A woman named Donna, who was saved from different deadly events as a child, and appears to be able to speak with spirits who are trying to pass over to the other side, as well as other spiritual gifts. This book was pretty interesting, even though it took a little bit of time for me to get into the story. But once I was able to get into it, I was able to fly through the book.

I picked up "Take Back What the Devil Stole" without knowing exactly what to expect, or really expecting anything at all. I guess, in the wake of 2020's racial protests in the US, I wanted to understand more about American black culture and racial tensions, in a vague and undefined way. And I ended up getting that - and more.

"Take Back What the Devil Stole" is the non-fiction biography of Donna Haskins, a black woman born at the end of the '50s (I think; either her exact birth year isn't mentioned, or I've forgotten it and can't find it again), who lives in the "projects" - neighborhoods of subsidized housing, which were (and still are?) notoriously terrible. She goes from being a victim of violence and abuse in her youth to being a „warrior prophet” in her old age.

What surprised me was that this is a page turner. One wouldn't expect a book published at an academic publishing house by someone in the academia to be engrossing, but it was. The style is simple but very evocative, creating a vivid image of Donna's life and her world. There's little by way of theory, except for a few quotes here and there and a couple of mentioned statistics, which I found rather surprising - in fact, Onaje X.O. Woodbine's input seems to be more that of a curator of stories rather than a critic or theorist of them. He allows Donna to speak through him, arranging her experiences in a coherent whole, and mentioning himself as a side character, but otherwise allowing her to take the full spotlight.

The first part of the book is heartbreaking, especially when you remind yourself that everything described happened to a real person (the writing style has such good flow and such clear style it's very much like a novel at times). Donna went through hell: she nearly died in a fire when she was five, her mother was bipolar and abusive, the neighborhood was unsafe especially for young women, leading to rapes and sexual coercion. At school, she fell behind (an undiagnosed learning disability). Fresh out of school, she had a child in order to pour love onto someone. Her relationships with men tended either to end in suffering, cheating and abuse (sometimes they started in the same way). Two of her nephews died in shootings, one at the age of nine. And she wasn't at all the only one to live through such hell.

Later in life, Donna had a spiritual awakening. She gained the power of leaving her body and entering the spirit realm, where she is guided by the Holy Spirit. She first fought an incubus who had attacked her through abusive men her entire life, and later came to see the souls of the dead, glimpses of the future, as well as the war between the armies of good and those of evil.

I won't lie: that part is hard to swallow. A prophet, in this day and age! An old woman, a warrior who has seen Jesus, the Archangel Michael and the Holy Spirit! Well... you're thinking it, I'm thinking it, Onaje X.O. Woodbine is aware of it, and she knows exactly how people see this. Nobody in this conversation is unaware that this sounds very much like madness. In a half-apologetic way, though it's hard to tell what his exact position is, Woodbine tells us that an ethnographer must try to see one's subjects through their eyes, not one's own. That Donna herself agreed to this form of the book. That this is lived religion. In a sense, what he's telling us is that, in order to learn, we cannot start by judging.

And I guess the point is not necessarily to believe, but to discover. To look through the window provided by Woodbine and see a new world. We see a world of suffering and aggression and pain in detail. We see struggles across generations. We see people coming to Donna for help, and the words of encouragement or warning she provides. How we choose to interpret it all is up to us; Woodbine offers a few parallels and observations (a very few), but leaves the topic open.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for offering an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.