Long before he was a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Ben Carson was a folk hero to the black community. It was a classic American story: He had risen from poverty to become one of the nation’s top pediatric neurosurgeons, successfully separating conjoined twins at the head for the first time in a dramatic 22-hour surgery, among other achievements. Carson’s fame was due in large part to his 1992 autobiography, which became required reading for many young African-Americans. Dwight Watkins, an African-American author from Baltimore, first read Gifted Hands as an assigned book in high school in the late 1990s.