by D. Watkins
For the first time in my life I realized how important reading really was. I harassed the professor for more titles after class. She introduced me to writers like Langston Hughes who ended up being my favorite poet and thinkers like Michael Eric Dyson, who wrote a book about 2Pac—2Pac! I didn’t even know you could write a book about 2Pac! But Sister Souljah’s The Coldest Winter Ever was the book that hooked me on reading. I read it in a day and then read it again. The story hit really close to home, giving me perspectives of drug culture I never thought about while being deep in it. I needed more.
After reading everything Souljah wrote, I started devouring novels, articles, and everything else. You couldn’t find me without a book. My mind opened all the way up and I filled it with more information and new ideas. I gained a better understanding of music and culture in general. Nas’s stories made more sense, Jay Z complex rhymes became more clear and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was making decisions based on my own thoughts. Critical thinking became my obtainable super power. As a result I began to question everything—why did the government dismantle the Black Panthers but allow the KKK to function? The Black Panthers built while the Klan destroyed. Why does America praise Joe Kennedy and demonize Big Meech? They both made fortunes selling illegal drugs. The government still makes a fortune off of selling drugs. Why were the dudes involved in the Rodney King uprise called rioters but the people responsible for the Boston Tea party got to be revolutionaries? They both looted and destroyed for freedom. Why? I continued to absorb, question, and then question my questions.
I understood why my friends and I hated reading growing up. As a kid, I was given books about slaves who followed kids that painted fences by Mark Twain—not to take away from those books, but they didn’t speak to us. We spent summers ducking bullets, and riding dirt bikes, so the events that Twain spoke about felt flat to us.
Bip read and he was different—he was thinker. He analyzed things and that’s what reading has allowed me to do. Now I know why he cared about it so much. Way back, I spit a Douglass quote to my bro that went, “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” I didn’t really get it back then, but it is so clear now. Reading has freed me. I’m at home now.
A few books, along with my new passion for reading, helped all of my perspectives evolve and sent me on the path to purpose and an understanding of the power of education. I wanted to be able to do the same for other students, so I decided to become a teacher.
As a teacher I thought I could use my story as a way to get other kids like me—Dog Boy, Mac, Nick, and Hurk—to read. Education was working for me so I knew I could use it as tool to help somebody else, plus I could give back to the neighborhoods that my friends and I tore apart. All these college dudes rap about making it out the hood, but that’s not me. Running away from issues don’t solve them. Staying in East Baltimore as a teacher after I graduate could make a huge difference.
I shared my plan with some of the corny people I went to school with and they said, “Teachers don’t make money!” I ignored them, because I made tons of money in the streets and happiness didn’t come with it. But developing a better understanding of who I am and where I came from meant the world to me and would make my brother proud.
And making my brother proud was all I wanted to do anyway.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is dedicated to you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
D. Watkins is a columnist for Salon. His work has been published in the New York Times, The 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, and has also been the recipient of numerous awards including Ford’s Men of Courage and a BME fellowship. He has lectured at countless universities, and events, and programs around the country.
Watkins has been featured as a guest and commentator on NBC’s Meet the Press, CNN’s The Erin Burnett Show, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show, Democracy Now, and NPR’s Monday Morning, among other shows.
Watkins is from and lives in East Baltimore. He is the author of The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America.
ALSO BY D. WATKINS
The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America
Reading Group Guide
THE COOK UP
1. If you were in D’s position and you opened that safe, what do you think you would have done?
2. At what point does The Cook Up read more like a novel than a memoir? How is D’s story a Hero’s Journey?
3. How would you characterize D’s choice to start cooking crack cocaine? Was it an act of veneration to try to be just like his big brother? Or by defying Bip’s wish for his brother to attend college, was becoming a drug dealer an assertion of D’s independence? Bip always hoped for more for D: Who in your life does that for you?
4. D begins The Cook Up with a college acceptance and ends it with a college attendance, but he lived a thousand lives in between. Consider the ways D’s values changed during his years away from higher education in terms of maturity, responsibility, and materialism. What if he had remained at Loyola University and never started dealing? What did he gain from dropping out of college?
