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Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball
J-Rod moves like a small battle tank on the court, his face mean, staring down his opponents. "I play just like my father," he says. "Before my father died, he was a problem on the court. I'm a problem." Playing basketball for him fuses past and present, conjuring his father's memory into a force that opponents can feel in every bone-snapping drive to the basket. On the street every ballplayer has a story. Onaje X. O. Woodbine, a former streetball player who became an All-Star Ivy Leaguer, brings the sights and sounds, hopes and dreams of street basketball to life. Big games have a trickster figure and a master of black talk whose commentary interprets the game for audiences. The beats of hip-hop and reggae make up the soundtrack, and the ball players are half-men, half-heroes, defying the ghetto's limitations with their flights to the basket.
Streetball is rhythm and flow, and during its peak moments, the three rings of the asphalt collapse into a singular band, every head and toe pressed against the sidelines, caught up in the spectacle. Basketball is popular among young black American men, but not because, as many claim, they are "pushed by poverty" or "pulled" by white institutions to play it. Black men choose to participate in basketball because of the transcendent experience of the game. Through interviews with and observations of urban basketball players, Onaje X. O. Woodbine composes a rare portrait of a passionate, committed, and resilient group of athletes who use the court to mine what urban life cannot corrupt. If people turn to religion to reimagine their place in the world, then black streetball players are indeed the adepts of the asphalt.
Streetball is rhythm and flow, and during its peak moments, the three rings of the asphalt collapse into a singular band, every head and toe pressed against the sidelines, caught up in the spectacle. Basketball is popular among young black American men, but not because, as many claim, they are "pushed by poverty" or "pulled" by white institutions to play it. Black men choose to participate in basketball because of the transcendent experience of the game. Through interviews with and observations of urban basketball players, Onaje X. O. Woodbine composes a rare portrait of a passionate, committed, and resilient group of athletes who use the court to mine what urban life cannot corrupt. If people turn to religion to reimagine their place in the world, then black streetball players are indeed the adepts of the asphalt.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published May 24, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 15, 2019
This book is about exactly what the title promises. Onaje Woodbine grew up playing street ball in Boston, got a scholarship to Yale, and went on to study at the Boston University School of Theology. He then went back to the streets of Roxbury and Dorchester (Boston's black neighborhoods) to look at the relationship between black men and basketball from an anthropological/theological perspective.
I'm not sure I can review this book objectively, because while I don't know Dr. Woodbine or any of the men he mentions specifically, I have surely rubbed shoulders with some of these guys at my gym, which is in Roxbury and has a powerful basketball culture and tradition. You can't spend time around urban black men without recognizing and appreciating the deep, cohesive strength of basketball in their lives.
Dr. Woodbine immersed himself in the summer tournament seasons, letting his friends and acquaintances describe their experiences and emotions, and often their conviction that basketball had saved their lives or at least given meaning to their lives, in their own words. Those words are so moving, and so filled with a natural poetry, that I wanted to stand up and read them out loud (and sometimes I did, if I wasn't in public). IMO, some of this would make a great play/performance, like a male version of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.
I don't think I can say anything about this that's going to do this book justice, since I feel like I'm just babbling here. Every page of this hit me in my heart and my gut.
It's getting the highest honor I can pay a book: I'm buying a copy of it.
I'm not sure I can review this book objectively, because while I don't know Dr. Woodbine or any of the men he mentions specifically, I have surely rubbed shoulders with some of these guys at my gym, which is in Roxbury and has a powerful basketball culture and tradition. You can't spend time around urban black men without recognizing and appreciating the deep, cohesive strength of basketball in their lives.
Dr. Woodbine immersed himself in the summer tournament seasons, letting his friends and acquaintances describe their experiences and emotions, and often their conviction that basketball had saved their lives or at least given meaning to their lives, in their own words. Those words are so moving, and so filled with a natural poetry, that I wanted to stand up and read them out loud (and sometimes I did, if I wasn't in public). IMO, some of this would make a great play/performance, like a male version of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.
I don't think I can say anything about this that's going to do this book justice, since I feel like I'm just babbling here. Every page of this hit me in my heart and my gut.
It's getting the highest honor I can pay a book: I'm buying a copy of it.
