Thorough investigation of a misunderstood branch of the Nation of Islam, seen through a white Muslim’s perspective.
Often disregarded as a religion for rappers, gangsters and convicts, Five Percenters have long been marginalized as a dangerous and mystical offshoot of the also-scorned Nation of Islam. Even Knight (Blue-Eyed Devil: A Road Odyssey Through Islamic America, 2009, etc.) admits, “Don’t get me wrong—before my first trip to Allah School, they had me scared shitless.” So begins the author’s exploration of a religion founded in 1964 by Clarence Smith after breaking from the mosque led by Malcolm X in Harlem. But as much as this book is an investigation into the far reaches of American Islam, it also reads as a justification for the author’s own religious identification. Inspired by the references to Islam in the lyrics of the hip-hop artists he loved as a youth, such as Public Enemy, and a fascination with Malcolm X, Knight’s passion was further cemented when, at 15, he first met his absent father, only to discover he was a white supremacist. The Five Percenters, he writes, “offered both freedom and discipline, politics and spirituality, salvific manhood and then more salvific manhood.” Through song lyrics, doctrine and his own spiritual journey, the author distills the essence of the Five Percenters’ take on race, religion, sex, personal power and refinement. An insider’s view of a largely unknown belief system woven tightly with the author’s own journey of spiritual discovery.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58542-868-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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