CANR
WORK TITLE: Milk and Honey
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 10/5/1992
WEBSITE: http://www.rupikaur.com/
CITY: Toronto
STATE: ON
COUNTRY: Canada
NATIONALITY: Canadian
LAST VOLUME:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/27/rupi-kaur-i-dont-fit-age-race-class-of-bestselling-poet-milk-and-honey * https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/27/rupi-kaur-i-dont-fit-age-race-class-of-bestselling-poet-milk-and-honey
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born October 5, 1992, in Punjab, India; immigrated to Canada, c. 1996.
EDUCATION:Graduated from the University of Waterloo.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Poet.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Rupi Kaur was born in India and emigrated to Canada with her family when she was four years old. She began posting her poetry on Tumblr when she was in high school, first doing so anonymously and then under her own name. Kaur later began posting her poems and photos on Instagram, garnering over a million followers after one of her photographs (an image of Kaur with a menstrual stain) went viral. The photo was removed from Instagram for violating community guidelines, but Kaur noted that woman on Instagram are often objectified or sexualized, while her image was simply depicting a normal fact of most women’s lives. Similar feminist themes can be found in Kaur’s poetry, and she self-published her debut collection, Milk and Honey via Amazon’s CreateSpace platform in 2014. The book sold more than 10,000 copies, and it was then picked up and re-released by Andrews McMeel the following year. Kaur’s collection has since sold over a million copies, which is virtually unheard of for contemporary poets.
Kaur’s poetry, however, is not like the work of most contemporary poets, and it focuses more on universality than on specific details. In fact, Milk and Honey is divided into four broad categories: the hurting, the loving, the breaking and the healing. Notably, Kaur’s work eschews capitalization, as well as nearly all punctuation (using only periods to denote a new sentence). Her poems center on love, sexual abuse, loss, and family issues, and Kaur includes simple line drawings in the collection as well. Her combination of visual images and verse is a hallmark of her Instagram fame, and Kaur is known as an Instapoet because she is among a handful of poets who have amassed a following via social media.
Notably, Milk and Honey fared well with readers, but it fared less well with critics. The book’s popularity can perhaps be explained by Kyara Roberson in the online What Is That Book About, and she remarked: “In addition to being heartbreaking and inspiring, the author manages to showcase body positivity, women supporting other women, and other important topics that should be taught.” Yet, as online Palatinate correspondent Nikita Bangar observed: “Upon reading Kaur, I was drawn to the contrast between poems that seem to truly infiltrate your being, linking so closely to personal experience, and poems which comparatively lack notable substance. . . . At times, the imagery is almost too simple and although highly relatable, also predictable.” Chiara Giovanni, writing on the Buzzfeed Website, explained Kaur’s popularity as such: “Thanks to this social media strategy of sharing pieces with little to no context, Kaur is able to target two demographics: white Westerners who might be disinclined to buy books by minority writers, and her loyal grassroots fan base that includes a large contingent of young people of color across the world. She is thus able to maintain her brand of authenticity and relatability, but in different ways for different groups; to her Western metropolitan audience, she is ‘the patron saint of millennial heartbreak,’ while to her marginal readers she is a representation of their desire for diversity in the literary world, despite rarely touching upon race in her work.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, August 29, 2016, Anisse Gross, “Andrews McMeel Hits Sweet Spot with Milk and Honey; December 19, 2016, Claire Kirch, “Rupi Kaur: Bestselling Poet.”
ONLINE
A View from the Balcony, http://www.aviewfromthebalcony.com/ (March 6, 2017), review of Milk and Honey.
BuzzFeed, https://www.buzzfeed.com/ (September 13, 2017), Chiara Giovanni, “The Problem With Rupi Kaur’s Poetry.”
Ed Times, http://edtimes.in/ (May 14, 2017), review of Milk and Honey.
Her Campus, https://www.hercampus.com/ (April 16, 2017), review of Milk and Honey.
Palatinate, http://www.palatinate.org.uk/ (November 15, 2016), Nikita Bangar, review of Milk and Honey.
Rupi Kaur Website, https://rupikaur.com (September 13, 2017).
What Is That Book About, https://www.whatisthatbookabout.com/ (July 2, 2017), Kyara Roberson, review of Milk and Honey.*
Rupi Kaur
Born 5 October 1992 (age 24)
Punjab, India
Occupation Author, poet
Language English
Citizenship Canadian
Notable works milk and honey
Website
http://rupikaur.com/
Rupi Kaur (Punjabi: ਰੂਪੀ ਕੌਰ) (born 5 October 1992) is a Canadian poet, writer, illustrator and performer of Indian descent. She published a book of poetry and prose entitled milk and honey in 2015. The book deals with themes of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. milk and honey has sold over a million copies, reaching #1 and spending over a year on the New York Times bestsellers list.[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Life
2 Work
3 Inspiration
4 Books
5 Controversy
6 References
7 External liks
Life[edit]
Rupi Kaur was born in Punjab, India, to a Sikh family and emigrated with her parents to Toronto, Canada, when she was four years old. As a child, she was inspired by her mother to draw and paint, especially at a time when she was unable to speak in English with the other children at school.[2] She used to write poems to her friends on their birthdays or messages to her middle school crushes.[3] Growing up, she yearned for access to words written by people who looked like her, writing about things that she was going through.
She studied Rhetoric and Professional Writing at the University of Waterloo, Ontario.[3] Kaur and her family moved around many times before settling in Brampton, where she lived until recently.[4] She currently resides in Toronto, Ontario.[5]
Work[edit]
Kaur's first performance took place in 2009, in the basement of the Punjabi Community Health Centre in Malton.[2] Among her more notable works is her photo-essay on menstruation, described as a piece of visual poetry intended to challenge societal menstrual taboos.[6]
Throughout high school, she anonymously shared her writing, and in 2013 she began sharing her work under her own name on Tumblr. Kaur took her writing to Instagram in 2014 and began adding simple illustrations.
