She and Noel Furie had just come out as lesbians when they opened an unusual gathering place for women in Connecticut. Nearly half a century later, it is still thriving.
Selma Miriam and Noel Furie were unhappy housewives, as they put it, when they met at a gathering of the National Organization for Women in Connecticut in 1972. Soon after, they divorced their husbands, came out as lesbians and set about creating a place for women to congregate.
Ms. Miriam was a talented and adventurous cook, and at first they held dinners at her house, charging $8 for a weekly buffet of lush vegetarian dishes — a culinary choice they made because a friend pointed out that a feminist food enterprise should not contribute to the suffering of animals.
In 1977 they opened Bloodroot, a feminist restaurant and bookstore tucked into an industrial building on a dead-end street in Bridgeport. They had no waiters, no printed menu and no cash register, and they did not advertise. Against the odds, the business thrived.
“The people who need us, find us,” Ms. Miriam always said.
Selma Miriam died on Feb. 6 at her home in Westport, Conn. She was 89.
The cause was pneumonia, her longtime partner, Carolanne Curry, said.
“We don’t just want a piece of the pie, we want a whole new recipe,” Ms. Miriam declared in “A Culinary Uprising: The Story of Bloodroot,” a feature-length 2024 documentary about the restaurant. (Another documentary, “Bloodroot,” came out in 2019.)
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
