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The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir, by D. Watkins
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New York Times Bestseller New York Times Editors' ChoiceO Magazine Best Summer BookBaltimore City Paper Best Memoir, 2016
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 mantel 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.
- Sales Rank: #485388 in Books
- Brand: Grand Central Publishing
- Published on: 2016-05-03
- Released on: 2016-05-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.63" h x 1.00" w x 6.00" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 272 pages
Features
Review
"D. Watkins is beautifully unusual. Having lived the horrors within the heart of our inner city Baltimore first-hand and having acquired the heights of collegiate achievement, D. Watkins is uniquely equipped to communicate our political and social challenges of urban America not only through the lens of academia but through empirical knowledge as well. He is the voice of the future seamlessly blending the wisdom of the streets and intellectual prowess in a way I have never experienced before."―Jada Pinkett Smith
"The East Baltimore of D. Watkins is distant from where I live by twenty-five, maybe thirty blocks. It might as well be a country other than my own. This is the United State we abandoned and then forgot, the margins of a thriving, information-age America where mass labor is no longer essential, where the factories and warehouses and piers are empty or gone, and where Johns Hopkins University is the second largest employer -next to the illegal drug trade. And the corners are always hiring. That Watkins threaded his way from those corners to the page is rare enough. That he is so committed to pulling this world through with him-enough of it to at least rub our noses in it and make us acknowledge some collective responsibility--is precious. These are angry pages."―David Simon, author of The Corner and creator, HBO's The Wire
"THE COOK UP delivers a raw and honest account of life in East Baltimore and a narrative of incredible strength and redemption. D. Watkins is truly an artist."―King Mez, hip-hop artist
"D. Watkins is his generation's David Simon. Another brilliant storyteller who takes you into the heart of East Baltimore and never flinches as he shows you the real."―Touré, author of Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now
"Amazing storytelling that brings us deep into the reality of East Baltimore. A moving and important piece of contemporary memoir."―Wes Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The Work and The Other Wes Moore
"THE COOK UP is an important story for both black and white America, as well as this country's political leadership, to read, if we're truly going to tackle the challenges that are facing our communities all across the country."―Chuck Todd, correspondent on NBC's Meet the Press
"THE COOK UP is classic and cinematic, told with an observational acuity that hits you where it hurts."―Frannie Kelley, host of NPR's Microphone Check
"THE COOK UP is an unflinching, raw, coming-of-age account of the personal impact of the drug trade. Simply a must-read."―DeRay Mckesson, activist and organizer
"D. Watkins' THE COOK UP is a bold, necessary dispatch from the streets, where a kid born into a hustler's life must fight for survival-and his soul. Watkins may have been a drug dealer, but he was caught up in his own addictions: To rampant consumerism, the numbness of Percocets, and a fantasy of the high-flying American dream. His book shows the astonishing evolution of a man who traded cheap fixes for the mighty power of the written word."―Sarah Hepola, New York Times bestselling author of Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget
"Bleakly humorous, original prose, which pinballs between stoned, brand-focused, hip-hop excess and a more contemplative tone...Watkins provides a gritty, vivid first-person document of a desperate demographic."―Kirkus Reviews
"In the tradition of James Baldwin's "Letter From a Region in My Mind," THE COOK UP is a personal history that complicates racial stereotypes...Watkins knows his readers live in different Americas. THE COOK UP is their invitation to notice one another standing in the same line."―TheAtlantic.com
"Stunning."―Baltimore City Paper, Best Memoir 2016
About the Author
D. Watkins is a columnist for Salon. His work has been published in the New York Times, Guardian, Rolling Stone, and other publications. He holds a master's in Education from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Baltimore. He is a college professor at the University of Baltimore and founder of the BMORE Writers Project. Watkins has been the recipient of numerous awards including Ford's Men of Courage and a BME Fellowship. Watkins is from and lives in East Baltimore. He is the author of The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Powerful, but Confusing
By Patrick Cleary
Watkins' story is a powerful one, but "The Cook Up" can be a confusing read. I never felt sure of how much time had passed from one event to another, and the characters all rolled in and out of the narrative in such a way that it was difficult to keep track of who was who. I also got the impression that, despite his claims to love all these people, the author looked down on them all for not being as smart as he is for only being a dealer and an addict for a shorter amount of time. It's a raw, powerful story that I'm still unsure of exactly what happened when.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
D. Cook's It Raw!
By Kevin11
In The Cook Up, we find D. Watkins at the center of the mass hysteria that is East Baltimore. Following news of his brother’s death just days after being accepted into Georgetown University, Watkins suddenly found himself in a position that his brother had fought extremely hard to keep him away from, the drug game.