All of her work is written exclusively in lowercase, and the only punctuation used is the period. In the Gurmukhi script, there is only one case and only periods are used. She decided to write this way to honour her culture. She also says that she enjoys the equality of letters and that the style reflects her worldview.[2] Her written work is meant to be an experience that's easy to follow for the reader, with simple drawings to elevate her words.[7]
Common themes found throughout her works include abuse, femininity, love, and heartbreak.[8] In October 2015, Kaur published her collective works in the book milk and honey.[9] She has been contracted to release two more books with Andrews McMeel Publishing and Schuster Canada, the first of which is to be released in fall of 2017.[10]
In a recent TED Talk, Kaur performed a piece called "I'm Taking My Body Back", which centres on sexual violence—a crime committed on a car ride home. Kaur began writing poetry as a response to her trauma, but it's not the story she wants to tell—she's more interested in survival.[5]
Inspiration[edit]
Rupi Kaur says she draws inspiration from other people's stories and experiences, as well as her own.[11] Notable writers that she admires are Kahlil Gibran, Alice Walker, and Sharon Olds. She also draws inspiration from Sikh scriptures in her writing and her life.[3]
Kaur's passion for writing began when she was young, when she entered and won a speech and essay competition in middle school. She also took to writing letters to friends and crushes, and eventually started journaling.[12] She has said that empowerment is her favorite thing to write about because "it's like becoming my own best friend and giving myself the advice I need".[12]
Books[edit]
milk and honey (2014)
Kaur's first book is an anthology titled milk and honey. A collection of poetry, prose, and hand-drawn illustrations, the book is split into four chapters, and each chapter deals with a different theme.[3] The sections are titled "the hurting", "the loving", "the breaking", and "the healing". Kaur designed the book from cover to cover, illustrating pictures that were woven in with her words.
Amidst warnings of being barred from prestigious literary circles, Kaur originally self-published the book of poetry on Amazon in 2014.[13] The book was so popular that Andrews McMeel Publishing decided to pick it up for a second print in October 2015.[14] The book was on the top-seller list for Canadian literature on Amazon. It also landed in the number two spot on Amazon's bestseller list for poetry. The collection made it to the New York Times bestseller list and remained on it for 52 consecutive weeks. As of April 2017, it has sold over a million copies.[1]
As of June 2017, milk and honey has been translated into over 25 languages, including a popular Spanish edition translated by the famous Spanish writer Elvira Sastre entitled, Otras Maneras de Usar la Boca.[15]
the sun and her flowers (2017)
Rupi Kaur announced her second book, the sun and her flowers, in July 2017.[16] Like her previous book, the sun and her flowers is also a poetry anthology consisting of five chapters and the poems celebrates all the forms of love. It is set to release on October 3, 2017.
Controversy[edit]
In March 2015, as part of a photo project for a university class, Kaur posted a photo of a girl lying in bed with a menstrual blood stain on her sweatpants on Instagram.[17] The picture was part of a menstruation themed photo-series to destigmatize taboos around menstruation.[18] On her Instagram page, Kaur makes an explicit statement about such stigmatization, noting that "a majority of people. societies. and communities shun this natural process. some are more comfortable with the pornification of women. the sexualization of women. the violence and degradation of women than this. they cannot be bothered to express their disgust about all that. but will be angered and bothered by this."[19]
Instagram removed it – and the other photos in the series – twice because the picture didn't "follow (their) Community Guidelines".[20] Kaur took to Facebook to critique the removal of the post: "Thank you Instagram for providing me with the exact response my work was created to critique. You deleted my photo twice stating that it goes against community guidelines. I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in an underwear but not be ok with a small leak when your pages are filled with countless photos/accounts where women (so many who are underage) are objectified, pornified, and treated less than human."[21]
The picture on Facebook was shared by thousands, went viral, and made headlines around the world. Later, Instagram restored her picture and apologized to Rupi Kaur, saying it had removed it by mistake.[18]
rupi kaur is a #1 new york times bestselling author and illustrator of two collections of poetry. she started drawing at the age of five when her mother handed her a paintbrush and said—draw your heart out. rupi views her life as an exploration of that artistic journey. after completing her degree in rhetoric studies she published her first collection of poems milk and honey in 2014. the internationally acclaimed collection sold well over a million copies gracing the new york times bestsellers list every week for over a year. it has since been translated into over thirty languages. her long-awaited second collection ‘the sun and her flowers’ was published in 2017. through this collection she continues to explore a variety of themes ranging from love. loss. trauma. healing. femininity. migration. ‘revolution.
rupi has performed her poetry across the world. her photography and art direction are warmly embraced and she hopes to continue this expression for years to come.
be sure to follow rupi on instagram and facebook for continuous updates.
The young ‘Instapoet’ Rupi Kaur: from social media star to bestselling writer
Rupi Kaur’s first book, Milk and Honey, sold 1.4 million copies. Here, she tells how Instagram helped her find her young, female audience
Rob Walker
Sunday 28 May 2017 00.04 BST
Ordinarily, the illustration adorning the cover of a new book is not a big story, but such is the hype around the young Canadian poet Rupi Kaur that her plan to release the picture to her 1.3 million Instagram followers on 1 June is generating great excitement.
Kaur, 24, came from nowhere to sell 1.4 million copies of her first book, Milk and Honey. That is almost unheard of for a first-time writer, let alone a first-time poet. First self-published in 2014 and then by a publishing house the following year, the poetry collection became a New York Times bestseller. Now Kaur is building up anticipation on social media for her new anthology, which is due out in September. And here, the Observer publishes an exclusive extract.
Kaur is one of a burgeoning group of young “Instapoets”, so called because they have shot to fame after building up huge followings on social media. She was catapulted into the limelight after Instagram banned a self-portrait photograph, in which she is seen lying on a bed with menstrual bloodstained sheets.
She took a stand against Instagram, pointing out the hypocrisy of a platform that hosted sexual images of women yet censored a typical female experience. Followers came in their droves – 1.3 million of them at the last count (though notably she follows no one). “My book would never have been published without social media,” she says. “I wasn’t trying to write a book, it wasn’t even in my vision. I was posting stuff online just because it made me feel relieved – as a way of getting things off my chest.”
Milk and Honey is a collection of poems that tackles tough themes – rape, violence, alcoholism, trauma – but it’s written in Kaur’s trademark short, simple verse – with her own illustrations acting as visual punctuations.
“People aren’t used to poetry that’s so easy and simple,” she says.
And that is key to why Kaur has connected so strongly with millions of young people worldwide. Her poetry does not need heavy analysis. Rather like a rapper, she tells it how it is. One of the poems in Milk and Honey goes like this:
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The thing about having
an alcoholic parent
is an alcoholic parent
does not exist.
