What do You think about Mama Black Widow (2004)?
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 struggled to survive in the most difficult of circumstances. It is a tragedy but a real portrayal of the inhumane suffering that one family and others in their time in history in the Chicago ghetto sought to overcome.
—Cristalle1
When I read Iceberg Slim's book "Pimp" I was so intrigued by the subject matter of his book "Mama Black Widow" that I had to read it. Stylish and poetic, with a tragic twist, the story about Otis "Tilly" (Sally) Tilson, a glamorous drag queen struggling to survive in Chicago, Illinois is painful and graphic enough to make it highly melodramatic but compelling all the same. Despite that,it still has a lovely humanistic side that made me really care about the characters and what they go through in the story. Told by Otis to Iceberg, his account of how his family followed other African-Americans up North from the Deep South for a better life, shimmers with loss, deep passion and ghetto flash. It's the honesty and boldness of his account that's really at the heart of "Mama Black Widow" and made it a book I'll always remember.
—Victoria Moore
I don't know what I was expecting from this but it was somewhat different from what I did think it would be like. Not to say it's bad- it's certainly not- I enjoyed it. It took a little while to get into for me, a little longer than I thought it would for sure, but once I got into it there was no turning back. The main character, Otis, is so real you feel like he's your brother (or sister depending...) I was in awe of how much I was into the story once I really fell into it. I can't wait to read Pimp and the others now!
—Eva Leger
