My father tearfully vowed to straighten himself out and be a man, but he didn’t have the will, the strength to resist the cheap thrills of the city. Slim soon finds his mentor in the city’s top pimp, Sweet Jones. Sweet, who is close to fifty when they meet, had come to Chicago from Georgia as a teen and made a fortune. He had a stable of ten whores, and was universally feared and respected. Schilling, Dave (2018-01-03). "A Close Read of the Pimp Story Dave Chappelle Tells in The Bird Revelation". Vulture . Retrieved 2020-08-28.

I said as I squeezed my arms around his waist, “Yes, Daddy, yes, Daddy. We love you too, Daddy. We always will, Daddy.” I think it is clear pimps are not nice people. They are cunning, abusive, emotionless creatures and liars. And their street walkers are lost souls, foolish and not too bright. That's why I loved this book. It's blunt, gritty, and organic. Sweet teaches Slim to maintain absolute physical and psychological control over his women through physical brutality and psychological manipulation. The treatment he prescribes is essentially the same playbook that plantation owners practiced on slaves: beat them, gaslight them, remind them at every turn that they are worthless and powerless, wring all you can out of them until they’re physically and psychologically ruined. Then go find new ones to recruit. Yes, poor Henry’s fears had foundation. Mama had never loved my stepfather. This kind, wonderful man had only been a tool of convenience. She had fallen in love with the snake all right. I began a "borrowing library" in my office, where I work as a social worker in the Bronx. Reading has always been a passion of mine, especially books about the city I now call home and human suffering that has always informed my work.The novel ends and the Epilog(sic) tells us Slim is now a happily married man with two children. He works as a salesman and lives an average, normal life. Only after I had become a pimp years later would I know Steve’s complete plot, and how stupid he really was. His stomach muscles were cording, jerking against my cheek. I knew he was going to burst into tears. He is somewhat repentant. Borrowing a trope from Fanny Hill and Vanity Fair, he presents Pimp as a cautionary tale, and unlike those two books he seems to mean it; he doesn't glorify his life. Much. Big Daddy Kane's mileage apparently varied.

Then he could have pulled Mama out of there and with a big bankroll he could have done anything with her, even turned her out. After a week, my hustler uncle brought Steve to visit us, and to case the lay out. My father bought the cousin angle and broke out his best cigars and cognac for the thieves. It was another week before they took him off. The general facts presented by Slim are likely true. That is, where he says he was imprisoned and when we can probably believe. However, it is the nature of that profession (and the nature of a writer, as well as the nature of an autobiography) to glorify the self in a way that is certainly deceptive. Was Iceberg Slim molested by a religious nut babysitter when he was just little Bobby Maupin? That's hard to say. Even if one wants to believe the testimony of children in such a situation, one must temper that desire with the recognition that as Iceberg Slim he made his living as a depraved and drug-addled liar whose every word was a rationalization of his own behavior. That means that as a book it's a decent piece of work. As a confession it is almost certainly not decent (in any sense of that word.)I’m going to need to justify that, so here’s a little taste of Slim’s masterful lambasting: “Listen square-ass bitch, I have never had a whore I couldn’t do without. I celebrate, bitch, when a whore leaves me. It gives some worthy bitch a chance to take her place and be a star. You scurvy bitch, if I shit in your face you gotta love it and open your mouth wide.” I couldn’t come up with anything remotely as solid in a hundred years. With that sample alone, and considering that many rappers consider him an influence, it’s no wonder the word ‘bitch’ has enjoyed such proliferation in their craft. Needless to say, if objectifying and degrading women bothers you, “Pimp” should probably be removed from your to-read list. On his first night in Chicago, in the spring of 1938, he sees a man beat an unconscious woman almost to death in front of a huge crowd of onlookers. The man then lifts the woman onto his shoulder, throws her into his car and drives off. Slim turns to another man in the crowd:

Maybe we need to make prostitution legal, and just like the current battle for women’s reproductive rights, boot the men out of the equation...well, except for when they want to exchange their cabbage for getting their pipes clean. Men should be customers only. Their opinions about women's bodies they can keep to themselves.

Customer reviews

Slim goes to his aunt's home, finds another hooker and starts trying to pimp again. He gains a number of whores, including Rachel who will work with him for 13 years. brutal, ugly, honest, energetic. not a world i know, have ever known, this is written in 1967, set throughout twentieth century. so maybe bad things have happened to me in early years, but i also grew up comfortably, i had good parents, good brother, good travel, good schooling, some friends, some girls, book intelligence if not street, rewarded art inclinations, did not ever much suffer racism, poverty, deceit, stupidity, cruelty, assault, or any of the many ways that the author has suffered.... i hope i never do... My father’s house was crammed with expensive furniture and art pieces. He had thousands of dollars invested in rich clothing and linens. This is part of Slim’s initiation into the cutthroat underworld of a notoriously corrupt city. He calls his neighborhood Hell, and describes a nighttime walk after shooting cocaine: Mama said she threw everything she could lift at them. They were unemployed when they walked away from the shambles.