Depression Cooking: easy recipes for when you’re depressed as fuck
Sonali Menezes
28 pages
https://www.instagram.com/sonaleeeeeee/
https://linktr.ee/sonaleeeeeee

Depression Cooking is a black and white, US half-fold size primarily text zine of recipes as well as advice and thoughts around eating when you are dealing with depression.

I’m reviewing this zine in January and decided to do so because depression is even more common at this time of year. Remember you are not alone.

Depression Cooking opens with a content warning (touches on diet culture, fatphobia, disordered eating, [Sonali’s] body, and [Sonali’s] weight) before launching right into the introduction. Sonali writes about how this zine is a love letter to depressed kin, zines and how beautiful they are, wanting to make this zine for a long time, and then into Sonali’s history both in the creation of the zine and with food and eating. From there we get the formal introduction to the format of the zine itself, including recipes having categories of ‘Less Spoons’ and ‘More Spoons’ (spoons = energy if your’re not familiar with Spoon Theory). A detail I love because sometimes you have an extra spoon or two, but just trying to come up with a little extra somethin’ somethin’ for your meals uses those spoons.

We also have a table of contents, general tips for mindset around eating, a number of recipes of both savoury and sweet varieties, and even some sneaky playlists for you!

What I first anticipated as being a zine purely of recipes and perhaps a story or two became a zine that had good timing in my life in a number of ways. Not only have I somewhat recently experienced one of the worst depressive episodes I’ve had in years, I also have issues with disordered eating and a history with bad food relationships. I appreciated this zine just by my assumptions from the title, and I appreciated it all the more seeing how Sonali wrote about personal experience with and around food.

One special element to note about this zine is highlighted in the first line (after the content warning): “This zine belongs to everyone.” Depression Cooking is noted as being copyleft. That means you can make as many copies as you like and send them to friends (like my friend Anna Gecko sent this copy to me). You can find the free PDF along with others at the Linktree link in the details at the top of this review. (Sonali only asks that you never sell it.) I love that Sonali did this, especially given how common and impactful depression is.

All up, I think this is a fantastic zine on so many levels. I want to make copies and send them to everyone, and I love that Sonali has made it possible to do that. This is definitely one to check out for yourself and/or for a friend. You don’t always know who might be struggling.

Thank you Sonali.

Death
Wesley Sueker
16 Pages
https://www.youtube.com/c/TwentyTwoZines
https://linktr.ee/twentytwozines

Death is an 18.5x11cm sized black and white zine in Wesley’s Drawing Room Tarot series that explores the meaning and implications of the card as well as adding perzine elements from Wesley’s life that relate to the card.

We open from a quote from Mark Twain about Death the immortal and its equal treatment of us all. Quite the opening, and quite the quote. From there, we read an introduction to the Death card and why it in particular can bring up conflicted feelings if not negative assumptions about the meaning of the card. The Death card may include but also can often go beyond the literal meaning and interpretation, and Wesley does a great job of explaining that.

We also read about how the Death card and its various meanings have applied through their life, Death within the structure of the major arcana, tarot in the musical Carmen, and much more. I also absolutely must mention that there is a resource section for further reading about tarot because I do so love a resource section.

Wesley’s writing style is just plain awesome. They write in a way that is welcoming and intelligent without presuming that the reader has any particular level of familiarity with tarot. They write about their life in an acknowledging and contemplative way and put personality into the more educational parts so you feel like you’re reading something from a friend rather than a textbook.

The physical format of these zines is one of the reasons that I say the physical aspects of a zine are part of the reviewing experiences. (Though I would have enjoyed a digital version as well.) This zine is sized not in your usual half or quarter sizes but rather like a tarot card with that extra length to the width. This detail tickled me and gave me a big smile throughout reading it.

Adding onto that, Wesley’s art style is just plain awesome. I love all the elements Wesley incorporated in their Death card and found myself interpreting everything from one hand letting go of another and the other holding on to the roses beneath. There’s so much more to the Death card than the assumed ‘it’s a bad card’, and Wesley really captures it all in so many symbolic details. Even better? The symbolism choices are laid out and explained in the zine itself.

Regardless of whether you’re ‘into’ tarot or not, I think you would enjoy this zine. There is so much about the symbolism of the Death card that relates so much to life and how we live it that it goes far beyond the study of the card itself. There’s a lot to get from this zine. Definitely one to pick up.