February 12, 2017
This book is why I subscribe to Goodreads. I would have never known about this book if not for my buddy Michael.
Decades ago, Michael and I worked together in a newsroom outside Boston. Good times, we had. But I haven't talked to him in years. All I've done it keep up with what he's reading on Goodreads. And a few months back, he had read this book -- and liked it. So, I picked it up at my local library and read it, too. Ditto. I liked it. And for me, it brought back good memories. But it was more than that.
Onaje tackles the masculine territory of street basketball as a participant and a researcher. He weaves his own story into a captivating read of how working-class blacks in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood use the blacktop as a way to deal with the senseless death of their peers. In turn, the blacktop becomes their therapy.
Onaje, a former hoops player at Yale, teaches philosophy and religion at Phillips Academy, an elite private school in Massachusetts, and he employs in his book many familiar research principles you'd find in any dissertation. So, his writing becomes academic and describes events as if at an arm's distance that at times sucks the emotion out of scenes and stories. But really, these are minor quibbles. I enjoyed this book much. It doesn't get close to my favorite hoops book, "Heaven Is A Playground." That book is sheer poetry. But "Black Gods'' reveals a fascinating perspective on the American sport of basketball and adds much to the basketball storytelling canon.
Now, to those memories.
On many a Sunday afternoon decades ago, I biked across town from my walk-up in Brighton to play on the blacktop in the Fens neighborhood in Boston. It was a time when my college-playing body hadn't left me. Basketball was my Prozac. My jumper was sharp, my crossover was wicked quick and my drive to the basket against bodies large and larger made me feel electric and alive. The exclamation of "Who's got next?" and walking onto the court for the next game in my droopy socks made me as giddy as a six-year-old at Christmas. I often was the lone white guy on the court. Yet, like in "Black Gods," race disappeared between the chain-link nets. It was all who had game in an often unspoken masculine test of skill and talent. I hooped with the same kind of players I saw in "Black Gods" -- these players like Onaje, like Marvin, like Sticks, like C.J., all muscle hard, faces of stone with fluid movements like a ballet dancer. I will keep those sunny Sunday afternoons under a Boston skyline frozen in the amber of my mind. Good times, they were.
So, I could identify with what I read in "Black Gods." Yet, after coaching and watching my son and his friends grow up with a basketball in their hands, I also realized what I read about in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood was what happened on any blacktop in everyday America.
Beautiful stuff here. Michael, thanks for the tip.
Decades ago, Michael and I worked together in a newsroom outside Boston. Good times, we had. But I haven't talked to him in years. All I've done it keep up with what he's reading on Goodreads. And a few months back, he had read this book -- and liked it. So, I picked it up at my local library and read it, too. Ditto. I liked it. And for me, it brought back good memories. But it was more than that.
Onaje tackles the masculine territory of street basketball as a participant and a researcher. He weaves his own story into a captivating read of how working-class blacks in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood use the blacktop as a way to deal with the senseless death of their peers. In turn, the blacktop becomes their therapy.
Onaje, a former hoops player at Yale, teaches philosophy and religion at Phillips Academy, an elite private school in Massachusetts, and he employs in his book many familiar research principles you'd find in any dissertation. So, his writing becomes academic and describes events as if at an arm's distance that at times sucks the emotion out of scenes and stories. But really, these are minor quibbles. I enjoyed this book much. It doesn't get close to my favorite hoops book, "Heaven Is A Playground." That book is sheer poetry. But "Black Gods'' reveals a fascinating perspective on the American sport of basketball and adds much to the basketball storytelling canon.
Now, to those memories.
On many a Sunday afternoon decades ago, I biked across town from my walk-up in Brighton to play on the blacktop in the Fens neighborhood in Boston. It was a time when my college-playing body hadn't left me. Basketball was my Prozac. My jumper was sharp, my crossover was wicked quick and my drive to the basket against bodies large and larger made me feel electric and alive. The exclamation of "Who's got next?" and walking onto the court for the next game in my droopy socks made me as giddy as a six-year-old at Christmas. I often was the lone white guy on the court. Yet, like in "Black Gods," race disappeared between the chain-link nets. It was all who had game in an often unspoken masculine test of skill and talent. I hooped with the same kind of players I saw in "Black Gods" -- these players like Onaje, like Marvin, like Sticks, like C.J., all muscle hard, faces of stone with fluid movements like a ballet dancer. I will keep those sunny Sunday afternoons under a Boston skyline frozen in the amber of my mind. Good times, they were.
