D. Watkins discusses new book, 'We Speak for Ourselves,' and the importance of empowering children

How do you inspire kids living in impoverished neighborhoods to rise above their circumstances?

When you’re on the road with the author D. Watkins, the answer might include an HBO film crew, presentations by a neighborhood nacho czar and others, a free lunch and boxes filled with 1,000 copies of the author’s newly released third book, “We Speak for Ourselves: A Word from Forgotten Black America” (Atria, 188 pp., $26).

“Reading every day is the only way you can guarantee success for your life,” the 38-year-old author recently told a room full of teens in an English class at Baltimore's Patterson High School.

“It’s the only way you can grow as a critical thinker. When you learn how to think critically, you learn how to make good decisions. When you learn how to make good decisions, you can do the right things with your life.”

“We Speak for Ourselves” contains 15 essays about social ills, from underfunded schools to police corruption. It also is Watkins’ attempt to rectify what he says is a serious oversight by other authors who address those topics.

Too often, he writes, intellectuals take “a drone approach” when commenting about economically disadvantaged communities. In his view, these middle-class pundits — some black and some white — hover from above. Rarely do they visit the neighborhoods whose problems they attempt to analyze or speak to anyone who actually lives in the falling-down row houses.

Watkins said he’s not attempting to be the voice of his community, but he feels qualified to be a voice. He grew up and still lives in East Baltimore. He has written about the murder of his older brother and of the period of his life when he ran a successful drug operation. He has described falling in love with books and using that passion to transform himself into the college professor and bestselling author he is today.

Essays with titles such as “I’m Sick of Woke” and “Intellectually Curious or Racist?” might seem targeted more toward an adult audience than toward middle and high school students.

But Watkins thinks kids are starved for books by and about people like them, books that address the conditions under which they struggle. It’s terribly important to him to show young people that there are other options than those leading to prison, a life of poverty or an early death.

So he organized his own “book tour” of a dozen Baltimore schools aimed at helping students start personal libraries. He brought lunch — supplied by his friend Eric Williams, owner of Nacho Bangers — and he brought along an entourage of Baltimore residents to share their own success stories.

And the HBO crew wielding a great, big boom microphone? They were trailing Watkins for the day in connection with an upcoming and mysteriously vague documentary being directed by Sonja Sohn. (She’s the actor/director best known for portraying Detective Kima Greggs on the HBO drama, “The Wire.” Neither she nor anyone else at HBO would reveal the documentary’s topic.)

But chances are that even without the TV crew, the kids in Kerry Graham’s English class would have been eager to hear what the author had to say.

“D. previously gave us 25 copies of his memoir, ‘The Cook Up’, and within weeks, every single one had vanished from the classroom,” Graham said. “They disappeared. They were just gone.”

This mission of getting the right books into the right hands is so important to Watkins that he goes to unusual lengths to accomplish it. On a recent Friday, he crisscrossed the city, squeezing in visits to four schools in four hours.

During a question-and-answer session at City Springs Elementary/Middle School, 7th grade student Durius Walker raised his hand.

“What inspires you today?” he asked.

Watkins thought for a second. Then he began to speak very fast, as he does when he feels strongly about what he’s saying.

“You do,” he said. “You inspire me. I was once your age and trying to figure out the world like you. I needed big brothers and homies to look out for me. Sometimes I had that, and sometimes I didn’t.

“When I have rough days, I know there’s kids running around the city who are being inspired by the work I do so I have to keep going. When you see a young person and you look out for them and they start to succeed — when they are smart and get into great colleges and start their own companies — that is the biggest blessing.”