 Mama Black Widow is the portrait of a black family s migration from the southern Mississippi fields of the segregated south to the ghettoized black underworld of Chicago during the 1930 s. The story follows Otis Tilson s struggle to keep his family together as they navigate through a world of alcoholism, pimping, sexual deviation and racial degradation. Told in the gut level language of the original novel by Iceberg Slim, the family s journey is a harsh testament of lives lived on the margins of a racist and predatory world.