Mama Black Widow, Iceberg Slim
Mama Black Widow, Iceberg Slim
1 Rating(s)
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Mama Black Widow

Author: Iceberg Slim

Narrator: Bobby Spears Jr.

Unabridged: 8 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/01/2014

Synopsis

Mama Black Widow tells the tragic story of Otis Tilson, a stunning black drag queen trapped in a cruel queer ghetto underworld. In hopes of escaping the racial bigotry and economic injustice of the South, Otis' family journeys north from their plantation to an urban promised land. Once in Chicago, Otis and his siblings become prisoners to a wasteland of violence, crime, prostitution, and rape. This is the gut-wrenching tale of the destruction of a family and the truest portrayal of homosexuality in the ghetto ever told.

About Iceberg Slim

Iceberg Slim  (1918–1992), a.k.a. Robert Beck, was born in Chicago and initiated into the life of the pimp at age eighteen. He briefly attended the Tuskegee Institute but dropped out to return to the streets of the South Side, where he remained, pimping, until he was forty-two. After several stints in jail, culminating in a ten-month stay in Cook County, he decided to give up the life and turned to writing. With a family to feed, he folded his life into the pages of Pimp, which emerged as a definitive chronicle of street life. Slim was catapulted into the public eye as a new American hero, known for speaking the truth whether that truth was ugly, sexy, rude, or blunt. He published six more books based on his life and different aspects of the ghetto black, pimp community. Slim died at age seventy-three in 1992, one day before the Los Angeles riots.

About Bobby Spears Jr.

Bobby Spears Jr. is a multimedia personality whose career has spanned the arenas of radio, theater, and the World Wide Web. In translating his distinctive brand to the mainstream, he has perfected the unique ability to captivate wider, more diverse audiences without compromising authenticity. Bobby holds a BA in communications from Howard University and is currently a radio personality on WURD Radio.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Cristalle1 on July 30, 2013

This is a tough book to read but once you get through the first chapter and enter Otis' life you will find this a hard book to put down. Iceberg Slim provides a window into the life of a Black family that like so many others at that time joined the migration to the 'promised land', the North. They s......more

Goodreads review by Martin on April 03, 2016

I'm going through my old list of ten favorite novels, and this was near the top. It's actually the first one I loved as much now as I did 15-20 years ago, but I'm only giving it four stars. There are a few stretches that drag, such as Otis' transformation into a queen, and others that go by a bit to......more

Goodreads review by Shaun on October 19, 2013

I'm coming down the home stretch of reading everything Iceberg Slim wrote, and I'm glad this one was saved for the endgame. I think I have one or two more left, and then I'm done. Like most of Slim's work, very few punches are pulled. As a matter of fact, I can't think of a single instance of Slim pu......more

Goodreads review by Tosh on September 08, 2007

It is amazing to me that Iceberg Slim is not more well known in the American mainstream press or even in schools. "Mama Black Widow" is probably one of the great American novels of the 20th Century. If this was going to be a film, only someone like Fassbinder could have filmed it. Also his "Pimp" sh......more

Goodreads review by Kenning on January 07, 2020

Tense and gorgeous. Definitely a product of its time but still an interesting read for those interested in black literature and in how queer folks are portrayed in literature.......more

Quotes

“Remarkable…It ain’t pretty, but Slim’s bracing ghetto melodrama and famously histrionic voice capture a core of unsentimental truth not just about homosexuality in the ghetto but also about the myths and travails of masculinity itself.” Publishers Weekly

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