Child X: A Memoir of Slavery, Poverty, Celebrity, and Scientology [Hardcover]

A vivid, compelling and heartrending memoir. —Booklist

“Evocative . . . Intimate yet universally resonant . . . a powerful memoir that takes us down the darkest corridors of Scientology.”—Kirkus Reviews

Non-stop indoctrination . . . reckless indifference . . . A nightmare childhood in the baby factory. —The Daily Mail

Winner of the Phillis Wheatley Literary Award

Literary Global Book Awards Book of the Year in Nonfiction

Finalist for the Frances Fuller Victor Award

Winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award

National Indie Excellence® Awards Winner

“Hey, kid. Kid.” A voice in the darkness of the slum dorm. I awoke to my stale, bare mattress. It was midnight. The arm of a male nanny reached into the closet where my bed was, roughly jostling me. “You have to get up. They’re coming.”

A prosperous Black family that rose from the ashes of American slavery. A notorious movement cloaked in secrecy. A forgotten boy. And a daring escape.

Jamie Mustard was born into one of the most influential fringe movements in the 1970s: Scientology. Raised on a mythos of spaceships and made to believe that it was his life’s purpose to help save the world, he was determined to survive—not only unsurvivable neglect but also the impossible physical and psychological gauntlet of extreme poverty and illiteracy.Child Xis a dark existential journey into a deepest hole of human existence and the road back.

The unbelievable story of a lost generation of children,Child Xtakes readers through Jamie’s childhood and adolescence in “the movement,” his daring escape, and his rise into self-possession. With wit and vulnerability, Jamie sheds light on one of the untold, but not uncommon, accounts of a powerful l3u