Publishers Weekly
02/15/2021
Woodbine (Black Gods of the Asphalt), a philosophy and religion professor at American University, presents a stirring ethnography of a Boston woman who claims to have spiritual gifts. Donna Haskins suffered significant pain and trauma growing up as a Black woman in a rough part of 1960s Boston. She barely survived a fire, struggled through school with an undiagnosed lead poisoning–induced learning disability, and endured several sexual assaults before adulthood. Woodbine interviews Haskins and offers her words to describe, in heartbreaking detail, her subsequent bouts with cancer and abusive romantic relationships: “the devil don’t want me here, been using my body to take me out from the beginning.” During a low point in Haskins’s early 40s, she agreed to attend Morning Star Baptist Church with her sister and began having visions of the spiritual realm—eventually developing what she believes are powers to combat demons which she’s used to guide others under her new name of “Child of Light.” While readers skeptical of Haskins’s claims will remain unconvinced, Woodbine’s explanation of Haskins’s complicated cosmology builds a rich portrait of her religious life and the ways spirituality has strengthened her. This accessible portrait of Haskins’s peculiar spiritualism will appeal to scholars of interfaith theology. (Apr.)
Reading Religion - Alexandria Griffin
[This] book is a powerful argument for the importance of the lived religion of “everyday” people.
Midwest Book Review
An inherently fascinating, exceptionally well written, thoughtful and thought-provoking read.
André Holland
Having met Ms. Donna in person, I can attest to the incredible power of her gift. The temperature in the room changes when she enters, and here Onaje X. O. Woodbine skillfully captures her essence while treating the reader to a thrilling, heartbreaking story of a Black woman’s hard-earned survival. Many of us have had a Ms. Donna in our lives; this book serves as a fitting tribute to the Black women who have crafted a beautiful existence out of rejected stone. Woodbine’s masterpiece reminds us that, even in the face of the most extreme trauma, transformation is possible. This book is required reading for a broken world, and Ms. Donna is one of the most compelling characters I’ve ever encountered.
Stephen Prothero
A searing story of the darkness that haunts so many in America’s cities and a needed reminder that Black souls as well as Black bodies are under assault there. But out of the smoke and fire emerges a magical character who just so happens to be real—a victim of all the evils America has to offer who shape-shifts before our eyes into a mystic and prophetess who somehow manages to steal back her own life. Like Karen McCarthy Brown’s Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, this study of an impossibly ordinary life grabs you and refuses to let go, even as it offers new insights into a hidden spiritual world.
Nancy T. Ammerman
Onaje Woodbine has crafted a compelling—gripping—story exploring the everyday spiritual world of a remarkable woman. As he takes us with him into this spiritual world, we see the big structural issues that shape urban poverty and racism through her life, and we also see the interweaving of religious traditions that constitute the lived religious power of this woman. This is urban ethnography, religious biography, and masterful storytelling at its best.
Phillis Isabella Sheppard
Woodbine’s work is beautiful and compelling. The strengths of the book are its ethnographic intelligence, its attention to an unexamined area of Black religious experience and social location. Take Back What the Devil Stole is an exceptional contribution to the scholarship on lived religion as well as Black women’s multireligious belonging. A notable contribution is Woodbine’s adeptness at maintaining Donna Haskins’s control of her narrative and her multidimensional religious worldview. Drawing on womanist thought, Woodbine privileges Haskins’s voice throughout, and, as such, his engagement with lived religion maintains its focus on the practitioner and practice.
Spirituality & Practice - Jon M. Sweeney
[An] inspiring story.
Religion - Dara Coleby Delgdao
Take Back What the Devil Stole is a well-told and painfully honest story of Black womanhood in the United States. Although not representative of the totality of the Black experience, Woodbine’s presentation of Donna Haskins’s account of the complexities of gender, race, and class paints a vivid portrait of the challenges facing urban communities in this country. An unquestionable strength of this project is Woodbine’s ability to envelop the reader in Donna’s journey from powerlessness to fully empowered. In addition, the author’s careful but intentional use of thick description provides a rather intimate read, making the text uniquely captivating.
Nova Religio - Jeffrey E. Anderson
Along with its moving prose, the greatest strength of Take Back What the Devil Stole is how successful it is at achieving the author’s goal of telling a story from its subject’s perspective.
Boston Globe - Nina MacLaughlin
Layered, powerful, personal, nuanced, and deeply researched, the book tracks Haskins's violent childhood, her encounter with the Holy Spirit, and her experiences as a traveler in the spirit realms, warring against "the ghosts of American power."
Boston Magazine
A distinctive blend of reportage, personal memoir, and ethnographic scholarship rendered in elegant prose, the book is not only a fascinating portrait of a resilient person, but an examination of what American society has inflicted on Black women for generations and how they have used religion to get through it.
The Christian Century - Elizabeth Palmer
Onaje X. O. Woodbine’s book about a Black woman’s life is a model of ethnographic work that centers the voice of its subject. . . It’s a compelling story because it is simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary.
André Holland
Having met Ms. Donna in person, I can attest to the incredible power of her gift. The temperature in the room changes when she enters, and here Onaje X. O. Woodbine skillfully captures her essence while treating the reader to a thrilling, heartbreaking story of a Black woman’s hard-earned survival. Many of us have had a Ms. Donna in our lives; this book serves as a fitting tribute to the Black women who have crafted a beautiful existence out of rejected stone. Woodbine’s masterpiece reminds us that, even in the face of the most extreme trauma, transformation is possible. This book is required reading for a broken world, and Ms. Donna is one of the most compelling characters I’ve ever encountered.
