In the Gender, Sexuality, Feminist, and Social Justice Studies (GSFS) 401 Winter 2022 semester class on Food, Gender, and Environment taught by Dr. Alex Ketchum, students are analyzing the ways that food accessibility and environmental threats are gendered, raced, and classed within the global context. As part of the course, students visited McGill’s archives and special collections to have a hands on experience with historical cookbooks (more on that here: http://www.historicalcookingproject.com/2022/02/class-visit-2022.html). The Special Series of Student Posts is a collection of student reflections on what information we can glean from cookbooks.
Cookbook Analysis – The Coloured Women’s Club Millennium Cookbook
by Molly McKenzie
Cover of The Coloured Women’s Club Millennium Cookbook, 1999
The Coloured Women’s Club (CWC) was founded in Montréal in 1902 by a group of women of colour whose husbands worked as porters (The Coloured Women’s Club). The establishment of the CWC was defined by these women’s racial and class solidarity within the rising difficulties, both financial and social, caused by industrialization and the emergence of capitalism at the turn of the century. Moreover, the forming of the CWC was necessitated by the lack of spaces welcoming women of colour due to their identities as both racialized and women; the majority of charity groups of the time were constituted by wealthy, religion-oriented White women, and were not open to women of colour who worked as domestic workers and labourers (The Coloured Women’s Club). In this sense, the Coloured Women’s Club was created in response to the specific needs of their community, endeavoring to fill the gaps that they identified.
The central tenets of the CWC are mutual aid and fostering community and social inclusion. For example, the CWC provided support to veterans of the Boer War, to families in difficulty immigrating from the Caribbean, and to the overall emotional, material, and spiritual needs of the community. In addition to this, religiosity was a core aspect of their framework – the CWC also supported the establishment of Montréal’s oldest Black Church, the Union United Church, as well as worked in partnership with the Church to assemble scholarships for Black students (The Coloured Women’s Club).
Within this context, the structure and content of The Coloured Women’s Club Millennium Cookbook is indicative of this history and the values of the CWC itself. When the Millennium Cookbook was compiled in 1999, the group mostly consisted of senior members who had been with the club for many years, who had witnessed the rapid social and technological changes throughout the 20th century, particularly those that arose with capitalism and consumer culture at the turn of the century when this cookbook was released. The Cookbook was created with the intention of being a fundraising endeavor for the CWC scholarship fund and was sold for $21.95 CAD per copy in 2000 – the central goal of this project was mutual aid and community support. Alongside the variety of Island and Southern recipes curated by CWC members, poetry and prayers are featured, containing messages of guidance and advice for living a more fulfilling and happier life under the conditions of capitalism and colonialism. For example, the poem featured on page 4 titled The Paradox of our Age speaks to some of the struggles attributed to capitalism, consumerism, and technological advances, such as this impactful quote: ‘We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life’ (CWC Millennium Cookbook, 4). This particular poem focuses on symptoms of capitalist consumer culture such as feelings of emptiness, of excess, of quick fixes and short-term solutions, of instant gratification, of disconnect and isolation. This poem captures some of the visceral human experiences that have resulted from capitalism, and its inclusion in the cookbook highlights how this must have been heightened for the senior members of the CWC who witnessed this shift, who knew the before as well as the after, and who spent their time with the CWC resisting the very structures that caused this.
Furthermore, another poem titled Plant Three Rows of Peas on page 96 provides advice on the true sources of happiness and fulfillment in life: kindness, community, patience, and reflection. This poem decenters the redundancies outlined in the previous poem that capitalism and consumerism claim will bring us happiness, and brings focus back to the values structuring the CWC and the support that they provide to the community. This poem is much simpler in structure, reflecting the equally simple guidelines for living a fulfilling life. It seems to convey that things do not need to be as complicated as described in The Paradox of Our Age; in this sense, it is as if the lived experiences of the senior members of the CWC who curated this cookbook are coming through, who lived and knew the before of the millennium, who recognize that life has not always been this way. The poem’s use of food-centric language and puns also grounds this piece within the Cookbook and further maintains its relevance to this volume.
I chose to write about this cookbook because it demonstrates the power of community organization and solidarity. The Millennium Cookbook not only grounds itself within the community through its recipes, centering cultural recipes to which CWC members have personal ties (with most recipes noting to which member they can be attributed for their contribution), but it also is one of many projects the CWC took on to benefit and provide opportunities to their community – both through material and immaterial means. It is personalized and specific to its context, and acts as a sort of time capsule in that it offers a surprisingly deep look into the values of CWC, who its members were, and the needs and desires of their community at that time.
Bibliography
Gyles, Shirley, and Coloured Women's Club of Montreal. The Coloured Women's Club Millennium Cookbook: A Mélange of Island and Southern Recipes. Coloured Women's Club of Montreal, 1999.
The Coloured Women’s Club. https://colouredwomensclub.tripod.com/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2022.