THE COMMUNITY

A journalist recounts the time her family spent living in a Muslim cooperative known as the Community, a group rife with abuse.

When Chisholm was 14, she asked her mother, Ummi, about a recurring dream she had about being in a room full of women and girls “wrapped in monochromatic fabric.” That day, her mother confirmed what the author had long suspected: that her subconscious was reminding her of the trauma of two years spent in the Community, which was run by charismatic leader Imam Isa, aka Dwight York. Years later, as a freelance journalist, Chisholm investigated allegations against York, including “aggravated child molestation” and “sexual exploitation of children.” After talking to other women who were involved in the Community, the author decided to interview her own mother about their shared past to uncover the truth about the family’s time in the Community in the late 1970s. In addition to uncovering painful personal memories about separation from her mother and abuse at the hands of her caretakers within the group, Chisholm seeks to understand her parents’ motivation for joining the group in the first place. One motive, she discovered, was a desire to escape pervasive anti-Blackness. “The Community,” she writes, “in all its conservative and extreme leanings, was essentially saying to anyone with eyes that Black lives mattered….I understand my parents were molded by a world full of extremes and that they felt the way to surf it was to counterbalance with an extreme of their own,” she writes. “I believe to my core that they thought the Community would save us.” The author expertly balances passion with compassion, and her vulnerability electrifies the often harrowing narrative. Though the prose is sometimes overwritten, with Chisholm relying too heavily on exposition, her story is valuable.

A heart-wrenching memoir about surviving a religious group helmed by an abusive leader.