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Little X: Growing Up In The Nation Of Islam
In Little X , Sonsyrea Tate reveals, through the acute vision and engaging voice of a curious child, the practices and policies of the mysterious organization most know only through media portrayals of its controversial leaders Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan. First published in 1997, Little X chronicles the multigenerational experience of Tate's family, who broke from the traditional black church in the 1950s to join the radical Nation of Islam, then struggled to remain intact through disillusionment, shifting loyalties, and forays into Orthodox Islam.
Little X is also an absorbing story of a little girl whose strict Muslim education filled her with pride, confidence, and a longing for freedom, of a teenager in an ankle-length dress and headwrap struggling to fit in with non-Muslim peers, and of a young woman whose growing disillusionment with the Nation finally led to her break with the Muslim religion. Little X offers a rare glimpse into the everyday experience of the Nation of Islam, and into a little-understood part of America's history and heritage.
Sonsyrea Tate-Montgomery has been a staff writer for the Virginian Pilot, Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post . The recipient of four coveted Echoes of Excellence awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, Tate has also worked as assistant to Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. She currently works as a political reporter for The Gazette , a Post-Newsweek publication.
Little X is also an absorbing story of a little girl whose strict Muslim education filled her with pride, confidence, and a longing for freedom, of a teenager in an ankle-length dress and headwrap struggling to fit in with non-Muslim peers, and of a young woman whose growing disillusionment with the Nation finally led to her break with the Muslim religion. Little X offers a rare glimpse into the everyday experience of the Nation of Islam, and into a little-understood part of America's history and heritage.
Sonsyrea Tate-Montgomery has been a staff writer for the Virginian Pilot, Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post . The recipient of four coveted Echoes of Excellence awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, Tate has also worked as assistant to Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. She currently works as a political reporter for The Gazette , a Post-Newsweek publication.
256 pages, Paperback
First published December 12, 1971
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 3, 2026
A FASCINATING ACCOUNT ABOUT LIFE IN THE NATION OF ISLAM UNDER ELIJAH MUHAMMAD
Author and journalist Sonsyrea Tate wrote in the Introduction to this 1997 book, “It all started when a fair-skinned fellow named W. Fard Muhammad arrived in Detroit, Michigan, from the holy city of Mecca. The year was 1930. Mr. Muhammad said he’d come to save the lost-found tribe of Shabazz. Come to save us---the so-called Negro… Mr. Muhammad said … We had been praying to the wrong God…. When Mr. Muhammad arrived on the scene, all of America was depressed---economically speaking… So it was easy enough to believe in a man like Mr. Muhammad… Then in 1934 he mysteriously disappeared, and his devout disciple Elijah Poole, took over leadership of the organization and assumed the last name ‘Muhammad.’ … In spite of considerable opposition Elijah Muhammad expanded the Nation of Islam across the country and amassed power from the early 1930s to the mid-1970s. The Nation became the largest and most formidable all-black organization in America.” (Pg. 1-2)
She continues, “My family was among tens of thousands who joined the Nation of Islam in search of a better way. In the Nation of Islam, we had our own identity and our own ethics. We had our own constitution, our own businesses, our own educational system---not just schools, but our own system and our own way of life. When my grandparents joined the Nation of Islam, they replaced our family name with the letter X, a symbol that stood for hope deep-rooted and eternal. To a people weighted under racism, broken and embittered, disenchanted even with the black church, the Nation of Islam represented such hope. My grandparents liked the fact that in the Nation of Islam gender roles were clearly defined, rules were strictly enforced, and the individual god within each black person was acknowledged and respected.” (Pg. 3)
She adds, “After leaving the Nation of Islam, 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 or despite it. I set out to examine my life to find some answers.” (Pg. 5)
She recalls, “Whenever Uncle Avon walked up with me on his shoulders, the guys knew they had to watch their mouths because Uncle Avon told them not to cuss around me. The men in our neighborhood treated us special… because they knew we were Muslims and you couldn’t disrespect a Muslim woman… I’m special, I thought… I didn’t realize that ‘special’ was also a word to describe kids born crippled… I later realized mine was a social handicap. Growing up Muslim was going to be special.” (Pg. 12-13)
She reports, “Being a Muslim boy had made Uncle Avon special, too, but special in a different way. He learned enough about the white man at the Temple to impress his friends back home… He told them that Elijah Muhammad hadn’t taught him and his brother to hate and torture white people, he had just taught them how hateful and evil the white people were.” (Pg. 25)
