Mama Black Widow tells the story of Otis Tilson, an African American Drag Queen coming up in depression era Chicago. Based mostly on fact, Iceberg Slim narrates from Tilson’s perspective as a forty year old homosexual man. Starting from the late 60’s, Tilson describes fighting that bitch “Sally,” his drag persona, from coming out. Otis undeniably craves men (and being in Drag) but fights it, trying to maintain a relationship with Dorcas, the inherited owner of a Funeral home. Tilson feels conflicted in part because of a tragically binding relationship to his mother. They’ve lived together forever and she disapproves of Sally and dating men, and Dorcas, as being too high class for him.
The Story backtracks to the South, where Tilson grew up on a plantation. His father,a street corner preacher, shoulders a wife, Sedalia, (with a promiscuous past), two girls, and two boys, Otis being the youngest. After a relative up North dies, they decide on moving to Chicago, and here Slim shows city life taking over.
Longtime Chicago pimp turned author, Slim recounts the many horrors of big city life, a world of pimps, hoes, pool hustlers, drug runners, shifty preachers, cheating landlords, and above all, the vicious “thrill-kill police” all of which the Tilson family becomes intertwined. Sedalia hates white folks because she’s forced to take jobs cleaning after them, and Papa never finds steady work. The novel keeps a frenetic pace throughout as the horror unfolds.
Otis tells mostly a tale of corruption, his being molested by a Deacon being the prime example. He also watches his sister Bessie turn to prostitution, his brother Junior resort to petty crime, and Carol keep a hidden romance with a white guy. Hustlers like Lockjaw Hudson and other fiends lurk constantly and provoke danger. When Otis gets older, he gets routinely taken advantage of because of his being queer. His father eventually becomes demoralized and falls into alcoholism due to Sedalia’s cheating and abuse.
With tragedy descending in nearly every chapter, Mama Black Widow will obviously test a reader’s boundaries. Its shock value however validates its place in literature, as Otis Tilson brings the lesser-heard perspective of the black city queen. This is clearly the intent, to show the many pressures facing a queer black man in the Chicago criminal underground, a world where “good is condemned and evil applauded.”
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