New Releases: Malcolm X and Supernatural

Professor Abdur-Rahman’s parents were both Black Power–era converts to Islam, who left their mosque when they divorced in her adolescent years. Her memoir recounts her father’s history and her own, going from “the Christian righteousness of Adam Clayton Powell Jr.’s 1950s Harlem, through the Malcolm X–inspired college activism of the late 1960s, to the unfulfilled potential of the early 1970s Black American Muslim movement.” A look at the Black Power movement and American Muslims from the mid-20th century to today.

I talked about this in the nonfiction preview for 2021 and it’s now out! Jessup White is the Public Relations & Community Engagement Officer at Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello. In her book, she talks about her discovery that she was related to both Jefferson and Hemings and “explores America’s racial reckoning through the prism of her ancestors—both the enslaver and the enslaved.”

To find out how and why Americans eat the way they do, Fielding-Singh — a sociologist and ethnographer — looks at dozens of families, and does a deep dive into four: “the Bakers, a Black family living below the federal poverty line; the Williamses, a working-class white family just above it; the Ortegas, a middle-class Latinx family; and the Cains, an affluent white family.” What is the meaning of food and how does it change depending on your context? Really excited about this one; I haven’t seen a lot of books like it.

Until two years ago, I had seen no Supernatural. Then I had a really gay moment on Tumblr where I saw a gifset of Ruth Connell who plays the season ten witch Rowena, and I decided to just watch all the way through to get to her. So I have now seen ten seasons of this show. Which is still only 67% because the show ran for fifteen seasons whattt. This history goes through the show’s “predecessors, characters, major storylines, and fan activism.” This show and its fandom are something else, and if you like it, you’ll probably like this.