Take Back What the Devil Stole

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.” Both ethnographic and personal, Onaje X. O. Woodbine’s portrait of her spiritual life sheds new light on the lived religion of the dispossessed.

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).

Phillis Isabella Sheppard, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Associate Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, Vanderbilt University:
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.

Stephen Prothero, author of Why Liberals Win (Even When They Lose Elections): How America's Raucous, Nasty, and Mean "Culture Wars" Make for a More Inclusive Nation:
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, author of Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life:
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.

André Holland, acclaimed Broadway and film actor and producer:
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.