Simply
an alcoholic
who could not stay sober
long enough to raise their kids
She is in Sydney this weekend, as part of a tour that has seen her take in Britain, Spain, New Zealand and, next month, Canada. This month in Brighton, tickets to her performance sold out in less than 45 minutes, her London show in less than 10. The audience was predominantly female, twentysomethings, mostly students.
“She has changed the way that a lot of us think about poetry – she’s dusted off its cobwebs,” said Daniella Bassett, 20, queueing for the Brighton show. “She really gets to the raw emotion of life – but puts it in a human way. It’s gorgeous.”
A poem from Rupi Kaur's new anthology.
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A poem from Rupi Kaur’s new anthology. Photograph: © Rupi Kaur
Clutching a copy of Kaur’s book, photography student Rebecca Guiterrez, 23, agreed. “The images speak to me just as much as the words.” But the simplicity of her work has drawn criticism too. And Kaur says she is hurt by that. At the same time, she revels in being anti-establishment.
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“I don’t fit into the age, race or class of a bestselling poet,” she says, a glint in her eye.
“I used to submit to anthologies and magazines when I was a student – but I knew I was never going to be picked up. All their writing was, you know, about the Canadian landscape or something. And my poem is about this woman with her legs spread open.”
Born in Punjab, India, Kaur moved with her Sikh family to Toronto when she was four. She loved reading at school, but with English her second language she found it difficult to understand most of the poetry. What she loved was cutting and pasting words and images, or filling up poems with drawings.
It is not a million miles from what she does now and that formula will not change for her second book.
“It’s a grown-up version of Milk and Honey. The style is the same but I go deeper. It’s more emotional,” she says.
There are poems about refugees, immigration, revolution – each motivated in part, she says, by her experience of living and writing in the US during the rise of Donald Trump.
But a big part of the new book, too, is about the grief of losing “what you think is the love of your life – and dealing with its raw aftermath,” she says. “How do you redefine love when your idea of love is something that’s so violent? When your idea of passion is anger. How do you fix that?” she says.
Kaur does not necessarily write from experience. Hers seems to have been a happy, albeit strict upbringing on the outskirts of Toronto. She talks little of her past but simply points to her experience of being a woman as the thing that has most informed her writing.
A poem from Rupi Kaur’s new anthology.
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A poem from Rupi Kaur’s new anthology. Photograph: © Rupi Kaur
Whatever you might think of it, there is little doubt Kaur is at the forefront of a poetry renaissance in both Britain and US. People line the streets to see her perform and last week Milk and Honey was still in Amazon’s top 40 bestellers in the UK, more than 18 months after publication.
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During her Brighton performance, she wooed the audience like a pop star rather than a poet. It was as if they were under her spell. She asked them to click their fingers when something she recited “moves you emotionally”. As a result, the performance is punctuated by mass finger clicking, providing a rhythmic, almost musical backdrop to her words.
Kaur says it got her thinking. “How do I get this poetry bumping in somebody’s car? So maybe after this second book, I’ll get some time to go into a studio and perfect it,” she says.
She is unashamedly ambitious –a workaholic. She’s already 10 chapters into her first novel – “I’m just free-writing it at the moment” – and, apart from the music, she’s keen to experiment with screenwriting, films and photography.
“I want to do all those things – I want to double up – why not?” she asks.
The Problem With Rupi Kaur's Poetry
The milk and honey author's use of unspecified collective trauma in her quest to depict the quintessential South Asian female experience feels disingenuous.
Posted on August 4, 2017, at 8:19 p.m.
Chiara Giovanni
Chiara Giovanni
BuzzFeed Contributor
Not many poets are able to say that Ariana Grande follows them on Instagram. Rupi Kaur, however, can: The 24-year-old Indian-born Canadian counts the Dangerous Woman singer among her 1.5 million Instagram followers. Indeed, Kaur’s particular brand of celebrity is more akin to that of a pop star like Grande than a traditional poet. Her debut collection milk and honey, 200 sparse poems about love and loss, abuse and healing — first self-published in 2014 while Kaur was still in college — has sold over a million print copies and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 52 consecutive weeks. Tickets for the London leg of her world tour in spring 2017 sold out in less than ten minutes. In July, when Kaur uploaded a series of Instagram posts to announce her forthcoming second poetry collection — the sun and her flowers, to be released on Oct. 3 by Simon & Schuster — each image racked up over 100,000 likes. Kaur’s explosive success is largely due to her origins as a social media star, and she is not alone.
Like her peers Nayyirah Waheed, Lang Leav, and, to a lesser extent, Warsan Shire (whose work is more complex and has received more critical acclaim), Kaur produces bite-size, accessible poems. Their free verse poetry eschews difficult metaphors in favor of clear, plain language, and this accessibility is precisely what has garnered the new wave of "Instapoets" such a large and dedicated following.
But in terms of sheer numbers, Kaur remains the most popular — and the most controversial. Lauded by her readers as an authentic, intensely personal writer who isn’t afraid of baring her innermost trauma, she’s considered a much-needed voice of diversity in a literary scene that’s overwhelmingly white. But she’s also been accused of plagiarism and criticized for blurring individual and collective trauma in her quest to depict the quintessential South Asian female experience.
Kaur’s work brings up a bevy of questions: Is her poetic engagement with trauma valid as a defense against any critique of her style? After all, honesty, vulnerability, and a willingness to tackle tough issues are valuable qualities in any writer, but content and form are ultimately separate, and one does not cancel out the other. In an age when increasing attention is being paid to narratives of female trauma — particularly those communicated in a confessional vein — it can easily lead to the exploitation and commodification of those who experience said trauma.
Rupi Kaur’s rise to fame is a story befitting of our digital age; it’s a tale of sudden virality and savvy capitalization. In March 2015, Kaur was still a student of rhetoric and
professional writing at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. She had a modest
internet following when she uploaded a photo to Instagram of herself lying in bed, menstruation bloodstains on her clothes and sheets. The photo was removed twice, ostensibly for violating the site’s Community Guidelines. She hit back on Tumblr and Facebook, saying:
i will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in an underwear but not be okay with a small leak. when your pages are filled with countless photos/accounts where women (so many who are underage) are objectified. pornified. and treated less than human.
The story went viral, gaining attention from media sites across the world, including Jezebel, BBC Newsbeat, Mashable and the Huffington Post, the latter enthusiastically praising Kaur for breaking down the stigma surrounding menstruation. Emboldened by her new fan base, Kaur released an updated edition of milk and honey with new poems and illustrations later that year. The poems in the collection can be broadly divided into two main categories: emotional and empowering. Kaur deals with the pain and joy experienced in familial and romantic relationships, as in:
the way they
leave
tells you
everything
or
i see you
and begin grieving all over again.
