Customer Reviews

Little X: Growing Up In The Nation Of Islam

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

Thankyou, Sonsyrea Tate, for this wonderful book. It was very interesting and touching reading - seeing the world of the Nation through the innocent eyes of a little girl. I liked the language in the book, the characters and the way Tate is telling her story. No sentimentality at all but still very strong and touching. Very good! please write some more!..

Tate offers her readers intimate travels into the Nation of Islam. Her perspective touches the heart of the reader as she presents the musings of a child who is taught to embrace the Nation of Islam as a life line. Tate held all of my emotions and thoughts as she began to question the authenticity and logic of the religion. I really didn't understand or know much about the Muslim faith. Tate has given me an initiation that, short of joining the faith, can not be rivaled.

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.

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