Little X: Growing up in the Nation of Islam » (1st Edition)

Tate recounts her experience as a child in the Nation of Islam, saying it made her feel safer than at any other time in America. She also asks what if any role Islam played in the later dissolution of her family. The 1997 edition was published by HarperSanFrancisco. She writes a new introduction for the second. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

VOYA

From her childhood in the sixties through her early teens, Tate was reared and educated as a "Little X" in Washington, D.C.'s Nation of Islam community. This is her account of growing up in a strict, proud, complex religion that molded yet challenged her identity. At Washington's Nation-run University of Islam, Tate attended Muslim Girls' Training classes, learning to sew and be a good wife, and regular classes that taught her reading, math, science (at a more advanced level than public school students), and that "black people, especially the few...chosen for the Nation of Islam, would rule the world." When she was nine the Nation closed its school, and Tate was enrolled in public school. "[It was like] moving to another country, adjusting to a culture and philosophy we had been trained to despise," she writes. Later, Tate, her parents, and her siblings would leave the Nation to become Orthodox Muslims, a conversion sparked by Elijah Muhammad's death; the organization's restructuring; and the hypocrisies and confusion of faith that pervaded Tate's family. But the Nation had stirred in Tate a sense of determination, and a desire to make her own decisions. By her last year in school, she was a self-motivated, independent thinker seeking her own choices about faith and worship, and considering a career in journalism. This autobiography is composed of segments of Tate's life, and after a few jumps, it flows smoothly. The people in Tate's life are not fully exposed, but each is drawn well enough for readers to get a true sense of how they helped shape the author. Little X will ring true for YAs growing up in religious communities with fundamentalist beliefs-Muslim or otherwise. VOYA Codes: 5Q 3P M J S (Hard to imagine it being any better written, Will appeal with pushing, Middle School-defined as grades 6 to 8, Junior High-defined as grades 7 to 9 and Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).