I would like to preface that many of us come from various positionalities. So, the beginning of building a culinary collection or workshop looks different for everyone.

This module will teach you where to seek archival culinary ephemera— or otherwise, how you can further develop your own collection through opening up to collaboration through participatory donations or submissions through family, friends, peers, and even strangers!

Black studies informs us on the ways that the archives can be a site of trauma, misrepresentation, and a place that perpetuated systemic, colonial ideas. Throughout history— not only was there a “lack” of Black Archivists and scholarship, but traditional boundaries in heritage places did not formally acknowledge Black thought that had already existed.

The curator of Feast Afrique, Ozoz Sokoh describes the culinary project as a dedication to West African cuisine and cultural heritage. Sokoh’s belief that food is more than just eating is strongly evident in her curation of the Feast Afrique website— each category: Read, Watch, Listen, Eat, Explore, and Experience provides new interdisciplinary modes of learning about food history.

Curator of the Sufra Archive أرشيف سفرة, Salma Serry, describes the digital repository as a space dedicated to Southwest Asians and North Africans (SWANA)’s food history, consisting of more than 2500 items.

University of Toronto’s Scarborough Campus (UTSC) holds various collections such as the Harley J. Spiller Menus Collection within their archives, as well as the Culinary Cookbooks Collection within their library. Lesser known archival collections at the UTSC are the Robert Bon Lee Menu and Brazilian Menu fonds. Away from UTSC, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, which is located on the St. George campus holds a Culinary Ephemera Collection.

Each community cookbook is bound to be different. However, they all have a structural process in creation. In this module, you will be met with questions regarding your audience, learning objectives, and resources to ensure that your community cookbooks are accessible to all.

Developed by Clara Scholtz, the NYPL Simmons LibGuide is meant to provide resources from its library, relevant to culinary ephemera and narratives. Various links are directed to NYPL books related to collective recipes within different categories ranging from ‘recent and current cookbooks’ or ‘community cookbooks in the news.’

This library guide contrasts from the NYPL Simmons Library Guide, as it mainly focuses on its own library resources, culinary ephemera, and regional community cookbooks, especially since this library guide’s purpose is to direct the reader to the resources that were once on display at the Northern Illinois University’s “You Are What You Eat” exhibition (2018).

Keep in mind when planning your community cookbook — Who does this community cookbook collection or workshop benefit? When seeking community participation in counter-archiving, we must understand that it is important to form a reciprocal relationship where we are also giving back to the people who have helped us in the development of our project.

According to the Sufra Archive أرشيف سفرة, “since 2007, Israel had imposed a siege on Gaza— restricting the movement of goods, people and aid. The blockade on food transfer acts to impoverish, collectively punish, and humiliate the people in Gaza. Today, more than 90% of Gaza’s population are below poverty line, +75% are severely food insecure, 95% suffering from a lack of a healthy diverse diet and +75% rely on humanitarian aid for food.”

Fields of Survival, Foods of Memory by Judith Carney contains passages that reflect on the absence of recognized African cultural heritage due to the erasure of identities under American segregation and enslavement. American society viewed Black communities as a monolith. However, archival documents and regional recipes provide greater nuance to the histories of Black enslaved cooks.