered a prayer meeting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Suddenly the entire country awakened to a stark fact: African Americans - particularly young black men - are an endangered species. Now the country's urban war zone is brought powerfully to life by a rising young literary talent, D. Watkins. The author fought his way up on the east side (the "beast side") of Baltimore, Maryland - or "Bodymore, Murderland" as his friends call it - surviving murderous business rivals in the drug trade and equally predatory lawmen. Throughout it all, he pursued his education, earning a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University, while staying rooted in his community. When black residents of Baltimore finally decided they had had enough - after the brutal killing of 25-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody - Watkins was on the streets when the city erupted. He writes about his bleeding hometown with the razor-sharp insights of someone who bleeds along with it. Here are true dispatches from the other side of America.
©2015 D. Watkins (P)2015 Audible, Inc.