Search
Cart 0

It appears that your cart is currently empty

Black Boy Smile: A Memoir in Moments

$27.00

“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 Boy Smile is the story of a Black boy who healed.

Vendor: Legacy Lit

Collections: Local Spotlight, Non-Fiction, Prose

Related product

Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World *signed*

Random House

Better Living Through Birdi...

$28.00

Central Park birder Christian Cooper takes us beyond the viral video that shocked a nation and into a world of avian adventures, global excursions, and the unexpected lessons you can learn from a life spent looking up at the birds Christian Cooper is a self-described Blerd (Black nerd), an a...

Quick view
Comic Book Story Of Beer Graphic Novel

TEN SPEED PRESS

Comic Book Story Of Beer Gr...

$18.99

The Comic Book Story of Beer traces beer's influence through world history as a liberating and emancipating force that improved the life of everyday people, beginning with early human's experiments with fermentation all the way up through the contemporary explosion of craft brewing. No book has e...

Quick view
"Extra Life" By Michael Owen

Michael Owen

"Extra Life" By Michael Owen

$200.00

Seventy-five works of art merge with a dozen chapters of prose, telling of a deep dive within.   “Extra Life” is an oversized book and an archival print, wrapped in a unique portfolio.   “Extra Life” was brought to fruition through a team of Baltimore creatives:Martin Studio Photography (imaging)...

Quick view
Gender Queer: A Memoir Deluxe Edition Hardcover

Oni Press

Gender Queer: A Memoir Delu...

$24.99

2020 ALA Alex Award Winner2020 Stonewall — Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor BookIn 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable wit...

Quick view
The Risk It Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation

St. Martin's Press

The Risk It Takes to Bloom:...

$29.00

A passionate, powerful memoir by a trailblazing Black transgender activist, tracing her life of transformation and her work towards collective liberation. In 2017, Raquel Willis took to the National Women’s March podium just after the presidential election of Donald Trump, primed to tell her stor...

Quick view
Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair

DK PUBLISHING CO

Safe and Sound: A Renter-Fr...

$24.99

Don't panic--Mercury Stardust, AKA The Trans Handy Ma'am is here to help!   For too many people, the simple act of contacting a plumber or repair person can feel like a game of chance. As a transwoman and a professional maintenance technician, Mercury Stardust has discovered (the hard way) that ...

Quick view