She notes, “Our studies were different, too. While children in public schools ... learned that slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. had been a hero, we were taught he had been a coward… They learned America was ‘land of the free, home of the brave,’ we learned it was the most vile and wicked nation on Earth, one that would be destroyed.” (Pg. 29-30)
Her mother told her one day, “Your Granddaddy passed on last night… He won’t be coming home again.’ She couldn’t tell me he went to heaven up in the sky because I had already learned in the Temple that no such place existed.” (Pg. 36)
She recalls, “My school lessons became more complex… We were taught that Asians and Africans, people of color, are all the same but that Caucasians gave us different names to try to divide us… I was learning to hate white people without even knowing them… Some evenings [her older brother] and I watched ‘The Brady Bunch’ and ‘Partridge Family’ because there were few shows on TV with black children. That’s the reason the Honorable Elijah Muhammad told our parents not to let us watch TV, because he said we didn’t need to be watching white kids, wondering why there were no black ones, and we didn’t need to be patterning ourselves after them.” (Pg. 37-38)
She notes, “In class we read articles in ‘Muhammad Speaks’… We didn’t read the white man’s newspapers because the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said they were full of propaganda and negative news to try to make black people look bad or foolish. He told us… that more black people should make their own newspapers and print news that they liked. When I got older and worked as a journalist myself, I heard the same complaints from people in the black community, but I believed it was my duty to change the way whites viewed us. I would wind up working for large white-owned newspapers, and my family, which once refused to read them, would subscribe, proud that I was covering our community.” (Pg. 40-41)
She observes, “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)
She recalls, “Sunday service was considered a teaching session… We didn’t worship some invisible God up in the sky. There would be no heaven above the clouds after we died, we were taught. This life was it… Heaven and hell were states of mind, we were taught. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders who got their heads beat while praying for integration were foolish, said the Messenger.” (Pg. 50)
She recounts, “There had been rumors of Elijah Muhammad’s extramarital affairs and resulting offspring before I was born, but nobody talked about it now… it was all kept hush-hush because the few people who believed the rumors to be true also believed that actions to be justified. ‘The people just believed he was a prophet and he had to do what he had to do… but it wasn’t for us to understand because he was the one who was the Messenger of Allah.’” (Pg. 54-55)
She states, “Elijah Muhammad said black men should protect black women from the white man by keeping us out of his offices, out of his world… the fight for women’s liberation was a white woman’s battle; that the black woman needed to stay home and take care of her husband and children. The black man… had enough to fight out in the world without having to fight with his woman over women’s rights.” (Pg. 84-85)
She explains, “Orthodox Muslims, especially the ones from the Middle East, didn’t consider that Elijah Muhammad taught true Islam because [he] based his teachings on a mix of the Bible, the Quran, and the nationalist philosophy of 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)
She says, “[My Dad] didn’t believe in the Nation of Islam anymore because… too many of the officials in the Nation turned out to be as corrupt as the white American leaders they condemned.” (Pg. 113)
But she also acknowledges, “in the Nation of Islam we had been taught more advanced studies than our white counterparts in public schools. I was beginning to see how my Muslim school training was paying off. Uncle Wallace graduated two years ahead of his peers, and Uncle Hussein, who graduated from the Muslim school when he was fourteen, would become the class salutatorian at the prestigious George Washington University, a white school. Now, at fourteen, I was finishing my junior year in high school.” (Pg. 208)
She concludes, “I married my next-door neighbor who had become [Orthodox] Muslim while in jail… Most of my Muslim relatives and friends have graduated to a better understanding of Islam and now practice their beliefs in a way that doesn’t choke the life out of their younger children. I probably will not return to the Muslim mosque for daily worship because the experience was too intense. I found out that I enjoy gospel music on Sunday mornings… Occasionally I attend a church service because I enjoy the fellowship… I’m happy to see Elijah Muhammad’s son, Warith Deen Muhammad, promote interfaith conferences in cities across America… Even the Nation of Islam seems to have grown… I do hope that the Nation has evolved in its philosophies of life and understanding of Islam as well… Someday I’ll be able to count it all to joy.” (Pg. 228-230)
This a fascinating and insightful memoir. (She has also written a sequel, ‘Do Me Twice: My Life After Islam.’)
