Cook Up

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.

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.

Definitely recommend the book! Purchasing it here saved me money and book was in really good condition.

I'd never heard of D. Watkins until listening to an interview with him on NPR. The interview didn't really cover his life in depth, but the host referenced this memoir and minutes later I downloaded it. "The Cook Up" is nothing short of one of the more brilliant memoirs I've read. The fact is there aren't a lot of great memoirs coming from someone like D., black male born in the inner city and their struggle to break free of the systemic and institutional factors that ultimately impact what happens to them during their life. The data is clear that race and economics do play a significant role in what happens to individuals and the odds of a young black male born in the inner city overcoming the institutional factors stacked against them is bleak. The path D. took to get where he is today is fascinating, but the best part of "The Cook Up" is the raw authenticity he brings to his story. D. is a really good writer but he doesn't polish this story up to glamorize the tough parts or paint an overly optimistic picture of the unfortunate reality that most in his situation will either be in prison or dead before they reach adulthood. We need more people like D. to so eloquently share the reality facing young black men, give back to their community and challenge our society to do better to break down the institutional and economic barriers to give all Americans an equal chance to succeed.

This book kept your attention and taught a really good lesson. I would recommend this book to any young man, who is transitioning into adulthood for sure. 10/10