She is also popular for her verses that focus on female empowerment and self-esteem, such as this poem published on her Facebook page for International Women’s Day, entitled progress:
our work should equip
the next generation of women
to outdo us in every field
this is the legacy we’ll leave.
The poems are often accompanied by Kaur’s own line drawings, such as:
we are all born
so beautiful
the greatest tragedy is
being convinced we are not
which appears inside a line drawing of a pregnant woman, or
An illustration from milk and honey
Rupi Kaur
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An illustration from milk and honey
your body
is a museum
of natural disasters
can you grasp
how stunning that is
which is paired with a sketch of a tornado.
An illustration from milk and honey
Rupi Kaur
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An illustration from milk and honey
Kaur’s poetry has been dubbed by the Huffington Post as essential reading for women everywhere due to her engagement with gendered yet universal themes such as sexism, abuse, trauma, sexual violence, and friendship. It’s this universality that can propel a poem — or part of it — into viral territory, as was the case for Warsan Shire’s "What They Did Yesterday Afternoon," an excerpt of which circulated around the internet following the Paris attacks in November 2015. It is perhaps telling that only the second, broader, and more general half of the poem went viral, rather than the first, which alludes to war crimes and conflict in Somalia and Kenya.
Kaur's stylistic similarities to writers such as Nayyirah Waheed and Warsan Shire, however, have also had negative consequences, with Waheed in particular recently leveling accusations of plagiarism (now deleted) at Kaur on Tumblr. Kaur has stated in interviews that she takes inspiration from Waheed and Shire, but Kaur works within a subgenre predicated on minimalist style — like short lines and a lack of punctuation — which makes it impossible to tell where inspiration ends and plagiarism begins.
This is not the only censure Kaur's work has been subject to. Satirical tweets, which have racked up hundreds of likes, imply that Kaur’s work is formulaic, shallow, and lacks true poetic talent. Her readers, however, do not mount a defense based on the quality of Kaur’s language; rather, they cite her openness about personal trauma in response to critiques of her work, suggesting that such honesty, particularly from a woman of color, exempts her from accusations of superficiality. That the debate has divided itself in such a way is a direct result of the poet’s own self-presentation: Whether on social media or in her poetry, Kaur has consistently marketed herself as an authentic writer who produces art free of artifice, and so any discussion of her work inevitably falls along these lines.
Kaur’s comments on her own work and the motivation behind it, as well as her rejection of the literary establishment, only strengthen this impression of effortless authenticity — in true confessional style, Kaur refers to her book as a “baby” and, in an Instagram post from June, calls writing her “most honest act of living.” Thus, when any suggestion of artificiality is preemptively shut down, it becomes impossible to discuss Kaur’s work in a way that goes beyond the existing dichotomy of vapidity versus raw honesty — and, as the moral high ground will always favor those who point to emotional authenticity over cynics who call the poet “corny,” this display of unpretentious openness ultimately benefits Kaur.
milk and honey is divided into four sections that can be read in isolation or in order, the first being "the hurting." Most of Kaur’s darker poems about rape, abuse, and familial misogyny can be found here. Yet many of these poems are not in the individual confessional vein for which Kaur is known and celebrated. Rather, they speak more generally about parents and children, men and women in the abstract, or they take a collective approach, relying on heavy use of plural pronouns like “we” and “our” to refer to an imagined South Asian universal experience. While Kaur didn't answer multiple requests for comment, the FAQ section of her website indicates that she is interested less in sharing her own experiences, despite the claims of her fans, and more in what she portrays as the collective nature of sexual trauma in her community, writing:
we know sexual violence intimately. we experience alarming rates of rape. from thousands of years of shame and oppression. from the community and from colonizer after colonizer.
This, together with Kaur’s attempt in the collection to gesture to a universal South Asian female experience, marked by abusive relatives and fear, reveals her desire to speak not about herself, but on behalf of the entire “larger South Asian community and diaspora.” Her ambition to act as a spokesperson of a mythic South Asian female experience also extends beyond the present day and into the past. Referring to colonial violence, she says:
our trauma escapes the confines of our own times. we’re not just healing from what’s been inflicted onto us as children. my experiences have happened to my mother and her mother and her mother before that. it is generations of pain embedded into our souls.
Kaur thus intends for her poetry to do two things at once: milk and honey functions both as an extremely individual (and thus subjective) work, and as a manifesto that attempts to redress the perceived wrongs done to the South Asian female collective. As she says under the FAQ section, “we also challenge that narrative [of abuse] every single day. and this poetry is just one route for doing that.” However, simply extending personal confessions to an entire community, and then claiming to represent generations of trauma with these confessions, is not as straightforward as Kaur would have it.
In his 2007 book The Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary, academic Vijay Mishra writes of the new wave of upwardly mobile South Asian immigrants and their “uneasy postmodern trend towards collapsing diasporic (and historical) differences” in the postcolonial literature they produce. Kaur indeed seems to note little difference between her educated, Western, Indian-Canadian self and her ancestors, or even modern South Asian women of a similar age in rural Punjab. She suggests that the way all South Asian women move through life is universal, uniting herself with them by insistently returning focus to the South Asian female body as a locus of “shame and oppression” in her collection.
While more female South Asian voices are indeed needed in mainstream culture and media, there is something deeply uncomfortable about the self-appointed spokesperson of South Asian womanhood being a privileged young woman from the West who unproblematically claims the experience of the colonized subject as her own, and profits from her invocation of generational trauma. There is no shame in acknowledging the many differences between Kaur’s experience of the world in 2017 and that of a woman living directly under colonial rule in the early 20th century. For example: neither is any more "authentically" South Asian. But it is disingenuous to collect a variety of traumatic narratives and present them to the West as a kind of feminist ethnography under the mantle of confession, while only vaguely acknowledging those whose stories inspired the poetry.
Kaur’s balancing act does not only extend to her approach to trauma, but also to her engagement with literary diversity. Kaur describes her personal trajectory specifically as “the story of a young brown woman”: Rather than self-defining as a Canadian poet, she stresses her marginality as “a Punjabi-Sikh immigrant woman,” deliberately rejecting a mainstream Western identity in favor of alterity. Her vision of herself as an icon of diversity against hostile gatekeepers of literary prestige is evident.