Author and journalist Sonsyrea Tate wrote in the Introduction to this 1997 book, “It all started when a fair-skinned fellow named W. Fard Muhammad arrived in Detroit, Michigan, from the holy city of Mecca. The year was 1930. Mr. Muhammad said he’d come to save the lost-found tribe of Shabazz. Come to save us---the so-called Negro… Mr. Muhammad said … We had been praying to the wrong God…. When Mr. Muhammad arrived on the scene, all of America was depressed---economically speaking… So it was easy enough to believe in a man like Mr. Muhammad… Then in 1934 he mysteriously disappeared, and his devout disciple Elijah Poole, took over leadership of the organization and assumed the last name ‘Muhammad.’ … In spite of considerable opposition Elijah Muhammad expanded the Nation of Islam across the country and amassed power from the early 1930s to the mid-1970s. The Nation became the largest and most formidable all-black organization in America.” (Pg. 1-2)
She continues, “My family was among tens of thousands who joined the Nation of Islam in search of a better way. In the Nation of Islam, we had our own identity and our own ethics. We had our own constitution, our own businesses, our own educational system---not just schools, but our own system and our own way of life. When my grandparents joined the Nation of Islam, they replaced our family name with the letter X, a symbol that stood for hope deep-rooted and eternal. To a people weighted under racism, broken and embittered, disenchanted even with the black church, the Nation of Islam represented such hope. My grandparents liked the fact that in the Nation of Islam gender roles were clearly defined, rules were strictly enforced, and the individual god within each black person was acknowledged and respected.” (Pg. 3)
She adds, “After leaving the Nation of Islam, 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 or despite it. I set out to examine my life to find some answers.” (Pg. 5)
She recalls, “Whenever Uncle Avon walked up with me on his shoulders, the guys knew they had to watch their mouths because Uncle Avon told them not to cuss around me. The men in our neighborhood treated us special… because they knew we were Muslims and you couldn’t disrespect a Muslim woman… I’m special, I thought… I didn’t realize that ‘special’ was also a word to describe kids born crippled… I later realized mine was a social handicap. Growing up Muslim was going to be special.” (Pg. 12-13)
She reports, “Being a Muslim boy had made Uncle Avon special, too, but special in a different way. He learned enough about the white man at the Temple to impress his friends back home… He told them that Elijah Muhammad hadn’t taught him and his brother to hate and torture white people, he had just taught them how hateful and evil the white people were.” (Pg. 25)
She notes, “Our studies were different, too. While children in public schools ... learned that slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. had been a hero, we were taught he had been a coward… They learned America was ‘land of the free, home of the brave,’ we learned it was the most vile and wicked nation on Earth, one that would be destroyed.” (Pg. 29-30)
Her mother told her one day, “Your Granddaddy passed on last night… He won’t be coming home again.’ She couldn’t tell me he went to heaven up in the sky because I had already learned in the Temple that no such place existed.” (Pg. 36)
She recalls, “My school lessons became more complex… We were taught that Asians and Africans, people of color, are all the same but that Caucasians gave us different names to try to divide us… I was learning to hate white people without even knowing them… Some evenings [her older brother] and I watched ‘The Brady Bunch’ and ‘Partridge Family’ because there were few shows on TV with black children. That’s the reason the Honorable Elijah Muhammad told our parents not to let us watch TV, because he said we didn’t need to be watching white kids, wondering why there were no black ones, and we didn’t need to be patterning ourselves after them.” (Pg. 37-38)
She notes, “In class we read articles in ‘Muhammad Speaks’… We didn’t read the white man’s newspapers because the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said they were full of propaganda and negative news to try to make black people look bad or foolish. He told us… that more black people should make their own newspapers and print news that they liked. When I got older and worked as a journalist myself, I heard the same complaints from people in the black community, but I believed it was my duty to change the way whites viewed us. I would wind up working for large white-owned newspapers, and my family, which once refused to read them, would subscribe, proud that I was covering our community.” (Pg. 40-41)
She observes, “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)
She recalls, “Sunday service was considered a teaching session… We didn’t worship some invisible God up in the sky. There would be no heaven above the clouds after we died, we were taught. This life was it… Heaven and hell were states of mind, we were taught. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders who got their heads beat while praying for integration were foolish, said the Messenger.” (Pg. 50)
She recounts, “There had been rumors of Elijah Muhammad’s extramarital affairs and resulting offspring before I was born, but nobody talked about it now… it was all kept hush-hush because the few people who believed the rumors to be true also believed that actions to be justified. ‘The people just believed he was a prophet and he had to do what he had to do… but it wasn’t for us to understand because he was the one who was the Messenger of Allah.’” (Pg. 54-55)