So, I could identify with what I read in "Black Gods." Yet, after coaching and watching my son and his friends grow up with a basketball in their hands, I also realized what I read about in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood was what happened on any blacktop in everyday America.
Beautiful stuff here. Michael, thanks for the tip.
October 23, 2022
Gosh, I just couldn’t put this book down (and I was reading it for class!!!)! Woodbine put words to so many beautiful concepts I’ve witnessed in community and introduced me to a mysticism about ritual and grief that I didn’t know I needed.
July 10, 2016
Like most books that grow out of the author's dissertation, this one is a bit uneven in places, but in its best passages it is sheer poetry. It's no small task to combine Pierre Bourdieu, Henry Louis Gates, and David Hall's discussion of "lived religion" with something as visceral and immediate as a game of street basketball, but the author succeeds in this. Woodbine's love of the game and the community in which he grew up is palpable. His discussion of his own experience on Yale University's basketball team addresses important issues about the commodification of Black bodies in college sports. But beyond all else, in this historical moment in which we seem to need to be reminded of what should be self-evident--that Black Lives Matter--this is an important book in its examination of the rituals of grief and healing that can take place on an asphalt basketball court.
February 1, 2017
A really unique book that is part memoir/part ethnography of street basketball in the Boston neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan. I found the writing a bit clunky, but the main points Woodbine was making kept me going. I think it is a key book for understanding, from an insider's perspective, the significant role street basketball plays in rituals of loss, grief, mourning for the young men in these neighborhoods that have lost family members to violence.
May 8, 2016
Really loved this book. Wonderful mix of ethnographic work on street basketball in NY, engagement with African American cultural and religious studies, and mediation on life and death. Woodbine masterfully makes clear how black youth particularly use the basketball court to express that #BlackLivesMatter even as so much around them conveys the exact opposite. Powerful read!
December 29, 2016
Important study of rituals on basketball court that young African American men growing up in inner city follow to cope with loss, pain and express love. A kind of religion that provides support and relationships.
April 16, 2021
A gripping autobiographical study into the nature of religion and culture. I know Dr. Woodbine and got to hear him talk about this book at AU. He put his soul into this book and what came out was a truly moving story about race and spirituality through basketball. Even if you aren't into basketball I highly suggest this book.
January 5, 2018
Very solid read on how the people of Boston's inner-city use the playground courts as an escape from their troubled lives.
January 20, 2020
Love this book
November 24, 2020
More interviews would have made this better. But, well done.
May 20, 2023
man i don’t think ever i’ll get over this book
April 7, 2022
The Notorious B.I.G. said, “the streets is a short stop/ Either you’re slingin crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot” in 1994, the same year the documentary “Hoop Dreams” was released. “Hoop Dreams” follows high-school basketball players in Chicago who dedicate themselves to the game in hopes of escaping the ghetto. Biggie’s rhymes and “Hoop Dreams” are both recognized as classics within their mediums, and both significantly shaped the way we understand the Black inner-city experience as it relates to basketball.
Onaje X.O. Woodbine doesn’t contend that narrative, but he believes there’s more to it than that. Black Gods Of The Asphalt is a personal and ethnographic account of how street basketball is more than just a way to escape poverty. It’s also a spiritual practice, a way to honor the dead, to grieve, to heal. Woodbine grew up playing street basketball in Boston’s inner-city and became a star player at Yale, so he speaks from a place of authentic expertise.
Still, the book felt a little uneven. Unlike the title suggests, hip-hop is barely discussed, and a lot of the personal episodes go into a weird level of detail about things that ended up being irrelevant (especially when dialogue was included). At times the book felt conflicted, like it didn’t know if it was trying to be a work of scholarship or memoir.
But when it was good, it was great. The descriptions of basketball are beautiful and powerful, and it provides real insight into why people are drawn to the game, even in times of utter hopelessness.
