Following Rupi Kaur’s first book, milk and honey which sold over a million copies, her second book the sun and her flowers came out Oct. 3.
Similar to her last book, the book covered themes of misogyny and femininity, loss and love, and trauma and healing.
However, an addition to this book was the theme of immigration and her experience as being a child of immigrant parents.
The book is divided into five sections: wilting/grief, falling/self-abandonment, rooting/honouring one’s roots, rising/love, and blooming/empowering oneself.
Her poetry length ranges from one line to several pages and I think her poetry has improved from milk and honey.
The improvements I especially noticed were the use of line breaks and imagery.
I like the section “rooting” as it explores the struggles immigrants go through.
I haven’t read many poems about this theme, so to see an entire section devoted to it was truly eye opening.
I know a lot about what my parents went through when they first arrived to Canada but this made me realize that there’s a lot more to their experience than what I thought.
One of my favourite poems is called “broken english” which explores her parents’ experience moving to Canada. Kaur compares her mother’s accent to being as thick as honey and instead of being ashamed of her broken english, she is proud of it.
As much as I related to Kaur’s poetry, some of it felt recycled.
For example, one of her poems explained her jealousy of the rain because it’s able to touch her ex-lover but she can’t.
I think clichés are fine to use but sometimes after reading one of her poems, it feels like déjà vu.
But none of this takes away from Kaur’s talent.
The combination of her ability to tackle several taboo topics along with her own drawings to support her poem, makes it incredibly difficult to put the book down.
So if you’re into modern, minimalist poetry, and you can relate or appreciate the themes, the sun and her flowers is a wonderful read.