She states, “Elijah Muhammad said black men should protect black women from the white man by keeping us out of his offices, out of his world… the fight for women’s liberation was a white woman’s battle; that the black woman needed to stay home and take care of her husband and children. The black man… had enough to fight out in the world without having to fight with his woman over women’s rights.” (Pg. 84-85)
She explains, “Orthodox Muslims, especially the ones from the Middle East, didn’t consider that Elijah Muhammad taught true Islam because [he] based his teachings on a mix of the Bible, the Quran, and the nationalist philosophy of 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)
She says, “[My Dad] didn’t believe in the Nation of Islam anymore because… too many of the officials in the Nation turned out to be as corrupt as the white American leaders they condemned.” (Pg. 113)
But she also acknowledges, “in the Nation of Islam we had been taught more advanced studies than our white counterparts in public schools. I was beginning to see how my Muslim school training was paying off. Uncle Wallace graduated two years ahead of his peers, and Uncle Hussein, who graduated from the Muslim school when he was fourteen, would become the class salutatorian at the prestigious George Washington University, a white school. Now, at fourteen, I was finishing my junior year in high school.” (Pg. 208)
She concludes, “I married my next-door neighbor who had become [Orthodox] Muslim while in jail… Most of my Muslim relatives and friends have graduated to a better understanding of Islam and now practice their beliefs in a way that doesn’t choke the life out of their younger children. I probably will not return to the Muslim mosque for daily worship because the experience was too intense. I found out that I enjoy gospel music on Sunday mornings… Occasionally I attend a church service because I enjoy the fellowship… I’m happy to see Elijah Muhammad’s son, Warith Deen Muhammad, promote interfaith conferences in cities across America… Even the Nation of Islam seems to have grown… I do hope that the Nation has evolved in its philosophies of life and understanding of Islam as well… Someday I’ll be able to count it all to joy.” (Pg. 228-230)
This a fascinating and insightful memoir. (She has also written a sequel, ‘Do Me Twice: My Life After Islam.’)
June 18, 2012
In terms of story and prose, it's rambling, sometimes repetitive, and occasionally confusing with a huge cast of characters hard to keep straight and a long timeline that even though it's linear seems to not tell a linear story. Yet, despite its flaws, this is still an interesting look into a unique subculture of America at a time it transitioned from its founding separatist principles to a more inclusive interfaith one. There's enough of the mechanics of life under the Nation to get a sense of how uncompromising it was and how that structure could be both helpful and harmful. From this story, the outcomes of the original goals of the Nation appear a mixed bag, with emphasis on community, family, and self-sufficiency (including entrepreneurship and a strong education) being the high-points, and a parochial vision of the role of girls and women, a promotion of violence, a systematized racial hatred, and a reliance on a made-up history being the low. Throughout it all the author saw her share of hypocrisy, especially among the adults towards their children and the leaders towards their followers. That story, though, essentially echoes anyone's who was raised in or around an ideals-based lifestyle or organization.
And like any child growing up, she had her share of doubts, dreams, good times, low points, lucky breaks and that's-not-fair moments, and plenty of fights with her parents. Despite the differences she might have felt being a "minority of a minority" as a member of the Nation of Islam, this memoir shows we're all ultimately human and thus not all that different, which in itself is a useful lesson.
And like any child growing up, she had her share of doubts, dreams, good times, low points, lucky breaks and that's-not-fair moments, and plenty of fights with her parents. Despite the differences she might have felt being a "minority of a minority" as a member of the Nation of Islam, this memoir shows we're all ultimately human and thus not all that different, which in itself is a useful lesson.
November 2, 2010
An excellent peek into the world of a girl who grew up in the Nation of Islam. Besides questioning the organization's quirky and often hypocritical "rules", the book also documents the social and familial conflicts faced by low-income African Americans during the 1960s and '70s.
September 29, 2011
Had to read it for a class, but overall it was a pretty interesting look at the Nation of Islam.
February 1, 2020
Insightful and informative about practices of islam and muslim group in the 70s and 80s. Organized religion tends to make me itchy, so i can empathize with sonsyrea's conflicting feelings towards radical changes like that. However, the novel gets three stars because to me, it was purely informative. Nothing about tate's writing evoked any emotions from me, but i found myself nodding along to her questions of "which god is REALLY right??" quite frequently.
