If you loved The Wire…

…and I know you did, you’d probably enjoy D. Watkins’ The Beast Side, a first-hand account of living and dying in Baltimore which I’ve helpfully reviewed for you here. Sample:

Each of the short vignettes that occupy the first half of “The Beast Side” attempt to dispel white stereotypes of inner city America via a give-and-take with bigotry, as in “Lessons of a Former Dope Dealer,” which openly acknowledges that while many black youths turn to the drug trade, they apply an “inner city work ethic” that, “had they been exposed to a different way of life [would have had them] running a Fortune 500 company today.” It’s not the mythical inherent laziness of the so-called “welfare queen” that keeps these communities of “grinding grandma[s]” from elevating themselves out of poverty — it’s simply a lack of opportunity. Theirs is no culture of dependence, as conservatives like to argue, and the drug trade is evidence of this. As Watkins notes, the “hardworking people like us…are forced to create our own industries as a direct result of being isolated by society,” which means the real question is why “employment inequality for African-Americans [is] always identified as laziness.”