Little X: Growing Up In The Nation Of Islam

Memories. The author's reflections gave me the courage to ponder my eldest children's experiences. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad IS Allah's Last Messenger. He taught us to pray and ask Allah to keep us in our Right Mind at all times. The sister is blessed to have received the training and knowledge of self.

It was AWESOME to finally understand the Nation of Islam from a young girl turned extraordinary Woman's perspective. Thanks to Ms. Sonsyrea Tate, I no longer have to guess at what the experience was like. She takes you on a very practical, tangible journey, in her own words.

Wonderfully written, I'll read this again. Very good story, something I'll get my children to read. Should be turned into a movie.

Sonsyrea Tate is an award-winning journalist. This book was selected by the American Library Association as a Best Book for Young Adults in 1998 and was featured in the New York Library Association's Books for the Teen Age 1998 in the "USA Black America" section.She writes in the Introduction to this 1997 book, "my life as an African American Muslim girl was bittersweet. After leaving the Nation, my family journeyed through several interpretations of Orthodox Islam. But in the midst of praying five times a day, something went wrong and I watched my family fall apart. I wasn't sure whether we fell because of our Islam of despite it. I set out to examine my life to find some answers. I hoped that by writing it all down, spelling it all out, it would begin to make sense."Here are some quotations from the book:"While (children in public schools) learned that slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had been a hero, we were taught that he had been a coward." (Pg. 29-30)"Most of the people in the Nation had been vulnerable emotionally and spiritually, and in other ways downtrodden, when they joined the Nation. So it was easy enough to mold them. And those of us born into the Nation simply went along with the program. For the most part." (Pg. 48)"(Elijah Muhammad) said the fight for women's liberation what a white woman's battle; that the black woman needed to stay home and take care of her husband and children. The black man, he said, had enough to fight out in the world without having to fight with his woman over women's rights." (Pg. 84-85)"We all heard of brothers getting 'chastised' and winding up mysteriously dead. But none of us made the connection that the deaths and chastisements might have been related." (Pg. 101)"Orthodox Muslims ... didn't consider what Elijah Muhammad taught true Islam because Elijah Muhammad based his teachings on a mix of the Bible, the Quran, and that nationalist philosophy preached by the late Marcus Garvey. In the Temple we were taught to disregard Orthodox Muslims because they refused to accept the fact that we were the real chosen people referred to in the Bible and the Quran." (Pg. 111)

The author's paternal grandparents joined the Nation of Islam in the early 1950s and by the time she was born in 1966, the family enjoyed a leading position in the Washington, D.C. temple. With a memory that borders slightly on the unbelievable, Tate recounts her early childhood in the Nation, followed by her mother's conversion to mainstream Islam, the discovery of her family's religious hypocrisy, and then her own crisis of faith and exit from Islam, followed by a journalistic career that included a stint at The Washington Post. Tate's account has particular value for giving a sense of the life of the poor but defiant life that NOI membership entails. The awkwardness of being marked by NOI customs (clothing, diet, female modesty, no extracurricular activites or games) comes through as one strong motif ("I felt like an ugly duck"), plus the extreme relief at being able, once no longer a Muslim, to blend in with the crowd. Tate makes vivid the narrow scope of her ambitions ("I knew . . . the only reason I was on this Earth [was] to become a good wife and mother") and describes the total protection by her male relatives against non-NOI men ("If somebody made your sister cry, you gotta beat him up!") -- though, alas, not against non-NOI women and their cutting remarks. She recalls rumors of Fruit of Islam hit squads, the agony as an eight-year-old sitting straight through an eleven-hour temple service, and her Christian grandmother who tried to trick her into eating pork ("we knew better than to eat any pink meat"). More surprising is the author's endorsement of her education at an NOI elementary school, despite its obvious drawbacks ("We didn't have textbooks, so the dictionary pretty much became our spelling book").Middle East Quarterly: Islam in the United States December, 1998

A sneak peek at the Nation of Islam, the Washington, DC version, through the eyes of little Sonsyrea X. The author paints a vivid picture of her world as a child growing up in the Nation with all of its restrictions and structure. With all of the rumors surrounding Elijah Muhammad, the NOI changes following his death, and Sonsyrea's mother's move toward Orthodox Islam, it's no wonder the inklings of her departure from the religion arise in the end. I enjoyed this much more than her second book, Do Me Twice.

Fantastic. I study religion, and this book provided fascinating new insight into a movement that has changed and gone through many hands. I learned a lot, and chnaged my point of view as a result...I guess that the number one thing that I learned was that all people just want an identity...and Elijah Muhammad provided that African American with that. There are a lot of interesting facts that one can glean from this book.