Pimp: The Story of My Life

Slim’s mother is the central figure and influence in his life, even when they spend decades apart. Slim’s mother raises him and gives him the formative experiences that shape his worldview. While Slim’s mother is a hard worker and an unconditionally supportive mother, she is also a Black woman living in the United States in the 1930s, and many of her decisions are influenced by her economic position and the need to find ways to support herself and her son amidst a racist society.

Slim’s mother endures abuse from Slim’s biological father and temporarily finds relief with Henry, a man who loves her and Slim unconditionally. He pays for her to open a beauty parlor and supports her every decision. When Slim turns 10, his mother leaves Henry for the abusive and threatening Steve, putting the family back into a desperate situation. This decision causes Slim to feel betrayed and alone, and he develops a strong sense of resentment toward women who do not stand up for themselves. Slim also feels that his mother prioritizes her own relationship and sexual needs over his need to be raised in a stable and loving environment. This makes Slim feel that even love cannot prevent a woman from betraying him.

When Slim grows up and leaves his mother for the pimping world, he begins having violent nightmares about hurting her. These nightmares signify Slim’s feelings of betrayal and his anger toward his mother and all women. Slim spends years disconnected from his mother, knowingly causing her worry and grief. He also knows that she feels immense guilt for moving in with Steve and for not doing more to keep Slim from resorting to crime. When Slim reunites with his mother in the months before her death, he forgives her and tells her that his decisions were his own. He learns that he cannot blame his mother for all of the terrible experiences of his life, and he comes to admire her strength and resilience. One of the main motivations for Slim to quit his life of crime is to ensure that he can finally make his mother proud, and he fulfills her wish for him to have a wife and family, reflecting, “Most of all I wish to become a decent example for my children and for that wonderful woman in the grave, my mother” (xiii).

Sweet Jones is known as the top pimp in Chicago and is based on the real-life figure of Baby Bell. Sweet becomes an inspiration for the young, naïve Slim, who sees how Sweet lives and wants to obtain the same lifestyle for himself. He sees Sweet riding in a Duesenberg, surrounded by women and holding an exotic pet ocelot, and in the 1930s US, this lifestyle was out of reach for the vast majority of Black Americans. Seeing Sweet’s extravagant lifestyle, Slim wants to take the “fast track” to success. Sweet Jones acts as Slim’s mentor and teaches him how to engage with The Cycle of Sexual Violence and Exploitation for the sake of profit and power. He tells Slim how to abuse and control women to keep them submissive, quiet, and obedient.

Sweet Jones has a complicated past involving serious trauma. When he was a child growing up in the south, he watched as his mother was gang-raped and his father was killed by a group of white men who lived nearby. Sweet internalized this experience and projected it out onto all white people, believing them to be the cause of all evil. As his conversations with Slim demonstrate, he has “an insane hate for the whole white race” (138) that manifests in the form of exploiting white women, and this dynamic illustrates The Relationship Between Crime and Trauma. Sweet takes pride in his brutality and is known to have murdered people and driven women to suicide. He sees pimping as a source of pride and of taking back power, and he fails to see how his actions hurt people in his own community, including himself. As he bitterly notes, emancipated Black people were not “lazy. They was puking sick of picking white man’s cotton and kissing his nasty ass” (176). Over time, however, Slim stops trusting Sweet, and his paranoia takes over. Slim starts to wonder if Sweet is using him, steering him wrong, or trying to take his women. Slim later learns that Sweet died by suicide in his sixties after several decades of successful pimping.

As Slim’s first sex worker, Phyllis is the woman who shapes his experience and perception of the sex industry. Slim refers to Phyllis as “the runt” when he talks about her, and he constantly disrespects, threatens, and manipulates her. He first meets Phyllis at a bar and then convinces her to sign over her car to him and move in together. Phyllis is a Black woman who is in a vulnerable economic position, and she sees the prospect of working for Slim as a chance to gain stability and wealth. She stays with Slim for several years, for the most part quietly enduring his abuse and earning him money as he abuses her to keep her in a submissive state.

Whenever Phyllis attempts to defend herself or declare her worth as a human being, Slim tears her down both verbally and physically. At one point, Slim deems her “lazy” and takes Sweet Jones’ advice to brutally whip her with a coat hanger. In doing so, Slim traumatizes both Phyllis and himself, demonstrating a different aspect of The Relationship Between Crime and Trauma. Initially, Slim believes that Phyllis really cares about him, but as soon as he realizes that she is only sweet-talking him for the sake of money, he begins to hate her. In Slim’s brutal world, love is seen as a weakness, and Slim refuses to allow himself to feel it. To some extent, Phyllis also reminds Slim of his mother because she is willing to live with an abuser, and Slim hates being reminded of this quality in his mother. Phyllis also becomes a target of Systemic Racism in the 20th Century when she is violently beaten and raped by two police officers. Phyllis finally grows tired of Slim’s abuse and leaves him, and Slim runs into her by chance years later. He finds her asleep in the bedroom of an associate and attempts to murder her but misses the opportunity to do so.