“Underworld Work represents the state-of-the-art in scholarship on African American religious history. . . . The currents that Greene-Hayes rides in the study of Black religion complement currents in the field of Black studies as it has developed in recent years . . . Greene-Hayes’s book helpfully invites us to begin . . . reflecting more deeply on the future of the field.”

American Religion

"In Greene-Hayes’s hands, queerness becomes a way of knowing, relating, and surviving—central, not marginal, to Black religious life—offering a provocative rethinking of African American religious history by showing that queerness is a generative way of knowing, relating, and surviving in Black America. His Hurstonian ethic strengthens this vision: he takes Black folk on their own terms, centering lived theologies and embodied ritual knowledge."

Religious Studies Review

“[An] astonishingly generative book . . . Not a page goes by without a fascinating nugget dug out of sometimes obscure archival sources, local newspaper records, the Louisiana Federal Writers Project, or the always pungent observations of Zora Neale Hurston and sometimes other writers; or without a challenging theoretical clarification or strongly phrased argument; or without an arresting photograph; or without a miniature biography of someone . . . All of which is to say, this book richly captures a portions of the lives, the religion making, of largely poor Black New Orleans residents who were surveilled, cataloged, folklorized, harassed, criminalized, rebuked, and scorned, both by the white Christian state (including its social scientific academic apparatus) and by the Black Protestant leadership class. . . . This is an intellectually challenging text to read; it is also an unforgettable one."

Church History

"Under the umbrella of underworld work, the author celebrates a wide range of practices loosely tied to each other primarily by their presence in New Orleans, their Black adherents, and the suspicion under which they fell in the eyes of the dominant white society. To literarily link these diverse and sometimes antagonistic faiths together, he introduces each chapter with what he calls a visitation, a selection from the writings of Zora Neale Hurston."

Nova Religio

“Greene-Hayes credits a diverse array of what he terms Black Atlantic ‘religion makers’ with the agency and creativity denied them by contemporary journalists and interviewers from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) who classified them as fanatics, cultists, and criminals.”

The Journal of Southern History

"Greene-Hayes skillfully teases out archival evidence and uses it to paint a picture of a vibrant, dynamic, intentionally counterhegemonic Black space."

Choice

“Underworld Work recovers the beautiful complexity of Black religion in twentieth-century New Orleans, elevating the archives as sacred sites where the ancestors speak. Guided by Zora Neale Hurston—through faith healing, Hoodoo recipes, and ecstatic performances in Baptist, Spiritualist, and Sanctified churches—Greene-Hayes ushers us into spaces of historical disorientation where Africana spiritual traditions persist despite relentless policing and criminalization by salvage ethnographers and Christian race makers.”

Yvonne Chireau, Swarthmore College

“Greene-Hayes beautifully captures the religious strivings of Zora Neale Hurston and many of the varied manifestations of Black religion that were maligned as criminal and dangerous by conservative social forces terrified by the freedom and power of occult practices untethered from Protestantism, heteropatriarchy, and other life-denying orientations. Perceptive, remarkable, and innovative, Underworld Work is a must-read for anyone interested in the life-affirming practices Black people conjure in the face of state violence and the terrifying enclosures of this world.”

Terence Keel, University of California, Los Angeles