Although Watkins wasn’t a dealer when his brother was alive, he certainly made a nice transition into the culture as he quickly became one of the elite hustlers known to Baltimore on Madeira Street and Ashland Avenue. With a crew that consisted of childhood friends and newly acquainted talent such as Uncle Gee, Hurk, Nick, Long Tooth and Dog Boy, Watkins’ wealth only increases as his crew began to cement their brand of “Rockafella” crack as the best dope that East Baltimore had to offer.
As a result, Beamers, Benz’s and lavish materialistic items become as standard for Watkins and his crew as a white man jogging in the suburbs on an early Saturday morning. It isn’t until Dee meets Soni, a girl around his age that is conscious, knowledgeable, and well educated that he contemplates life on the street for the first time in a while. While in conflict with this, Dee spends some time selling coke in safe communities with a former Loyola college buddy named Tyler and a friend named Troy who worked at a dialysis unit and craved the type of money Dee was making.
Overtime, Dee realizes that selling coke isn’t the answer as well and delves into real estate. From there, he invests and sells everything from bars, condos, and numbers from his own slot machines to sustain the way of life that he had been living on the streets. It isn’t until uncle Gee shoots Dog Boy that Dee realizes he needs to make a complete break from his friends once and for all. Quickly after, he renounces drug culture in its entirety and pyramids schemes and decides to enroll back into school. Once back in college, he enrolls at the University of Baltimore and finds a strong passion for reading. This connection leads Dee into the path of teaching and being an educator. Although many classmates discouraged him from the matter, he makes his point by saying that he doesn’t want to be another crab in the barrel bringing a brother down and that “I had made tons of money in the streets during my time as a drug dealer and it never brought me happiness”.
All this to show that by story’s end Watkins had found himself. Even from his time dealing crack and being an overseer to his operation, Dee had always been there to educate and guide his friends while rationalizing the means of what it meant to be a black man in urban America while staying alive long enough to tell the tale.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
A Smart, Harrowing Memoir of Drugs, Wealth, Poverty, and a Rigged Game
By M. Casarino
The Cook Up is, on one hand, a fast-moving memoir of a young man who managed to run a drug empire in East Baltimore and survive. As a look into a world few of us know, The Cook Up is riveting - Watkins provides not only a step-by-step look at how such operations are organized, but also how the political and economic system is so rigged that selling crack and junk on the streets is all but encouraged by everyone, from the junkies to the cops. It's so common and above-ground that as a child, Watkins assumed it was all legal.
But from the first page, Watkins gives us a sense of the price and danger of The Game. Because most people lose, emotional attachments leave many young men shattered - and numb. There are glorious highs, of course, and Watkins isn't afraid to use heightened language to describe the thrill of success, from the incredible profits to the clout that allowed him and his underage friends prime seats at the clubs. It's full of life and unforgettable characters, all sketched with just the right amount of detail. But danger is everywhere, from the stress of watching your back to shakedowns by crooked, abusive police to the paranoia that can turn childhood friends into rivals and enemies. Extreme violence is common, but, as Watkins relays it, always shocking and visceral. It's quite a trip, and Watkins uses sharp and smart writing to put us right in the center of it all. The Cook Up is as exciting, suspenseful, and morally ambivalent as a Richard Price novel - don't be surprised when it gets optioned for a feature film. It's that kind of read.
As an extension of The Beast Side, Watkins' outstanding collection of essays about life in Baltimore, The Cook Up furthers his ideas about drug culture in America. Without resorting to lecture, Watkins illustrates that there never really was a "War on Drugs," but a war on poor minorities; drugs are simply part of the ammunition. Watkins and his friends reason that they didn't create the demand for drugs - they're simply meeting demand with supply. But he need to get high as a temporary respite is simply the by-product of a class system designed to prevent anyone from actually escaping poverty. Even as a teenage slinger, Watkins cannot ignore the human toll of his line of work - while he tries to provide balance by being a positive presence in his neighborhood, employing junkies and giving away hundreds of thousands in clothing and merchandise, he knows that when he's gone, someone else will take his place, and the cycle of poverty, poor health, and violence will continue.
There's a lot more. Read The Cook Up. It's a quick read - mostly because you won't put it down until the last word - but it'll stay with you a long, long time.
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