The Beast Side Living (and Dying) While Black in America by D. Watkins

About the Book:
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 twenty-five-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.