Street Poison. The Biography Of Iceberg Slim

Cover Type: Hardcover
Book Condition: Fine
Jacket Condition: Fine
Publisher: Doubleday
Publisher Place: Usa
Publisher Year: 2015
Edition: First Edition

Description: 265 pages. Book and Jacket appear to have hardly been read and are both in Fine condition throughout.

Publishers Description: The first and definitive biography of one of Americas bestselling, notorious, and influential writers of the twentieth century: Iceberg Slim, n Robert Beck, author of the multimillion-copy memoir Pimp and such equally popular novels as Trick Baby and Mama Black Widow. From a career as a, yes, ruthless pimp in the 40s and 50s, Iceberg Slim refashioned himself as the first and still the greatest of "street lit" masters, whose vivid books have made him an icon to such rappers as Ice-T, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg and a presiding spirit of "blaxploitation" culture. You cant understand contemporary black (and even American) culture without reckoning with Iceberg Slim and his many acolytes and imitators. Literature professor Justin Gifford has been researching the life and work of Robert Beck for a decade, culminating in Street Poison, a colorful and compassionate biography of one of the most complicated figures in twentieth-century literature. Drawing on a wealth of archival materialincluding FBI files, prison records, and interviews with Beck, his wife, and his daughtersGifford explores the sexual trauma and racial violence Beck endured that led to his reinvention as Iceberg Slim, one of Americas most infamous pimps of the 1940s and 50s. From pimping to penning his profoundly influential confessional autobiography, Pimp, to his involvement in radical politics, Giffords biography illuminates the life and works of one of American literatures most unique renegades.

ISBN: 9780385538343