The Sun and Her Flowers

Megan

Rating: really liked it
I don't know where to begin. Listen, as a brown woman of course I gave Rupi a try - that's what we brown girls do, we hold each other up and support each other like crazy because who else will? However, I think we should also be able to speak up when the work just doesn't cut it. Being critical is simply tough love - so don't be so quick to dismiss my negative feeback.

First of all, half of this book are one-liners from her first book, and most of her longer pieces felt lazy and ill-thought out. I found myself skipping/ losing interest through most of them. Furthermore, I just can't ignore the more popular pieces she has claimed as her own when any avid reader can tell you they are not.

Example 1 :

"you must see no worth in yourself
if you find me worth less
after you've touched me
as if your hands on my body
magnify you
and reduce me to nothing" - rupi kaur

sounds awfully familiar to my favorite quote by Kaija Sabbah:

“If you consider a woman less pure after you’ve touched her
maybe you should take a looks at your hands.”

Example 2: (This is from her first book)

"She was music, but he had his ears cut off" - Rupi Kaur

"She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off." - Angela Carter

Example 3:

"a
man
who cries"
- rupi kaur


"i want more men
with flowers falling from their skin
more water in their eyes
more tremble in their hands
more women in their hearts

than on their bodies

more softness in their height
more honesty in their voice more wonder
more humility in their eyes."

- Nayyirah Waheed

Example 4:

"Your voice does to me
what autumn does to trees
you call to say hello
and my clothes fall naturally"

- rupi kaur

(Okay aside from this just being hilarious, here's who she tried to copy)

"I want to do with you
what spring does with the cherry trees."

- Pablo Neruda

and

"You wonder why I don't
answer your 3 a.m. phone calls.
When you say "I miss you"
I begin to undress myself out of habit."

-Sierra Demulder


Example 5:

"If you got any more beautiful
the sun would leave its place
and come for you"

- rupi kaur

“Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.”

― Nizar Qabbani


(Many of you have messaged be about the difference between plagiarism and inspiration, and this is my take on it:

If ms. kaur is attempting to give a voice to women through her work, which she claims she is doing, then she should also acknowledge everyone who has "inspired" her. The debate her isn't whether she's a good poet or not, but if she has any integrity....which she clearly doesn't. Many women of color writers, specifically black women writers, have been silenced by her.

This is the same woman who "wrote" the following:

"I am the product of all the ancestors
getting together and deciding these stories need to be told"

???? How??? By erasing them? By taking their words and signing your name underneath them?

and my favorite,

"never trade honesty for relatability"

Congrats y'all, she played you.)





The pieces speaking about some of the hardest topics seem so surface level, I felt wrong reading it. I would never give this to my daughter. Not to mention the randomly sprinkled poems talking about her being an immigrant, all of them felt so out of place and awkward next to her other pieces.

Anyways, I could go on and on about how much her work mirrors the work of lesser-known authors, but I think most readers already know this. I feel let down and embarrassed by this author and would never recommend it to anyone.
I can only hope she grows up one day and finally finds her voice.

Hailey (Hailey in Bookland)

Rating: really liked it
*Thank you so much to Indigo for surprising me with a copy of this!*

I never read Milk & Honey. It just seemed like such a fad thing, I had no interest in it. I tend to prefer traditional poetry. It's just my inner English major coming out I suppose! That being said, I enjoyed this more than I had expected. I didn't love the whole thing, but there were some poems that I really loved. The poetic style is quite simplistic and some quotes I felt like were reworded versions of things I've seen before. But, I liked the fact that this collection dealt with femininity, immigration, and self love. The topics were well developed and the poems were short, but packed a punch. Not sure if I'll now pick up Milk & Honey. We'll see!

Brittney Andrews (beabookworm)

Rating: really liked it
This review was brought to you by the best Real Housewives gifs on giphy.com.



Let me start off by saying that I am not a fan of Rupi Kaur's milk and honey; HOWEVER, being the forgiving person that I am, I have decided to give her work a second chance.

Warning: The gifs you are about to see are real reactions to the poems I just read.



Alrighty, here we go:

i live for that first second in the morning
when i am still half-conscious
i hear the hummingbirds outside
flirting with the flowers
i hear the flowers giggling
and the bees growing jealous
when I turn over to wake you
it starts all over again
the panting
the wailing
the shock
of realizing
that you've left

- the first morning without you

Just adding my unwanted two cents and personal preference here, but I would have been good had she stopped after 'and the bees growing jealous'. The last chunk of this poem just made me cringe and it also ruined the initial emotion I felt while reading the first half.



---

Next up, buttercup:

i envy the winds
who still witness you

Been dur, done dat. How is this original? I bet Atticus would love this one.



---

Please, Queen Latifah, give me da strength that I need to get carry on. Here we go again:

you break women in like shoes

You know what? I've made a grave mistake in reading this. This isn't my preferred cup of tea.



---

The end is nigh:

a
man
who cries

- a gift

I came. I saw. I conquered.



