D. Watkins is the New York Times bestselling author of four books. He is Editor-at-Large for Salon. His work has been published in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and other publications. Watkins is a writer for the HBO series We Own This City. He is a college lecturer at the University of Baltimore and is the recipient of numerous literary awards. He is lives in Baltimore, MD with his wife and daughter. Watkins’s unique style has repeatedly been praised by literary giants, including Ibram X. Kendi, Jason Reynolds, Nikki Giovanni, Darnell L. Moore, Toure, David Simon (The Wire), Sarah Hepola, Jada Pinkett Smith, April Ryan, Wes Moore, Chuck Todd (NBC), DeRay McKesson,
and others.
About Black Boy Smile: A Memoir in Moments
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 Boy Smile is the story of a Black boy who healed.