In interviews, she emphasizes the importance of being a brown woman in traditionally white spaces, whether it be expensive restaurants or bestseller lists, despite being warned about being barred from literary circles if she self-published her collection. Despite her political stance, however, Kaur’s work and public persona are carefully modulated in order to maximize her marketability to both a Western metropolitan readership and the grassroots social media audience to whom she owes her fame. Kaur meticulously works to present a different face to each market: On her website, she states that she writes in exclusively lowercase using only periods to pay homage to her mother tongue, Punjabi. But in a January 2015 interview with the mainstream feminist website HelloGiggles, she gives her love of “branding,” “visual experience,” and symmetry as the reason for her stylistic choice, with no mention of her mother tongue or the Gurmukhi script. It is a watered-down version of her explanation on her website, and one designed specifically with a white audience in mind. A love of symmetry is, after all, easier to identify with than a loyalty to a specific South Asian script.
Kaur’s strategic appeals to two different markets also inform the composition of her collection and her social media presence. While milk and honey contains several poems that, through coded words like “dishonor,” obliquely refer to Kaur’s cultural upbringing, that’s about as explicit as it gets: The poems are vague enough to provide identifiable prompts for readers from a variety of different cultural environments, including — in many cases — white Western readers. Thus the collection remains relatable — and, crucially, marketable — to a wider audience, while still retaining an element of culturally informed authenticity that forms much of Kaur’s brand. The few poems that specifically address race are positioned facing each other, a brief interlude in a collection that is otherwise devoid of racial politics, and once again addresses a white, Western audience in their appeal for recognition of South Asian beauty and resilience.
On Kaur’s official Facebook page, all the pieces she posts are broad, usually relating to love, breakups, and female empowerment, and can garner up to 28,000 shares. The same is true of Kaur’s Twitter and Instagram feeds. Most crucially, her individual pieces that do not deal with race, but rather treat more general topics, no longer read as inherently informed by race simply through their inclusion in a collection that claims to speak to issues of diversity. Her black-and-white words and sketches become neutral, shared by (often white) women all over the world as a nod to empowerment and sisterhood. There is no longer any indication of the specific issues of race and diversity she claims her work intends to address.
Thanks to this social media strategy of sharing pieces with little to no context, Kaur is able to target two demographics: white Westerners who might be disinclined to buy books by minority writers, and her loyal grassroots fan base that includes a large contingent of young people of color across the world. She is thus able to maintain her brand of authenticity and relatability, but in different ways for different groups; to her Western metropolitan audience, she is “the patron saint of millennial heartbreak,” while to her marginal readers she is a representation of their desire for diversity in the literary world, despite rarely touching upon race in her work. This is not to reinforce the often-damaging expectation that writers of color must write only about racism in order to be successful, only that Kaur claims to be documenting a specifically South Asian experience that never materializes.
But is Kaur exclusively to blame here? It is important to consider the literary environment that has uplifted her while shutting out countless other writers from the margins. The Western metropolitan literary market’s demand for confessional writing that is colored by just the right amount of postcolonial authenticity, ensuring that it is exotic enough to be attractive without making white Western readers uncomfortable, plays a major part in her success. Kaur is marketable because she presents a homogeneous South Asian narrative while remaining just vague enough to appeal to the widest possible demographic. Kaur’s reach will no doubt expand with with the release of her next book, the sun and her flowers, this October.
That’s because her mass appeal lies in her perceived universality, with her fans often claiming that she vocalizes feelings they have not been able to put into words. Other minority writers, who trade in specifics and details, not broad-reaching sentiments and uncomplicated feminist slogans, would probably not achieve the same level of success. It is the paradox of the minority writer: the requirement to write in a way that is colored by one’s background, but is, at the same time, recognizable enough to a Western audience that it does not intimidate with its foreignness. It is only by eschewing complacency and holding such artists to account that mainstream media and culture will become more diverse: the kind of representation that, without compromise, accurately tells the stories of people of color around the world, and not just the stories that are the easiest to sell. ●
Chiara Giovanni is a writer and PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Stanford University.
Born: October 05, 1992 in Munak Kalan, Punjab (India), India
Nationality: Canadian
Occupation: Poet
Addresses: Web site--rupikaur.com.
Canadian poet Rupi Kaur was born in India and escaped with her family to Canada at a young age. To deal with the hardships that came with being an Indian refugee, Kaur embraced the arts to help her process her feelings. She began with traditional art forms such as drawing and painting and expanded her creativity into words and spoken performances. Kaur' collective artistic ability culminated in the poetry collection Milk and Honey.
Early Life
Rupi Kaur was born in Punjab, India, in October of 1992. Due to escalating violence in the country, the Kaur family escaped to Ontario, Toronto, Canada, to start a new life. Kaur grew up isolated from other children because she spoke Punjabi and was initially unable to speak English. From a young age, Kaur's mother taught her how to draw, a skill that did not require learning a language. Even as she learned English and attended classes, she was ignored and occasionally bullied in school. Although she did not have many friends, Kaur soon found company in books.
As Kaur grew older, she shifted her focus from drawing to writing. She began writing and performing poetry at age 17. In 2009 the poet performed at the local Punjabi community health center. This inspired her to travel the country to spread her voice. The poet received mixed responses when she appeared at a venue near her hometown. When discussing the lack of Punjabi people attending her performances, she told the Guardian, "I think poetry and this form of expression is still kind of new and there's a lot of hiding happening." As a result of observing her audience, Kaur realized that she wanted to make her poetry more accessible.
Eventually, Kaur began posting poems on the social media site Tumblr and uploading videos of her spoken-word performances on the video-streaming site YouTube. As she gained more followers, Kaur pursued an education in writing. In 2010 the poet began her degree in rhetoric studies and professional writing at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario.
Rising Fame
During college Kaur realized that she wanted to share her poetry on a larger scale. She told the Huffington Post, "I felt like, for the first time ever, what I had to say was so much more powerful than my fear of what people might think." In 2013 she began to post poems to the social media site Instagram. She accumulated a following, which inspired her to publish a poetry collection.
Kaur researched the process for publishing books and told the Guardian, "There was no market for poetry about trauma, abuse, loss, love and healing through the lens of a Punjabi-Sikh immigrant woman." After some failed submissions, Kaur decided to self-publish her poetry collection. She used the graphic design application Adobe InDesign to create her book and self-published Milk and Honey with Amazon CreateSpace in 2014 to surprising success.
