Food for the Female Body
Food for the Female Body is an illustrated recipe book of ancestral care foods for menstruation, miscarriage, abortion, birth, and recovery. It gathers recipes and rituals from kitchens around the world. From Mexico’s caldo de pollo and India’s haldi doodh to Korea’s moon juk, China’s ejiao cake, Haiti’s fey tea, Benin’s bouillie enrichie, and the iron rich liver dish from the Middle East and North Africa, each spread pairs clear steps with cultural context and artwork by Sunny Wu. We honor everyday care work and the people who kept this wisdom alive.
Across communities, food is medicine, language, and love. These pages map warming soups after loss or birth, tonics that help rebuild blood, porridges for cramps, teas for calm, and shared meals for recovery.
Curated by Martha Dimitratou with research from RU collaborators. Illustrated by Sunny Wu.
We want to thank our friends and partners for making this book possible, including the Sex Talk Arabic Community, Hesperian Health Guides collaborators, Zhuoyun Chen, Olive Fleur Oussougoe, Luna Borges Pereira Santos, Sneha Sukumar Nair, and many others who are named in the book. Special thanks to the mothers, aunties, elders, and peers whose practices inspired these pages.
Disclaimer: This book is not a medical guide. The recipes reflect cultural and ancestral practices and are shared for educational and cultural purposes only. They are not medical advice. For health questions, consult a qualified healthcare professional.