HAMILTON READS

Depression Cooking by Sonali Menezes is part comic, recipe book, and memoir and is a ‘warm, generous, and illustrated guide to nurturing yourself when life – and the world – is too much.’

Depression Cooking: Feeding Yourself When It All Feels Too Hard
By Sonali Menezes

In Grade 12, Sonali Menezes wrote a short memoir for her writer’s craft class, but her teacher was skeptical: “Memoir is for older people, people who have led long and interesting lives. You are too young.” Menezes, a Hamilton-based artist and writer, put words to paper anyway. Now, 15 years later, she’s published her first book, Depression Cooking: Feeding Yourself When It All Feels Too Hard — part comic, recipe book, and (you guessed it) memoir. 

Menezes, who struggles with mental health, disordered eating, and the crushing weight of capitalism, created Depression Cooking as a 30-page zine filled with easy and delicious recipes that satisfied both her hunger and need for care. But its success made distribution unmanageable, requiring the help of friends and family to hand-collate, fold, staple, package, and mail the zine. 

“[People] wanted more recipes, more stories, more information on me and the food I was sharing. They wanted gluten-free options, vegan options, cheese-free options. They wanted swear-word-free versions, child-friendly versions, versions of the zine tailored to people with ADHD, versions of the zine in Spanish and French,” says Menezes in the book’s introduction. “They wanted to know what I ate and what made me feel better. They wanted more than I was able to offer.”

Depression Cooking, released by ECW Press in September, has more than 200 pages of stories, recipes, drawings, and lists. Select recipes, including no-fry kimchi rice and pumpkin spice overnight oats, have two options: Fewer Spoons (lower energy) and More Spoons (higher energy), based on a theory developed by Christine Miserandino to help define what it feels like to live with a chronic illness. Unlike many traditional cookbooks, Menezes didn’t add preparation times. “There’s no such thing as a standard time to scramble an egg,” she writes. 

Menezes writes that the recipes in Depression Cooking were written with the younger version of herself in mind. “I’ve compiled all the cooking tips and tricks I’ve picked up during the past 15 years, discovered through the pure willpower and curiosity involved in survival. Because surviving under the weight of late-stage capitalism and climate change while bat-shit crazy takes gumption,” she writes. “And when you’re feeling low on depression resources — or spoons — Depression Cooking is intended to be a tool to support and comfort.”

OTHER LOCAL READS

The Hunger of Those Who Built It
By Wendy Waring

The first novel by Hamilton’s Wendy Waring, The Hunger of Those Who Built It, brings readers to a near-future Paris that’s been reshaped by climate emergency. It’s centred on environmental engineer Diane Griffith, whose ambitious approach to vertical agriculture promises to transform the city. The book is a recent release by local independent publisher Stelliform Press, which prioritizes works of fiction and non-fiction that address the world’s most pressing problems, including climate change and ecological destruction. Asking questions about collective care and responsibility, The Hunger of Those Who Built It brings together exceptional world-building and storytelling in a thought-provoking look at the not-so-distant future. 

Children of Fire: Kurdish Female Fighters and the Struggle for Woman, Life, Freedom
By Shahrzad Arshadi and Anna Chatterton

In 2018, Shahrzad Arshadi and Hamilton’s Anna Chatterton travelled to the Qandil Mountains of Kurdistan. There, they gathered the accounts of Kurdish female freedom fighters they lived alongside. The transformative experience resulted in a collaboration, Children of Fire: Kurdish Female Fighters and the Struggle for Woman, Life, Freedom, a genre-blending book that amplifies the voices of the extraordinary women they met. Bringing together playwriting, photographs, personal essays, letters, and poems – among other forms – the book is a powerful look at resistance, solidarity, and activism.