Child X: A Memoir of Slavery, Poverty, Celebrity, and Scientology
Jamie Mustard
BenBella Books
Jamie Mustard was born into one of the most influential fringe movements in the 1970s: Scientology. Raised on a mythology 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 neglect but also the physical and psychological gauntlets of extreme poverty and illiteracy.
A dark, existential journey, Child X takes readers through Jamie’s childhood and adolescence in “the movement,” his 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 Black family that rose to prominence and wealth, and how the counterculture of the 1960s and ‘70s caused that rise to crumble.