Underworld Work
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A01=Ahmad Greene-Hayes
African
Africana
alternative
ancestral veneration
anti-black
Author_Ahmad Greene-Hayes
black history
Category=QR
Category=QRAX
conjuring
creativity
creole
cultural
development
diaspora
dissidents
diversity
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
esotericisms
evolution
expression
faith
folk magic
freer worlds
healers
healing
history
hoodoo
marginalized
migrants
mysticism
outcasts
queer
racial oppression
resilience
resistance
rootwork
sacred spaces
sex
southern spirituality
spiritual empowerment
spiritual innovations
spirituality
subculture
syncretism
traditions
urban religion
voodoo
work
Product details
- ISBN 9780226838861
- Weight: 399g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 06 May 2025
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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A rethinking of African American religious history that focuses on the development and evolution of Africana spiritual traditions in Jim Crow New Orleans.
When Zora Neale Hurston traveled to New Orleans, she encountered a religious underworld, a beautiful anarchy of spiritual life. In Underworld Work, Ahmad Greene-Hayes follows Hurston on a journey through the rich tapestry of Black religious expression from emancipation through Jim Crow. He looks within and beyond the church to recover the diverse leadership of migrants, healers, dissidents, and queer people who transformed their marginalized homes, bars, and street corners into sacred space.
Greene-Hayes shows how, while enclosed within an anti-black world, these outcasts embraced Africana esotericisms—ancestral veneration, faith healing, spiritualized sex work, and more—to conjure a connection to freer worlds past and yet to come. In recovering these spiritual innovations, Underworld Work celebrates the resilience and creativity of Africana religions.
When Zora Neale Hurston traveled to New Orleans, she encountered a religious underworld, a beautiful anarchy of spiritual life. In Underworld Work, Ahmad Greene-Hayes follows Hurston on a journey through the rich tapestry of Black religious expression from emancipation through Jim Crow. He looks within and beyond the church to recover the diverse leadership of migrants, healers, dissidents, and queer people who transformed their marginalized homes, bars, and street corners into sacred space.
Greene-Hayes shows how, while enclosed within an anti-black world, these outcasts embraced Africana esotericisms—ancestral veneration, faith healing, spiritualized sex work, and more—to conjure a connection to freer worlds past and yet to come. In recovering these spiritual innovations, Underworld Work celebrates the resilience and creativity of Africana religions.
Ahmad Greene-Hayes is assistant professor of African American religious studies at Harvard Divinity School at Harvard University.