Onaje X.O. Woodbine doesn’t contend that narrative, but he believes there’s more to it than that. Black Gods Of The Asphalt is a personal and ethnographic account of how street basketball is more than just a way to escape poverty. It’s also a spiritual practice, a way to honor the dead, to grieve, to heal. Woodbine grew up playing street basketball in Boston’s inner-city and became a star player at Yale, so he speaks from a place of authentic expertise.
Still, the book felt a little uneven. Unlike the title suggests, hip-hop is barely discussed, and a lot of the personal episodes go into a weird level of detail about things that ended up being irrelevant (especially when dialogue was included). At times the book felt conflicted, like it didn’t know if it was trying to be a work of scholarship or memoir.
But when it was good, it was great. The descriptions of basketball are beautiful and powerful, and it provides real insight into why people are drawn to the game, even in times of utter hopelessness.
February 21, 2021
Onaje Woodbine writes in Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop and Street Basketball that street basketball provides a feeling of belonging, a sense of community, a place for mourning (all the young black men who have been killed), a place to practice religious rituals, transcendent experiences and, in general, a place where ‘lived religion’ can be practiced.
Growing up in and around a housing project in Detroit in a different era, my experience was different than Woodbine’s and those he writes about. Nevertheless, I’ve been thinking about religion, beliefs, and values and the influence playing sports had on me. The games the kids in my childhood neighborhood organized and played is how I’d connected to a community that was quite different from my own family. Over time I’ve re-evaluated that experience and that led me to Woodbine’s book.
While having a different focus than what I’ve been mulling over, Woodbine focused on religious ritual while I was thinking about how personal beliefs are developed, I thought his book well worth reading for those interested in religion, sports and building community.
Less is said, I think, about Hip-Hop than street basketball or religious practices. Not that it has to have been that way.
Growing up in and around a housing project in Detroit in a different era, my experience was different than Woodbine’s and those he writes about. Nevertheless, I’ve been thinking about religion, beliefs, and values and the influence playing sports had on me. The games the kids in my childhood neighborhood organized and played is how I’d connected to a community that was quite different from my own family. Over time I’ve re-evaluated that experience and that led me to Woodbine’s book.
While having a different focus than what I’ve been mulling over, Woodbine focused on religious ritual while I was thinking about how personal beliefs are developed, I thought his book well worth reading for those interested in religion, sports and building community.
Less is said, I think, about Hip-Hop than street basketball or religious practices. Not that it has to have been that way.
June 9, 2016
I expected a relatively light read based on the book's size, design, and title. Not that it wasn't something to take serious, but that a book about hoops and religion seemed poised to entertain as much as educate.
Instead, I found an existentially heavy collection of personal accounts carefully explored using a variety of theories from religious studies. Basketball in the hood is about so much more than dreams of stardom or potential exploitation. These are stories of despair, hope, and healing. Basketball as religion.
I thought there were a few organizational issues with the book, otherwise it'd be a 5.
Instead, I found an existentially heavy collection of personal accounts carefully explored using a variety of theories from religious studies. Basketball in the hood is about so much more than dreams of stardom or potential exploitation. These are stories of despair, hope, and healing. Basketball as religion.
I thought there were a few organizational issues with the book, otherwise it'd be a 5.
June 28, 2017
I downloaded this after hearing the author interview on the radio. It has a strong and supported statement on the value of the game beyond hoop dreams. A nagging question is who is this for? If it's pandering to me, fine, I really enjoyed it.
February 18, 2020
A topic I love mixed with analytical discussion, definitely off to a good start.
My only complaint: I think Woodbine told beautiful and heartbreaking stories. However, sometime they were just that. He drew conclusions a bit too quickly from one or two scenarios or happenings.
My only complaint: I think Woodbine told beautiful and heartbreaking stories. However, sometime they were just that. He drew conclusions a bit too quickly from one or two scenarios or happenings.
April 21, 2017
This is a fantastic book. Woodbine does a spectacular job of balancing (auto)ethnography and academic research, and communicates the lived religion and racial experience of street ballers fantastically. I never dreamed that a book like this even existed; I loved everything about it.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews