Black power was my father’s belief system; love was my mother’s. Yet a decade later, in 1978, when my father came home and told her about this place called the Ansaaru Allah Community, that he had been taking Islamic classes in Bushwick and had finally decided to share his books about Muslims with her, Black power and love were the exact two motivations that turned them toward the Community’s gates, albeit for different reasons. My father talked about changing his name, and my mother knew she had to hold on to that vision alongside him, for his eyes had become myopic, focused as one is when
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