Pimp / Iceberg Slim / 1967
Pimp is the memoir of Robert Lee Maupin, who spent 24 years of his life enslaving women in sex work and performing a variety of other cons for a life of lavish, fear, drugs, degradation, and prison. I’d like to imagine that this memoir is simply unpublishable these days, but we have a rapist in the White House. America likely has the appetite for a Pimp 2.0.
Maupin narrates his life with stunning narrative clarity and verve. Pimp is a masterclass on pacing. Reading Pimp is like watching a car crash in hi-definition with multiple camera angles to zoom and hawk out: it’s spellbinding and horrible. Pimp combines flashy writing with probing observation and reflection. Maupin doesn’t cut himself much slack in acknowledging the wretchedness of his crimes. He doesn’t try the readers’ patience in asking for a forgiveness or compassion he doesn’t deserve. In this way, Maupin creates an enticing ethos, giving the reader the sense that they are truly glimpsing into the life of a hardened Black criminal underworld. Maupin makes the reader a trick, using their morbid curiosity and desire to eat the other as a hook for his self-mythos. Likewise, the rugged oscillation between cold observation and confessional trauma dumping on the page likely mirror the same charisma that ensnared a number of young women in the flesh.
As in any memoir, the writing obviously cuts away some of the complexities of life, using composite characters and so forth, to present a narrative that’s easier to follow. Sometimes, the narrative voice is so street it’s comic. By the third time, Maupin claims to “skull-note” something, I’m facepalming at how goofy he sounds. There’s also a scene where Maupin describes his first con--dressing in drag to lure in and rob white tricks eager for Black pussy--which reminded me of the homoerotic and genderbending scenes of Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle. Early on, I realized that Paul Beatty actually satirizes Iceberg Slim’s voice in The White Boy Shuffle, from the slang to the fishbowl voyeurism into Black poverty to the queer scenes.
I wanted to read Pimp to potentially teach it in a hip-hop literature course alongside To Pimp a Butterfly. Unfortunately, it feels irresponsible to teach Pimp. It provides too much fodder for an undergraduates’ racist biases. Even if you had an undergraduate class with the social savvy and chops to engage the text, it is simply too misogynistic, foul, and horrifying to expect many people to stomach it. In the copy, Maupin calls Pimp a manual, akin to the Art of War by Sun Tzu. It’s true enough. Maupin does provide the rationale and strategy for enslaving women and dodging the law. It’s definitely outdated by now, but some principles likely still apply. Yet, I’m still tempted to teach it. Like The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Pimp opens with a first-person description of the sexual abuse he suffered as a child. Pimp is another side of the coin of the violences of racism, poverty, patriarchy, and misogyny. What it says about America is horrifying, but bitterly honest.
Pimp ends with a story of Maupin’s reformation into a best-selling writer with a wife and three daughters, living a square-ass life. Whether Maupin deserved this redemption or not, his story does demonstrate the ability of people to grow and change into functional members of society. His stints in prison were truly wretched, but justice and healing aren’t transactional. In any ethical world, Maupin would have carried the weight of his crimes for life and he likely did. Some of the best writing in Pimp comes from his descriptions of prison--including an eye-popping prison break. I want to talk with prison abolitionists about Pimp. Maupin’s stunning writing, reformation, and reflection raise questions about abolition, crime, and justice worth teasing out if you can bear the disgusting realities of its world.
5/5
