MAMA BLACK WIDOW - ICEBERG SLIM

Your boy’s slowly working through the Iceberg oeuvre, I believe I’ve now read 6/10, and it is quite amazing how overlooked it is. Beyond the Pimp stuff, which really only exists now as a precursor slash guide to the Blaxploitation aesthetic which itself goes on to be foundational to hip-hop, Iceberg is basically forgotten which is quite sad. Iceberg is, in many respects, a sort of demonic Jacob Lawrence. Someone who is telling the story of the Great Migration but highlighting the darker currents that this unleashed. Typically, characters move from a small town in the South to the big city, in this book it’s Chicago (which allowed me to play a fun game of “have I been to this location?”) where they are destroyed by the forces of racism and capitalism and descend into a street-nightmare. This book follows that trajectory, with the Tilson family moving from Southern-style Mississippi racism to Chicago where they are slowly destroyed by Northern racism. There’s a bit of a Moynihan report vibe to Iceberg’s critique, “How could he know that Mama would become like the man of the family and he would become like the woman.” but Slim is good about locating the racism in not just the Chicago rich and/or the Police, but also with the Trade Unionists, who are YT and refuse to help the family’s father. Otis (the main character) watches his brothers and sisters descend into drug dealing and prostitution and pimping and all the other street activities that Iceberg has such a laser focus on. The titular mother is quite a character, perhaps among the most evil of all the Iceberg villains and is a sort of template for Precious’ mother in PUSH. This also ties into the main fact that makes this book unique in the Iceberg universe, it’s gay main character. The back cover of the book describes Otis as a “Black drag queen” which isn’t quite right. Otis is certainly a man who has sex with men (almoste exclusively, though he does try to force himself into straight sex) but he typically does this while dressed as a woman in specialized (and bi-racial) clubs on the South and West sides. The book flirts with ideas about overbearing mothers causing queerness (along with that emasculated father) as well as with the idea that a childhood molestation is partly to blame. Likewise, the character himself often views his queer desire as a force outside of himself, which he names “Sally.” All that being said, I did find this small and limited window into gay Black life in the early 20th century worthwhile. The way the bars, the slang, the racial dynamics and social forces functioned during that time is something I do think that Iceberg, with his deep perception of the urban dispossessed, would know about. He doesn’t seem to hate queer people, the way I was expecting, he views them as an integral part of the street culture he knew so well. As for the interior life of queer people, I don’t imagine he was super-accurate, but who knows. At several points the main character brings up how much he likes MLK, I kept trying to figure out if this was a dig. Also, there is a long passage about the theological beliefs that Otis cobbles together based on his life-experience that reads like a folk-Gnosticism which I hope Slim fleshes out in an upcoming book. Either way, this book delivers, should be taught in college and is a major Iceberg Slim work. 1936 families moving North. 

  • “The White folks used him to clean up their puking and droppings until he wears out. Then they simply press another hungry nigger into service. They never really see him or realize he is a human unless he steals from them or kills one of them.”

  • “Sometimes fairly decent human beings join the force. They don’t stay long after they find out they’re part of a vicious system that has a license to maim and murder Black people in the street. But too many White cops in the ghetto are just thugs...Now you take nigger cops. They’re so mean and brutal because they’re ashamed of the uniform and they know how much they are despised by their own kind. 

  • “I remember how I first started wondering if God was like the old man. Maybe he had just grown so old he didn’t realize he was doing horrible things to good people who loved him. Maybe God had had his awful lucid moment and was overcome with guilt at the infinite carnage and heartbreak he had wrought even among innocent children, like the old man who had destroyed himself. Dorcas, I decided that whatever the case, I’d better not get too involved with him.”

Street Names

Big Lovee

Fat Roscoe

Rabbit

Bunny

Soldier Boy

Rajah

Railhead Cox

Grampy Dick

Lockjaw Hudson 

Cuckoo Red

Little Hat

Sweet Pea

Five Lick Willy

Prophet Twelve Powers

Toronto Tony

Butter Beans

Crip (a literal rat)

Kankakee

Indian Joe

Cadillac Thompson