January 24, 2022
I really enjoyed reading this. One reason is because I have daughters & I’m starting to teach them about spirituality more so than religion. As a mother I really try to practice what I preach & I try not to tell my girls how to live. This book gave me more insight on parenting because our children are watching us even when we think they are not. I was at a goodwill store & ran a cross this book, I’m so glad I did!!
February 23, 2023
Great book for to understand the day to day living of a child being raised in the Nation of Islam. It is a great inside look at it, especially the positive and negative impacts on the black community, specifically Black women.
December 14, 2018
Great book. Very insightful look at The Nation of Islam as well as the Islamic Religion and the way it impacted history. Loved the characters in it.
September 23, 2020
It held my attention and I learned something. What else do you want for free?
February 17, 2021
Basically an auto-ethnography of a famous sub-culture in Washington, DC.
July 3, 2021
Well written, interesting first-person account. Ending (post-Nation life) seemed very rushed and leaves a lot of unanswered questions.
August 15, 2016
Narrative was a little unfocused. There were a few moments when I got to the end of an anecdote and wondered why she had shared it because the pay-off I was expecting didn’t materialize. There were several details that reminded me of other cults that I had read about. Restrictions on the color of clothing, unrestrained procreation, working harder in order to turn more of your money over to the administration, see Jeffs, Warren (to name just one.) Then there was the slow realization that the administration was not abiding by the same rules they set out for the rank and file. (See Jehovah’s Witnesses and the People’s Temple.)
The Nation was ahead of its time as anti-vaxxers.
One element that seemed iconoclastic was the fact that their education system for their women was so rigorous, yet then they condemn their women to young marriages and endless child-bearing. How frustrating and discouraging that must be for smart, motivated women. It rankled me a bit that so many women birthed so many children that then lived in poverty—and then took welfare to support their families. Rather like the FLDS principle of bleeding the beast, the Nation may see the white man as the devil but they sure weren’t above taking his subsidized housing. It seems like such a progressive faith would have been able to equate many children = poverty, but I understand there is always that pull, the cult needs more members, so keep having babies (more hostages to the faith) and poverty = vulnerability which keeps people in the fold. The Catholics figured that out ages ago.
One thing that irked me, was the author’s habit of repeating some information, not having enough confidence in the reader to remember it the first time she said it. For instance, Elijah Muhammad son’s name had been Wallace Fard Muhammad, but he changed it to Warith Deen Mohammad, she must have repeated this at least three times.
She also only briefly mentioned a brief abusive relationship as well as a marriage, which I really would have liked to have known more about. How did the church and the way she was raised influence her to make these (presumably bad) choices about men? But I suppose that was beyond the scope of this book and perhaps that's material for the sequel.
The Nation was ahead of its time as anti-vaxxers.
One element that seemed iconoclastic was the fact that their education system for their women was so rigorous, yet then they condemn their women to young marriages and endless child-bearing. How frustrating and discouraging that must be for smart, motivated women. It rankled me a bit that so many women birthed so many children that then lived in poverty—and then took welfare to support their families. Rather like the FLDS principle of bleeding the beast, the Nation may see the white man as the devil but they sure weren’t above taking his subsidized housing. It seems like such a progressive faith would have been able to equate many children = poverty, but I understand there is always that pull, the cult needs more members, so keep having babies (more hostages to the faith) and poverty = vulnerability which keeps people in the fold. The Catholics figured that out ages ago.
One thing that irked me, was the author’s habit of repeating some information, not having enough confidence in the reader to remember it the first time she said it. For instance, Elijah Muhammad son’s name had been Wallace Fard Muhammad, but he changed it to Warith Deen Mohammad, she must have repeated this at least three times.
She also only briefly mentioned a brief abusive relationship as well as a marriage, which I really would have liked to have known more about. How did the church and the way she was raised influence her to make these (presumably bad) choices about men? But I suppose that was beyond the scope of this book and perhaps that's material for the sequel.
June 16, 2007
Not the most beautiful prose I've ever read, but I learned a lot from this book about one woman's experiences with the Nation of Islam.
May 15, 2013
AMAZING BOOK!!
December 27, 2015
A good companion read to the Autobiography of Malcolm X for an illuminating look at the Nation of Islam in the 1960s-70s.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews