Charles Mingus's autobiographical book, Beneath the Underdog, details his involvement with jazz, offers his view of life as a black American, and reveals some of the history of jazz from his point of view and through his experiences. The title of the book gives the general tenor of the work--he sees himself as beneath the underdog, meaning that he is even lower on the scale than those who are seen as at a disadvantage in our society. The story told by Mingus shows that he has been faced throughout his life with a sense of being on the lower end of the social scale; indeed, more than this, he has been so subjected to punishments, indignities, and discrimination that he seems to have come to expect it.
Mingus speaks of himself in the third person. He details his early life referring to himself as "my boy." The effect is to place a certain distance between himself and his childhood, perhaps showing that memories of that time are too painful. Later in the book he shifts from first to third person, showing that he remains a divided personality well into his adult life.
For Mingus, the indignities began in childhood as his parents abused him. His father was violent toward the young boy and helped create the second person noted above, the frightened animal who attacks before he is attacked. He develops a secondary personality as a way of protecting himself, but in another way his personality remains unformed and underdeveloped, with little self-esteem and little awareness of himself as a separate entity. Mingus's school life is troubled, and he is ridiculed by other pupils and teachers alike. The boy is not safe at home or at school.
He learns prejudice from his father and then from his schoolmates and others. Mingus lives out the consequences of this childhood in his personal life, and he experiences a good deal of prejudice in his public career which only reinforces the insecurities which cause him to be promiscuous, ...