Shortly after the release of the collection, Andrews McMeel Publishing contacted Kaur to rerelease her book. An updated edition of Milk and Honey with illustrations drawn by Kaur was published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. By 2016 the poetry collection had sold more than half a million copies.
Further Readings
Online
"Bio," Rupi Kaur, https://www.rupikaur.com/bio (December 14, 2016).
"FAQ," Rupi Kaur, https://www.rupikaur.com/faq/#writing (December 14, 2016).
"Poet Rupi Kaur's Milk and Honey Sells More than Half a Million Copies," Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/13/poet-rupi-kaurs-milk-and-honey-sells-more-than-half-a-million-copies (December 14, 2016).
"Q&A: Rupi Kaur on Her Debut Collection, Milk and Honey," Quill & Quire, http://www.quillandquire.com/authors/2015/11/18/qa-rupi-kaur-on-her-debut-collection-milk-and-honey (December 14, 2016).
"Rupi Kaur: The Poet Every Woman Needs to Read," Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erin-spencer/the-poet-every-woman-needs-to-read_b_6193740.html (December 14, 2016).
"Rupi Kaur: 'There Was No Market for Poetry about Trauma, Abuse and Healing,' Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/26/rupi-kaur-poetry-canada-instagram-banned-photo (December 14, 2016).
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2017 Gale, Cengage Learning.
Source Citation
"Rupi Kaur." Gale Biography in Context, Gale, 2016. Biography in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1650010516/BIC1?u=schlager&xid=de124cc9. Accessed 6 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|K1650010516
Rupi Kaur: bests elling poet
Claire Kirch
263.52 (Dec. 19, 2016): p28.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Rupi Kaur, a Canadian poet, writer, and spokenword artist, may only be 24 years old, with only one book published to date. But, insists her publisher, Kirsty Melville, the president of Andrews McMeel Publishing's book division, Kaur is already "an amazing force" who is being hailed by some as "the voice of her generation." Kaur's message of hope is resonating with people of all ages--primarily female--all over the world, who are following her on social media, buying Milk and Honey, her debut poetry collection, and flocking to her spoken-word performances.
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Milk and Honey is a collection of poems accompanied by simple line drawings that explore themes of love, loss, heartbreak, sexual abuse, and what it means to be a young woman in today's world. After initially posting her poems on Instagram and Tumblr, Kaur self-published the collection in 2014 and sold more than 10,000 copies.
AMP's expanded edition of Milk and Honey, released in October 2015, has sold 800,000 copies to date. After more than 20 print runs, there are now more than one million copies in print. Milk and Honey has perched on the New York Times bestseller list for 33 weeks, currently at #3, and was on the PW bestseller list for 37 weeks (it fell off the list in early November, 52 weeks after its pub date, when, according to PW's bestseller guidelines, it became a backlist book, and was thus ineligible to be included on the ranking). The book also has been among the top-three trade paper bestsellers at Barnes & Noble for months.
"Kaur's message of self-empowerment really speaks to people, especially after the election," Melville explains, noting that, since the November election, she has seen photos of young women demonstrating against Donald Trump with picket signs that quote from Kaur's poems.
"She gives people the confidence to confront and overcome their trauma, sadness, and grief," Melville says. "People need to feel some hope. Her words are transformative."
Kaur's appearances at universities, bookstores, and book festivals, such as a recent appearance at the Sharjah Book Fair, have drawn as many as 800 people, Melville says. These people, she explains, "want to see her, experience her, and be healed by her."
Kaur's fans will soon have more poems to read. In an agreement signed in October, AMP and Simon & Schuster Canada reached a deal with Kaur for two new poetry collections; the two houses will share world English rights. The first of the two collections is scheduled to be released in fall 2017, and the second in 2018.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Kirch, Claire. "Rupi Kaur: bests elling poet." Publishers Weekly, 19 Dec. 2016, p. 28. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA475324238&it=r&asid=a5774a565cea4f630f8b804cf75302c2. Accessed 6 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A475324238
Andrews McMeel hits sweet spot with 'Milk and Honey'
Anisse Gross
263.35 (Aug. 29, 2016): p9.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Andrews McMeel Publishing has long been known primarily as a humor and gift book publisher, but the Kansas City-based company could currently be the country's hottest publisher of poetry books.
The publisher has a major hit with its third poetry book, Rupi Kaur's originally self-published Milk and Honey. The 2015 title has sold, SMP said, 450,00 copies to date and continues to move around 30,000 copies per week. Its release comes after a foray into a genre that SMP has rarely dabbled in.
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AMP published its first book of poetry in 2013, Lang Leav's Love and Misadventure. Leav's title came to AMP by recommendation. "We published a book that was a huge international bestseller called The Blue Day Book: A Lesson in Cheering Yourself Up by Bradley Trevor Greive," said Kirsty Melville, publisher and president of AMP. "Leav was looking for a publisher and spoke with Bradley, and he recommended us." While negotiations for the book were in process, Leav, who had self-published the book, mentioned that she was getting requests from Barnes & Noble for copies, something that helped convince AMP to seal the deal. To date, Love and Misadventure has sold around 150,000 copies. AMP published a second Leav book, Lullabies, in 2014.
In addition to strong sales, the publication of Love provided Melville with some market insight. "We saw that there was this generation of young women, mostly in that early-20s age group, who were responding to this form of expression," she said, adding that the type of poetry that was resonating with readers is often associated with spoken-word poets or poets publishing online. To add to its small list, AMP then acquired the rights to a spoken-word poet named Clementine von Radies, who has a presence on YouTube, which led AMP to discover the popularity of spoken-word poets performing at colleges. AMP released von Radies's Mouthful of Forevers in April 2015 and it has sold about 7,500 copies.
Melville said she was interested in Milk and Honey in part because Kaur had a major following on social media, as well as a successful career as a spoken-word poet. "[Kaur] was visiting a lot of campuses in the United States," Melville said. "So we thought it would be interesting for us to try a book in North America with someone of her experience."
