Dave Chappelle Shook Me Out of My Reading Slump
This book grabs you on page one and carries you home
It's been a rough month y'all. Between a breakup, teaching online, and the spike in COVID cases, I've had trouble focusing on reading. As someone who reads half as much as they breathe, not being able to escape into a book has taken its toll on my mental health.
That changed six days ago in my local book shop.
My brother and I were browsing through the nonfiction shelves when one word jumped out at me: Pimp.
I pulled it off the shelf. "Iceberg Slim" was the name of the author. It rang a bell. I remembered that Dave Chappelle had mentioned this book in The Bird Revelation to illustrate what happened to him in showbiz, and describe the "capitalist manifesto". That was enough for me to flip it open, and after the first sentence, I was hooked.
I Knew Right Away I Was Entering a World Completely Different From My Own
As a teacher, I don't feel comfortable quoting the first sentence on medium (go look it up). However, I will quote the first half of Mr. Slim's preface to give you an idea of what you're in for here:
"In this book I will take you, the reader, with me into the secret inner world of the pimp. The account of my brutality and cunning as a pimp will fill many of you with revulsion, however, if one intelligent, valuable young man or woman can be saved from the destructive slime; then the displeasure I have given will be outweighed by that individual's use of his potential in a socially constructive manner"
This book is a brutal read. It's 300 pages of drug abuse, physical abuse, and dehumanization. It's also a page-turner. This book grabbed my attention from the first page and didn't let me go until Iceberg was finished with me.
One of the Many Reasons We Read Is to Inhabit Someone Else's Mind
This book showed me around inside the mind of a desperate man who was determined to thrive at any cost, in a society that wanted to keep him down. A man who became a monster to chase the American dream. It let me into a piece of history that I was too privileged to know had ever existed (The world of the African-American pimp in the 1930s and 40s).
Yes, you read that right. This book takes place in the thirties and forties. Reading it, I had no idea what time period It was until a scene where Iceberg Slim's pimp mentor visits him to break the news that the Japanese just bombed Pearl Harbor (Which will make life much harder for pimps, with all the new factory jobs for women).
For some reason, that shook me. How could I have not heard of this subculture before? My understanding of WWII-era American history became a lot less tidy after reading this book.
If you're looking for a shock-value story that will grab you by the shirtfront and remind you why you love to read, this is the one.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
