The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam
Ula Yvette Taylor
University of North Carolina Press
Taylor offers a compelling narrative that explains how the decision by Black women to join a homegrown, male-controlled Islamic movement was a complicated act of self-preservation and self-love in Jim Crow America. Taylor shows how, despite being relegated to a lifestyle that did not encourage working outside of the home, NOI women found freedom in bypassing the degrading experiences connected to labor performed largely by working-class Black women and in raising and educating their children in racially affirming environments.