By Donovan X. Ramsey
New York: One World, 2023. 427 pages. Nonfiction
This fascinating Book caught my eye with its bright, orange cover and then held my attention with its compassionate storytelling and riveting research. It's a report on how Crack cocaine decimated the Black community throughout the 1980s and the 1990s in the United States. The author, journalist Donovan X. Ramsey, vividly recalls his adolescence in Columbus, Ohio, with "kids who grew up like me -- poor and Black in the midst of the crack epidemic." In 2015, Ramsey began deeply researching "the facts of crack -- what it was, where it came from, and how it spread."
The author compassionately profiles four individuals whose lives were affected by crack and, interwoven with these intimately depicted, gritty stories, is the history of Black America from the 1960s to the end of the 20th century. The four individual stories provide readers with a startling portrait of crack's destruction and devastating legacy: Elgin Swift, an archetype of American industry and ambition and the son of a crack-addicted father who turned their home into a "crack house"; Lennie Woodley, a former crack addict and sex worker; Kurt Schmoke, the longtime mayor of Baltimore and an early advocate of decriminalization; and Shawn McCray, community activist, basketball prodigy, and a founding member of the "Zoo Crew," New Jersey's most legendary group of drug traffickers.
Though he acknowledges that survivors of the epidemic (particularly Black and brown people) rarely discuss it, the author shines much-needed light on this searingly traumatic ordeal. Each profile ends with the possibilities of hope and change, and Ramsey also dispenses provocative, convincing commentary on criminal legal system reform, social justice, the failures of drug policy, and the complicated relationship between disenfranchised Communities and drug abuse in America. Ramsey shows how crack infiltrated and nearly snuffed out entire marginalized communities while an indifferent government stood by and legitimized its demonization. This book is a crucial reevaluation of the era and a powerful argument for providing historically violated communities with the resources they deserve.
If you like When Crack Was King, you might also like:
Raising Lazarus: hope, justice, and the future of America's overdose crisisBy Beth Macy
Little, Brown and Company, 2022. 373 pages. Nonfiction
This book explores the "new frontier" of the opioid crisis, telling the story of the everyday heroes fighting to stem the tide of drug overdose in communities that are too often left to fend for themselves, and of the activists and relatives of the dead who are still struggling for accountability in America's courts. The author argues persuasively that substance abuse should be treated as a medical condition rather than a crime, and focuses on treatments with the potential to help, emphasizing the efforts of people who are necessarily skirting the law in order to provide aid to those who need it most.Under the Skin: the hidden toll of racism on American lives and the health of our nation
By Linda Villarosa
Doubleday, 2022. 269 pages. Nonfiction
Villarosa is a journalist who takes a stunning look at the racial disparities in health outcomes for Black and white Americans. Contending that these health disparities, which persist across different levels of income and education, demonstrate "the impact of insidious discrimination associated with the lived experience of being Black in America," Villarosa cites evidence that white physicians prescribe lower levels of pain medication to Black patients, that infant and material mortality rates are higher among African Americans, that Black communities bear greater costs of environmental pollution and climate change than white communities, and that "toxic stress" associated with racism prematurely age Black Americans' immune systems.
Live to See the Day: coming of age in American poverty
By Nikhil Goyal
Henry Holt & Co, 2023. 352 pages. Nonfiction
Goyal is a policymaker and sociologist who digs deep into the coming-of-age stories of three Puerto Rican boys: Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel, each navigating their way around Kensington, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Philadelphia, the country's poorest big city. Young people in Kensington have low odds of making it to their 18th birthdays. Faced with a wide availability of drugs, violence on the streets and at home, unstable living arrangements, and the near total absence of role models, the three boys eventually drop out of school and search for a stable and crime-free existence. This book is perfect for non-academic audiences curious about and empathetic toward the deeply personal consequences of entrenched poverty.
LKA
