Mama Black Widow

Mama Black Widow by Iceberg Slim    245 pages

Iceberg Slim knew Otis Tilson, a black homosexual man who's story he tells here.    Otis started out life on a plantation with his parents, his brother and his twin sisters, working hard for the white folks that owned it.   When his mother's cousin Bunny invites them to move to Chicago and offers to help them get an apartment in her building and pay them some for helping care for her (she is older and not in perfect health), Otis' Mama jumps at the chance and so his part-time preacher father went along with it to please his wife.   What they found when they got there was a tenement with a white slum lord landlady who lied and cheated people and was friends with the local beat cops so they would back her dishonest dealings up and never take the world of a black person.   Assaults were frequent, thugs ran the neighborhood, on the streets, drink, drugs and prostitution were rampant.  Crime was every where.and so were freaky molesters who felt no sorrow in abusing the young.   Iceberg Slim tells a sad tale brilliantly.  He takes you into the mind of Otis' mother who hated white people with reason her past will show but her love for money and fine things led her to fatally subject innocent lives to fates they should not have had.   Brilliant book.   Very, very  brutal and sad but so touching sharing the lives of this man and his family if briefly you will be glad you read it.   Excellent job, Iceberg Slim.    I would recommend this book to mature teens because of the adult content and graphic depictions of murder scenes and sexual content.

 - Shirley J.