What’s it all about?:
From Rupi Kaur, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of milk and honey, comes her long-awaited second collection of poetry. A vibrant and transcendent journey about growth and healing. Ancestry and honoring one’s roots. Expatriation and rising up to find a home within yourself.
Divided into five chapters and illustrated by Kaur, the sun and her flowers is a journey of wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming. A celebration of love in all its forms.
What did I think?:
Hello everyone and welcome back to another review on bibliobeth today. I’ve been away for a little break, perhaps longer than I would have liked as I’ve had some life “stuff” to deal with that has led to me being offered a new job. It’s been a tough decision for me to make as it involves uprooting myself from a place I love working, but practically and health-wise it’s going to be the best move to make as it will involve a reduction in both traveling and traveling costs! Anyway, today I’m here to talk about the second volume of poetry by Rupi Kaur who also wrote the astounding Milk and Honey (which I’m a huge fan of). Let me be frank, I’m not any kind of poetry connoisseur and I know the author has had a lot of criticism about her poetic style but all I’m here to say is, different things work for different people and personally, her poetry DEFINITELY speaks to me.
Rupi Kaur, author of the poetry collection The Sun And Her Flowers
Unlike most fiction/non-fiction books I review, it’s going to be pretty hard to give a synopsis regarding the particular content of The Sun And Her Flowers but there are overlapping themes between Rupi’s first collection and this, her second. It is divided into five chapters, all in turn connected with the growth cycle of flowers so we have: Wilting, Falling, Rooting, Rising and Blooming. As you may have suspected (or if you read the author’s previous collection, we start out on a somewhat darker note with Wilting and Falling where the author explores more heart-breaking nods to her life experiences so far. This includes her struggles with insecurity and body image, the break-up of relationships, her relationship with her mother and emotional and sexual abuse. Rupi uses her own simple but effective illustrations to complement her poetry which varies in length from a few paragraphs to merely a few lines but it seems every word is chosen so methodically in this latter case that just one sentence can be devastatingly moving.
After the initial few chapters, The Sun And Her Flowers embodies a much more positive message than Milk and Honey which at times, went into some very terrifying emotional places. The author focuses much more on learning to love yourself as a woman, accepting yourself for who you are, connecting with family and friends more often and accepting your past whilst trying to move on. The messages in her poetry that promote self-worth are dazzlingly effective and something I can see myself re-visiting myself if I’m having a bad mental health day and need a little boost. She still goes to some murky places and if you’re particularly sensitive to the topics I mentioned in the above paragraph, I would approach this collection with caution but generally, I could feel the optimistic change in her writing compared to Milk and Honey.
It’s almost as if Rupi Kaur has got everything out of her system, released a lot of anger and negativity regarding her past and although she understandably still has demons that haunt her, she is managing her own emotional well-being a lot better. She is able to discuss things that have happened to her in her past, confront the debilitating emotions that she suffered (and still continues to suffer on bad days) but can see the light at the end of the tunnel and approaches things with a much more positive outlook. For me, after Milk And Honey, my expectations were exponentially raised and although it isn’t the five star read that Kaur’s debut collection was and didn’t have as much of an emotional impact on me, it’s still a moving piece of work that I would be happy to read through again in the future, especially when I’m having particularly trying points of my own life.
Would I recommend it?:
But of course!
Star rating (out of 5):
