Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam [Hardcover]

Sonsyrea Tate (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1997

Since the 1930s, the Nation of Islam has been one of the foremost all-black organizations in the United States. Yet for most people outside the movement, it has been known only through media portrayals of the controversial leaders such as Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. As a young girl, Sonsyrea Tate was one of tens of thousands of "Little X's," the children raised within the Nation of Islam as future foot soldiers of black unity. In Little X, Tate, an award winning journalist, shows us the Nation of Islam from the inside: Little X is the compelling account of one woman's cultural identiy, family unity and spiritual fulfillment in a predominantly white and Christian America.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Her grandparents joined the Nation of Islam in 1952, which makes Sonsyrea Tate a third-generation member of the Nation. In this fascinating glimpse at life behind the scenes in an NOI family, Tate tells of going to a Muslim school, of the changes in the Nation after the death of its leader, Elijah Muhammad, and of the tensions within her family after her mother converted to Orthodox Islam. For all that it is a profoundly interesting account of growing up in a different culture, in the end Tate's is a quintessentially American story of a child coming of age and finding her own path.

From Publishers Weekly

Freelance journalist Tate has fashioned a female coming-of-age autobiography that unveils life in the Black Muslim sect of the 1960s and '70s. She begins with a brief survey of her grandparents' involvement with Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam. Heeding this self-proclaimed prophet's call to a life of dedicated discipline, her elders, and later her mother, embark on a religious journey through black society in Washington, D.C. At first, the demand for dignity, respect for education and pride in black achievements spur these converts from traditional black churches to new awareness and contentment. As the author details her adolescence, moving from the rigors of the Black Muslim school to the laissez-faire world of public education, we see a young woman standing with one foot in a misunderstood, restrictive parochial world, and one foot about to set down in the alluringly wide-open, but dangerous, secular world. Tate is at her best in describing the two strongest influences in her life, her mother and grandmother: Both strong women engaged in spiritual quests, they lovingly guide, chide and instruct Tate through the straits of youth. A temperate and sympathetic treatment of an African American family's religious evolution, this is not a sensational expose of the Nation of Islam. While Tate's journalistic style sometimes goes flat, her insights and reminiscences, drawn against a backdrop of dramatic public events, hold the reader's interest. $40,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 230 pages
• Publisher: Harper San Francisco; 1st edition (January 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062511343
• ISBN-13: 978-0062511348
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,318,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sonsyrea Tate Montgomery is the author of Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam, selected by the American Library Association as a "Best Books", and author of Do Me Twice: My Life After Islam. She is a veteran journalist, who has published articles in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Virginian Pilot, The Washington Informer, and other publications. She loves, loves, loves literature - reading and writing it - for its transformative powers. She is working on her first novel, and third non-fiction book.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent entry into growing up in a religous system, April 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam (Paperback)

While many texts in religious studies focus on the conversion moment of significant, historical religious figures, few discuss and deal with the issues of a child growing up within a particular system. This book does an outstanding job of addressing just such a need. The areas of children's life and children's culture within the study of religion has gained a great deal with this text. Tate gives the reader an insightful look into the world of a family torn apart by changes in religious affiliation. She also directly adresses the problems that such changes can cause to the children of such a family. Her account of becoming involved with drugs as a teenager is heartbreaking. To those looking for an insightful and informative look into the Nation of Islam, changes that occured to the Nation and the practice of Orthodox Islam in the inner cities of the United States will also find the text extremely useful. The book is not a practical guide of Islamic praxis, but more importantly, an account of a young person exploring the limitations of herself and her relgious upbringing. Tate's experience with the Nation of Islam as a child, and her first expereinces outside the Nation's schools (going into the public school system) should be a wake up call to those who view their worldview as superior to others. Her eventual triumphs in life and her own maturity in acepting relgious systems should be inspiring to all who claim to be religiously tolerant.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why is this book out of print?, January 13, 2003

By 

"brvs55" (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam (Paperback)

I do not understand why *Little X* went out of print. I was assigned it in a university course and loved it. Where else can we read about women's experiences in African-American Islam and Christianity?

There are big differences between the various kinds of Islam in this country and we need to know them all. It is human to interpret a religion according to one's own community needs, and that is what the Nation was for in Tate's early days. It is well-written. Why copy edit out the dialogue of family truths and pains and growth. Where is Tate today? Everyone in my class enjoyed reading *Little X* - and when I went to get a copy for a gift, I couldn't believe they stopped printing them.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but needs editing, April 20, 2002

By 

Kelley Hunt (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam (Hardcover)

Ms. Tate writes about her experiences growing up in the Nation of Islam (NOI). She discusses her bizarre education at the Nation of Islam school and her difficult adjustment to the public school system after the NOI school was shut down. In a span of several years she listens as the adults around her complain that the leaders of the NOI are not following their own rules (and there are a LOT of rules). Then she discovers that her parents are also not following the rules; they have a stash of marijuana in their bedroom, which she steals and smokes several times per day. She describes her mother's movement from NOI, to orthodox islam, and finally to the Church of Scientology. Unfortunately the book is repetitive and there are many statements that you will read twice. I don't know where the editor was on this one. This book is written in an adolescent voice and actually reminds me a lot of another memoir: "Red Scarf Girl" by Ji-Li Jiang (about the Chinese Cultural Revolution). A good book for teens and pre-teens.