Consuming Crisis

Dr Francesca Sobande is a Lecturer in Digital Media Studies at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University, UK. She is the author of The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), co-editor with Professor Akwugo Emejulu of To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe (Pluto Press, 2019), and co-author with layla-roxanne hill of Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). Francesca tweets at @chess_ess and more information about her work is available at francescasobande.com

Experimental, rigorous and an exceptional commentary on the multitude of inequities COVID-19 presented for the most marginalised. This book is a moving example of Black feminist scholarship’s capacity to demonstrate how employing neutralising tactics during crisis is a political choice by those in power. Sobande′s writing is the near perfect example of interdisciplinary Black scholarship which takes to task politics, sociology and cultural studies in ways that grapples with interpersonal and structural inequities during crisis Sobande presents a unique way of capturing a multitude of the structural and interpersonal challenges which COVID-19 intensified for many, whilst still writing in a way which feels incredibly personal to the reader.

• Chapter 1: Whose ‘New Normal’?Chapter 2: Beyond the Pretense of ‘Brand Activism’Chapter 3: Distraction, Dreaming, and AngstChapter 4: The Future, In Bloom