5. Discuss the ways in which the realities of running a drug ring differed from your expectations of it. Were there any stereotypes you may have had that The Cook Up forced you to confront? If so, what were they?
6. D refers to himself as a “serial escapist.” Does this strike you as an apt characterization? What exactly is D escaping from, and does he ever succeed in outrunning it?
7. D refers to women like Miss Angie as “the most powerful people in the Black community,” in that she provides consistent support in a neighborhood of volatile change. In what ways does this definition upset the conventional understanding of power? By these standards, who is the most powerful person in your own life?
8. Why do you think D included Hope in his memoir? As a symbol? A warning? A turning point? Who was she to him? In their final interaction at the 7-Eleven, D and Hope fail to recognize each other. Put yourself in D’s shoes: Would you have acted differently?
9. D and his friends worshiped Jay Z; they even called their product “Rockafella” to pay homage to the rapper’s record label. What do you think it is about the musician that made him so iconic to this group? Who was that figure in your own life, growing up?
10. D says that as a child, he was given books such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that he and his friends couldn’t relate to. It wasn’t until he discovered Fire in a Canebrake in college that D finally enjoyed reading. What books do you think should be taught in schools? Is there such a thing as a universally relatable book?
11. Discuss D’s assertion that reading is the avenue to freedom, to understanding others and ourselves. When does reading make us feel closer to worlds other than our own, and when does it make us more aware of our individuality? Is one result more freeing than another? What freedoms has The Cook Up provided you?
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Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
WELCOME
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
THE BEAST SIDE OF BALTIMORE
LOOKING FOR BIP
MY BROTHER’S KEEPER
AFTERMATH
SHOOTERS
COPING TACTICS
A DIFFERENT WORLD
THAT RED SAFE
MY TRUST FUND
HOPE
COOK UP
ROCKAFELLA
PROTECTOR
ASHLAND AND MADEIRA
MY
BLOCK
A DRUG CREW
TONE, DOG BOY, AND US
CASHLAND AND MADEIRA
IKE GUY
THE BEAST
COMING TO AMERICA
VIRGIN GANGSTERS
MY FIRST BENZ
REX RULES
DINNER AT ANGIE’S
KNOCK ’EM DOWNS
STEEL SHARPENS STEEL
SWEET SONI
LITTLE DEBBIES AND AUTOMATIC WEAPONS
DOG STORE
DATE ANXIETY
DINNER FOR REAL
WHAT THE FUCK IS RENAL DIALYSIS
THE GREEN HOUSE
SMACK LESSONS FOR TROY
SHOOTOUTS
IN A TIME OF WAR
BYE, DEE
MY RELIGION
SOME NEW SHIT WILL FIX IT
4.0?
SHOULD’VE
OLD HEAD SAID
STRAIGHT TO VOICE MAIL
MURDER TEAM
HOT BOY TROY
NICK GOT THE BLOCK
MADEIRA STREET
TYLER REUNION
DEE VERSUS TYLER
TYLER’S BLOCK
BIRTHDAY BRAWL
THE OTHER BALTIMORE
1046 WEST LOMBARD
NO DOC ZONE
MURDERLAND
CODED
THE NEW OWNER
HEALTH CARE
240 WILSON STREET
THE SIGNS
THE BUSINESS PLAN
COP UP
BOLTON BUBBLE
REMEMBER UNCLE GEE
I’M IN THE NBA
I DON’T WANNA BE IN THE NBA ANYMORE
NICK
REBIRTH
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY D. WATKINS
READING GROUP GUIDE
THE COOK UP
NEWSLETTERS
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
Some names, relationships, and locations were changed to protect the innocent and the guilty.
Copyright © 2016 by Dwight Watkins
Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Reading Group Guide copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Cover design by Post Typography
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: May 2016
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ISBN 978-1-4555-8864-0
E3–20160321–JV–PC
