A01=Onaje X. O. Woodbine
African American religion
Author_Onaje X. O. Woodbine
black women
Boston
Category=JBSL
Category=NHTB
Category=QRRT
Category=QRVP7
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnography of religion
lived religion
spirituality
Product details
- ISBN 9780231197168
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 06 Apr 2021
- Publisher: Columbia University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Ms. Donna Haskins is an African American woman who wrestles with structural inequity in the streets of Boston by inhabiting an alternate dimension she refers to as the “spirit realm.” In this other place, she is prepared by the Holy Spirit to challenge the restrictions placed upon Black female bodies in the United States. Growing into her spiritual gifts of astral flight and time travel, Donna meets the spirits of enslaved Africans, conducts spiritual warfare against sexual predators, and tends to the souls of murdered Black children whose ghosts haunt the inner city.
Take Back What the Devil Stole centers Donna’s encounters with the supernatural to offer a powerful narrative of how one woman seeks to reclaim her power from a lifetime of social violence. Both ethnographic and personal, Onaje X. O. Woodbine’s portrait of her spiritual life sheds new light on the complexities of Black women’s religious participation and the lived religion of the dispossessed. Woodbine explores Donna’s religious creativity and her sense of multireligious belonging as she blends together Catholic, Afro-Caribbean, and Black Baptist traditions. Through the gripping story of one local prophet, this book offers a deeply original account of the religious experiences of Black women in contemporary America: their bodies, their haunted landscapes, and their spiritual worlds.
Take Back What the Devil Stole centers Donna’s encounters with the supernatural to offer a powerful narrative of how one woman seeks to reclaim her power from a lifetime of social violence. Both ethnographic and personal, Onaje X. O. Woodbine’s portrait of her spiritual life sheds new light on the complexities of Black women’s religious participation and the lived religion of the dispossessed. Woodbine explores Donna’s religious creativity and her sense of multireligious belonging as she blends together Catholic, Afro-Caribbean, and Black Baptist traditions. Through the gripping story of one local prophet, this book offers a deeply original account of the religious experiences of Black women in contemporary America: their bodies, their haunted landscapes, and their spiritual worlds.
Onaje X. O. Woodbine is assistant professor of philosophy and religion at American University. He is the author of Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball (Columbia, 2016) and coproducer of a forthcoming documentary film on sacred space in New York City playground basketball, Hallowed Ground & Cracked Concrete.
