“Red” Book Puts The Period On Periods

“We all know womanhood can be very challenging; that’s why it’s good to start it off with a sweet taste of support and a little cream cheese frosting,” Lily Grace Sutton read aloud to celebrate a new New Haven-rich book all about menstruation.

Grace Sutton was reading on Saturday from the last line of her essay about baking red velvet cakes for her friends when they get their first periods, her way of welcoming them to the beauty and the challenges ahead. The reading took place before a small crowd gathered in a sun-washed room at the Institute Library downtown.

The essay is featured in Our Red Book, a newly published anthology of personal stories about periods, growing, and changing. Or, as the book’s publisher puts it: ​“Our Red Book takes us through stories of first periods, last periods, missing periods, and everything about bleeding that people wish they had been told.”

Saturday’s reading at the Institute Library at 847 Chapel St. was the second stop on the book tour for Our Red Book. The first was in New York City last week following the book’s publication on Nov. 1. 

For the editor, New Haven native Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, and many of the contributors, this Saturday’s talk was a homecoming.

This project started for Kauder Nalebuff — who previously published the New York Times bestseller My Little Red Book and who teaches at Yale — when she was growing up in New Haven. 

After hearing stories of her family members’ first periods, her mother told her: ​“Rachel, you are hearing stories that have never been told.” At fourteen, she began collecting essays from friends and community members about their first periods, preserving stories that might have otherwise been lost.

Our Red Book features many fellow New Haveners. Mindi Englart, mother of Lily Grace Sutton and longtime New Haven teacher also read her essay on Saturday. From the front of the room, she started: ​“My period ended just as my daughter’s began.” Englart spoke about navigating menopause and the role determined for women who no longer menstruate.

Englart, Sutton, and Englart’s aunt, Judi Katz, were just one of many families that the reading brought together. 

The last reader on Saturday, Sofiya Moore, is the granddaughter of Zannette Lewis — a New Haven organizer and author of one of the original essays Kauder Nalebuff collected at fourteen, who has since passed away.

In addition to her own essay, Sofiya shared her reaction to her grandmother’s essay, which is also published in Our Red Book. She said that it was very powerful to hear about her grandmother, who she didn’t know very well, as well as the stories of earlier generations who were enslaved. ​“Although this story in particular was hard for me to stomach, I think stories like this are so important,” she said.

Tchad Moore, Sofiya’s father and Zannette’s son, said that contributing to the book was a wonderful way for his daughter to connect to her grandmother after her passing. ​“They are so alike,” he said. ​“Both fiery, independent spirits. When Sofiya was born and my mother held her in her arms, you could feel the energy.”

The stories of grandmothers, mothers, daughters, and friends all discussed the stigma around first periods, last periods, coming of age, aging, womanhood, and menstruating as a trans or gender-nonconforming person.

Their stories provoked laughter, tears, many murmurs of solidarity, and reflection.

Listening to these many stories as a reporter and audience member at Saturday’s reading, I thought back to my own first period, the support of my friends, and the many creative ways that I hid tampons in my sleeves, shoes, and lunch bags in high school.

In seventh grade, I adored ballet and was doing well at my dance studio. I was over the moon when I was asked to fill in for an older girl in the corps de ballet for Swan Lake. I would get to dance the iconic ballet as a pristine and tranquil swan, clad in white. 

A recipe for disaster, obviously.

I came off stage at one of the dress rehearsals to find my brand new pair of tights stained with blood. There wasn’t any time for tears or wondering if I was dying. I had to get back out there. An older girl whisked me into the bathroom and handed me a tampon — pads won’t cut it in a tutu. She stood outside the stall and told me what to do, which I did with only slight hesitation. I trusted that she knew best. I put my tutu back on, got back on stage, and that was that.

The sense of solidarity and support was immediate. Because I had no other choice but to ask for help, I never felt any shame about my period with other menstruating people. But for many years after, I knew it was something to hide from others.

Unlearning the stigma around menstruation was a common theme among the excerpts read to the audience at the Institute Library, which included people of all genders and ages.

Amira Periotti, an organizer with Bleed Shamelessly in Wisconsin and current Wesleyan University student, spoke about their work helping all who need it to access menstruation products, and make conversations about menstruation more equitable for trans people, gender non-conforming people, and people of color.

“It’s really surreal,” said Pierroti, of reading their contribution to the book on Saturday. ​“To have so many generations of menstruating and non-menstruating people coming together to laugh is so special. Because there is still so much stigma.”

Two of the contributors, Axel Gay and Piper Zschack, were English students at the Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School in New Haven in Mindi Englart’s class, when they first met Kauder Nalebuff over Zoom. They both started their essays about what getting their periods meant to them as people who didn’t identify as women in February 2021, their junior year of high school.

As of the publication of Our Red Book, they have graduated high school and their thoughts about menstruation have changed. ​“I don’t really agree with what I wrote anymore,” said Gay. ​“I think of it now as a tribute to my younger self.”

Zschack felt similarly. ​“I stopped taking testosterone about seven months ago,” he said. ​“I’ve started menstruating since then, but I’ve accepted it and woven it into my life.”

For Kauder Nalebuff, who was meeting many of the contributors in person for the first time, the reading was a special experience. ​“I met some of them when they were 13 and it’s been almost four years. There’s such a big difference.”

“This was such a different process than the making of a typical anthology,” Kauder Nalebuff told the Independent. The stories came to her one by one, starting when she was fourteen. They came from New Haven and all over the world, from many different generations and in many different styles. ​“I just surrendered to the process,” she said.

Our Red Book is now available for purchase at Possible Futures bookstore at 318 Edgewood Ave. in New Haven.