New & Noteworthy: "Subversive Habits," Unjust Incarceration, and More

A Love Song

Elizabeth and Gulistan Mirzaei’s short documentary Three Songs for Benazir follows the life of a young newlywed couple, Shaista and Benazir, living in a Kabul camp for displaced persons. The Oscar-nominated documentary focuses on their burgeoning love as Shaista struggles with whether to join the Afghan National Army. Mirzaei Films.

Subversive Sisters

In Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle, professor Shannen Dee Williams illuminates Black Catholic nuns’ activism through oral histories and previously sealed church records, revealing the women who challenged racist structures inside and outside the church. Duke University Press.

Unjust Incarceration

Historian Hugh Ryan highlights queer and trans imprisonment in The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison. In exploring the history of the New York City detention center, Ryan makes a case for prison abolition while showing how the center shaped our understanding of queerness today. Bold Type Books.

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