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
After a slow beginning when AMP first released the book last fall, Milk and Honey began to find a larger readership this January, and demand has built steadily since. Melville was thrilled when Barnes & Noble said in late March that Milk and Honey was one of its better trade paperback bestsellers and put the book next to Me Before You in its stores. "Suddenly you've got Me Before You, which we know is a bestseller, and there's Milk and Honey," Melville said, noting the book has now become "a phenomenon." Melville credited the success of Milk and Honey to Kaur's connection to her readers. "Every time she posts something people [react]," Melville said. "It's just as simple as that. Her writing moves them."
Melville feels "that the medium of poetry reflects our age, where short-form communication is something people find easier to digest or connect with." As for AMP being a poetry publisher, she said, "Yes, this is poetry, but I think we are publishing a form of communication for the times that happens to be poetry, as opposed to being a poetry publisher. As a company, we've always published books about the meaning of life, in humor or in gift-book form, so it's sort of an extension in that way."
After publishing one book of poetry in 2013 and 2014 each, AMP released three in 2015 and plans to do 10 in 2016. The publisher has discovered a niche audience within the poetry world and continues to tap into it. "I think as a publisher you go where your audience is. We will just follow where the audience goes."
Gross, Anisse
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Gross, Anisse. "Andrews McMeel hits sweet spot with 'Milk and Honey'." Publishers Weekly, 29 Aug. 2016, p. 9+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA462236371&it=r&asid=1cc3539d6583da9a00aefbe315bf334d. Accessed 6 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A462236371
Book Review: Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
By Jessica Tiede
Posted Apr 16 2017 - 11:10pm
Tagged RUPI KAUR BOOK REVIEW POETRY POEMS BREAKUPS LOVE LOVE POETRY
via Noors Place
This heartfelt collection of poems hit the shelves November of 2014. I saw milk and honey in the store and decided to embrace my poetic side and purchase it. Needless to say, I was baffled with what I found folded into the pages. I was expecting an inspirational slightly tacky read much like how I viewed poetry prior to this. What I found was vulnerability, startling bluntness, and a pure and raw story laced into the pages of Rupi Kaur's poetry.
via Noors Place
Kaur breaks her book into four parts; the hurting, the loving, the breaking and the healing. The poems open in a bit of a dark aura. The hurting depicts the author’s experiences with sexual assault and the struggles of overcoming family issues. This section is a bit chilling and I found difficulty reading some of the poems. I found this part very comparable to the new series “Thirteen Reasons Why.”
The next section, the loving, is a more uplifting read. The poems are sweet and idealistic. These are the ones that couples want to read to remind themselves of why they are still together. I liked these poems and posted a few due to my connection with them.
via Noors Place
The breaking returned us to a darker place in Kaur’s life. Any girl that has ever endured a break up after a long term relationship could find a relatable poem in this section. I found myself back in sophomore year trying to get over some asshole that broke my heart. While these poems were sad, they were also very realistic and relatable.
The last section of milk and honey accomplished exactly what I think the author was aiming for. These poems empowered women to embrace themselves and to value who they are regardless of the turmoil they have endured. I would recommend this section to anyone going through a break up or just yearning for some comfort.
Overall I really enjoyed this compilation of poems and have already lent the book to a number of my friends that I feel could benefit from this book.
Rupi Kaur’s “Milk And Honey” Is A Failure To Me: ReviewED
By Chitra Rawat - May 14, 2017
All the articles on the internet compelling “7 Powerful Poems By Rupi Kaur Everyone Should Read” or “15 Times Rupi Kaur Made You Proud of Being A Woman” never interested me – precisely because I don’t like handpicking poems from a collection.
Poems have their own flow and purpose, and this is why they have been arranged in certain specific manners by the author. So is milk and honey. It is divided into four sections: “the hurting”, “the loving,” “the breaking,” and “the healing.”
milk and honey was released in 2015 and was a sensation. So much so that there is one person who always quotes her work in a week.
No matter how many people enthusiastically celebrate the anthology of her poems, I have certain specific problems with it.
Also read: Did You Know About These Amazing Regional Writers From India? ED Poster Series
1. Too basic that it will make you yawn
Take these two poems:
“apparently it is ungraceful of me
to mention my period in public
cause the actual biology
of my body is too real
it is okay to sell what’s
between a woman’s legs
more than it is okay to
mention its inner workings
the recreational use of
this body is seen as
beautiful while
its nature is
seen as ugly”
– milk and honey, rupi kaur
And
“i bleed
every month.
but do not die.
how am i
not
magic.”
– salt., nayyirah waheed
There is a mile of difference between both the women discussing menstruation. I will not argue because both deal with different topics though they are about periods itself.
What I really mean to say is, it is not enough to string a few words together to make a feministic statement to be accepted. You need to learn how to play around with words.
Except for a handful of poems, it seems Kaur has made this a handbook of feminism rather than a collection of poetry which talks about feminism. I came for poetry. Because that is how it was marketed. So don’t tell me that the reason I don’t like it is because I didn’t come for feminism. I went by the marketing strategy.
The success of this book really tells you how feminism is being sold in the market. Earlier, I used to think that it is restricted to advertisements but then you realize that literature has caught a grip of it too.
It is a feministic text. Sure. But it is bad poetry. Did not make me feel alive at all.
2. I smell elite feminism
Okay, the book really attempts to capture rape culture and the experiences of abuse. The hurting, the healing, etc. But the book somehow is just ONE STORY of womanhood.
And that singular story of womanhood – of abuse, without discussing how different factors might have contributed to abuses, especially to women of colour. I am not that kind of a feminist.
“So what if she has not taken intersectionality into consideration? It appeals to me, my struggles. I like it,” many might argue. One problem that I find among feminism in women of colour is that, even in that kind of feminism, there is a certain elite group which occupies these spaces (cisgender over trans women, upper-caste women over lower caste women, etc)
If that is not elite feminism for women of colour, what is it?
You like it because it appealed to you. I don’t like it because it doesn’t appeal to me. Fair enough?
And to people asking “So what?”, well, you get a terrible reading experience.
3. Lacked density
Flat. Absolutely.
It could be that what I understand by density is different from what you do. So, I will restrict it saying that: Rupi Kaur’s verses do not hold a deep meaning to me.
I read it, I felt good for a moment and then it faded away.
I am more of a person who would want to devour a book that haunts you with their depth. And especially poetry, which would make you want to go back to it again, every time with brand new eyes.
Rupi Kaur’s old and rusted verses did not cause my eyes to become brand new.
MONDAY, 6 MARCH 2017
Review: Milk and Honey - Rupi Kaur
I had seen bits of Rupi Kaur’s poetry floating around the internet for a while but hadn’t paid much attention until I saw a few people reference her book, Milk and Honey, and it went straight onto my to-read list.
Poetry isn’t exactly a mainstream form of expression or reading, and it has a muddled reputation and reception with all generations, but surprisingly the digital age seems to be making poetry relevant, ‘cool’ and ‘consumable’ again. You only have to scroll through #poetryisnotdead on Instagram to see that. In fact, it’s through mediums such as Instagram that Rupi Kaur has built up such a large audience and awareness of her own poetry.
I’m a strong believer that you only need to find the right style of poetry, the kind that speaks to you, to get it and appreciate it, in the same way as any genre of book or music. People consume poetry through lyrics on a daily basis without ever realising that’s what they’re doing. And I think that’s what the likes of Kaur manage to do with the simplicity and brutal honesty of their poetry; it’s relatable and real and not clouded behind elaborate metaphor or archaic syntax.
I took Milk and Honey on a long train journey, with the intention of reading a little before writing some blog posts. A few hours later I had read the whole thing in one sitting, and immediately wrote the scraps of four or five of my own poems into the notes of my phone, some of which you might have already seen appearing on my Instagram or Facebook page.
Although starting an ‘art journal’ and throwing myself back into poetry writing had been one of my goals for this year anyway, Milk and Honey pushed me into actually making these steps. I’ve got a full blog post in the making on this process and what I’ve created thus far, so keep an eye out for that.
The blurb on the back of Milk and Honey perfectly encapsulates Rupi Kaur’s style of writing and what the collection of poetry is about:
this is the journey of
surviving through poetry
this is the blood sweat tears
of twenty-one years
this is my heart
in your hands
this is
the hurting
the loving
the breaking
the healing
These final four lines are the titles of each section of the book, providing an overarching narrative journey, a journey of self-discovery and every significant moment along the way. The poems that fill these sections are predominantly short, but always sincere. Kaur holds nothing back; there is no mystery in her poems, but each one captures a seemingly familiar thought or feeling with such an exquisitely satisfying and unique expression. Every other poem or so is illustrated with a simple line drawing, to accompany or offer a new level to the words on the page. The illustrations are not composed of clear-cut or defined lines, they are messy and imprecise, existing in the same imperfect but real dimension as the sentiment they exemplify.
Rupi Kaur tackles all kinds of issues with her poetry, from growing up and broken families to love and heartbreak, gender and race, before finishing with a healing full of wisdom and lessons learned. You can read the collection from start to finish, tracing your own journey over the words on the page, or you can pick it up from time to time, letting the book fall open on a new page, and taking a journey into that one poem, exploring that one expression to its full depth.
Whether you’re a regular poetry reader, someone who dives in from time to time, or if the thought of poetry makes your insides curl up in revolt, I would recommend picking up Milk and Honey. I have no doubt that it will remain on my bedside table for a very long time.
Review: Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
Kyara Roberson July 2, 2017
I’ve been seeing this book everywhere. And on a whim, I decided to pick it up without having any knowledge of what it was about. And surprisingly, I really enjoyed it. Milk and Honey is a collection of poems that are both heartbreaking and inspiring.
The book is broken down into four chapters- The Hurting, The Loving, The Breaking, & The Healing. Each chapter emotes a different type of emotion out of the reader. The book is somewhat of a journey through life.
The book teaches you that life is filled with terrible and heartbreaking moments but within those moments you can find great things. Great things that you might have missed if you were not looking.
After reading one poem readers cannot help but want to stop and analyze the simple words that pack such a powerful punch. These poems can be read several times without ever getting old.
There is so much meaning and emotion behind every word, and it is even relatable. Several of the poems deal with situations that many face today. For example, there are poems about being trapped in a relationship and having an abusive parent.
In addition to being heartbreaking and inspiring, the author manages to showcase body positivity, women supporting other women, and other important topics that should be taught. This is definitely a book that everyone should read at least once.
Review: ‘Milk and Honey’ by Rupi Kaur
NOV 15, 2016• 0 • 0
By Nikita Bangar
It was a poem about individualism within partnership that drew me to Kaur (p. 59 for those who will go on to read her), and then her originally self-published collection of poems Milk and Honey. The book explores Kaur’s observations throughout 21 years of life, taking us through a journey divided into four stages, ‘the hurting’, ‘the loving’, ‘the breaking’ and ‘the healing’. Originally published in 2014, Kaur’s collection has recently gained much attention, selling over half a million copies in the US by September of this year.
It is her open discourse on somewhat difficult topics: violence, femininity, love, that gives her work a raw and almost uncomfortable edge. Her discussion of such topics easily engages the 21st century reader, who is somewhat predisposed to an interest in such topics as a result of their inescapable presence in social media. An “Instapoet”, Kaur in fact finds her roots in the depths of such forums.
Upon reading Kaur, I was drawn to the contrast between poems that seem to truly infiltrate your being, linking so closely to personal experience, and poems which comparatively lack notable substance. This is a book that subcategorises a wealth of topics under just four stages of life, and at just 21 years old it is understandable that Kaur has much left to learn. However, at times I found the contrast between content frustrating, there are times when her literary ability just does not seem well worked. At times, the imagery is almost too simple and although highly relatable, also predictable.
Nonetheless, this does not retract from the overall solidarity Kaur offers throughout her compilation. Her exploration of the female body is particularly striking, she encourages the reader to give themselves to themselves. As a female reader, I feel that Kaur works towards re-prescribing ownership of the body, giving women the affirmation that ‘to be soft is to be powerful’, and allowing us to take ownership of ourselves, trust in ourselves, believe in ourselves.
As a British Indian I was also very grateful for her tribute to women of colour, and noted that amongst all the voices that we hear throughout her work, that of the orient is always audible. In particular, the voice of a 21 year old woman of Punjabi-Sikhi heritage. I found this all the more salient as, within this demographic, the topics she explores are often culturally tabooed, and rarely openly discussed. Unfortunately, within such culture, sex, female empowerment via exploration and commandment of the body, violence and abuse, are examples of topics that evoke embarrassment and do not often merit open discussion. For this reason it is all the more interesting that such topics are discussed alongside those of culture and religion, such as Seva and Sikhi identity, perhaps in an attempt to normalise them and encourage discourse outside the pages of a book.
I encourage all readers to leaf through a copy. Find out how and why you should ‘fall in love with your solitude’, men and women alike.