---

It's over, finished, done, finito, caput. Welp, that was definitely better than milk and honey. NOT! But in all honesty, none of her poems really left an impression on me. There were a few "poems" that I liked, but I've already forgotten them. Also, I thought this collection was meant to empower women? Majority of her poems came across as emotionally insecure and overly clichéd.

Here is why I have a problem with her work: corresponding imagery is nice to look at once in a while, but I picked this up to be moved by her WORDS. If I wanted a picture book, then I'd go out and buy one. I found the artwork in this unnecessary, and I wasn't impressed with the stick people drawings.

Also, I think modern poets tend to forget how impactful the use of punctuation can be for a reader. Create a tonality with your words and format your stanzas with stylistic elements. Unfortunately, this whole book was very dull and very monotone.

It is nice to see a young Canadian poet establish herself--don't get me wrong! And my heart goes out to Ms. Kaur after reading about some of the horrific situations she underwent. That being said, I still think her work is overhyped and resembles little fluffs of nothing. If you enjoyed this then no hard feelings. But no more chances and no more modern poetry for me. I mean it. (that's probably a lie)

*sings* Edgar Allan Poeeee sum sugaaa on meee.

PS. Check out this insightful article by Chiara Giovanni: The Problem With Rupi Kaur's Poetry

Julia Miller

Rating: really liked it
Rupi, you have my heart ❤️ beautifully written and ohhh the art :‘)

jessica

Rating: really liked it
i hold
the pages
that give my heart
a place
to call home
while words of
simple elegance
and subtle purity
teach it
to grow
and inspire it
to love.

- how i feel about this book

↠ 4.5 stars

April

Rating: really liked it
“I hear a thousand kind words about me and it makes no difference yet I hear one insult and all confidence shatters - focusing on the negative.”

I've never related to written words as much as reading Rupi Kaur's books.

Kai Spellmeier

Rating: really liked it
god must have kneaded you and i
from the same dough
rolled us out on the baking sheet
must have suddenly realized
how unfair it was
to put that much magic in one person
and sadly split that dough in two
how else is it that
when i look in the mirror
i am looking at you
when you breathe
my own lungs fill with air
that we just met but we
have known each other our whole lives
if we were not made as one to begin with

our souls are mirrors - rupi kaur

Find more of my books on Instagram

Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin

Rating: really liked it
Wow!! That was intense, sad and good!!



Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

Kelli

Rating: really liked it
i started 
to read
this hoping to 
enjoy it more than Milk and Honey but 
instead i
found it derivative

i also
question whether 
random
 breaks in
 sentences and 
no
punctuation is equal
to 
poetry



Some parts of this, like the things she wishes she could have told her mother on her wedding day and insights on immigration were thought provoking, but much of this felt like thoughts I’ve read many times elsewhere. 


Here are three examples of that:


you do not just wake up and become the butterfly




the right one does not
stand in your way
they make space for you
to step forward



what is the greatest lesson a woman should learn


that since day one
she’s already had everything she needs within herself
it’s the world that convinced her she did not



This is akin to reading a teenager’s journal. Not that it’s bad, but rather a bit cliche and young. Also, the amount of time it took me to correct the computer and remove punctuation and add breaks in sentences was frustrating... and I’m pretty sure it still didn’t put my quotes as they appear in the book! (That is an explanation point for emphasis.)
2 stars!!

Elyse Walters

Rating: really liked it
Beautiful...
The range of emotions are all felt ... sadness, anger, loss, grief, pride, guilt, fear, nervousness, shame, joy, surprise, love ....

These stories/ poems are heartfelt...
rupi kaur is a lovely gift to the world.

“for so long i was lost in a place where there was no sun, where there grew no flowers. but something i loved would emerge and bring me to life again”.

I love “Milk and Honey”...
and I equally love “the sun and her flowers”. The one complaint is that I wanted to buy this book in a hard copy -
so far it’s only come out in a paper copy.

rupi kaur writes about sensitive topics with piercing imagination.

Introspective and tender ...really wonderful!

Jon Nakapalau

Rating: really liked it
Heart breaking yet empowering - a woman's journey of growth - (wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming) as she comes to terms with her past, present and future. As a man this book touched me because I never was aware of all the different ways we try to make women conform to 'our' idea of what they should be. If you have a friend trying to put their life back together after a break up this book will help them focus on the path they need to take.

Whitney Atkinson

Rating: really liked it
4.5 Stars

Wow. Let me say I had low expectations going into this, but I was so wrong. Backstory: I'm not a fan of milk & honey. It's not a style I enjoy at all, and the entire book just felt too Tumblr and cheesy and simplistic. this blew me away. it's so different, fresh, and jaw-dropping.

it’s interesting to see how her writing has grown and evolved. there are very few short poems (unlike m&h), which i was thankful for, because in m&h it seemed like she would just write sentences with skips in it, then label them poetry, and i really hated that style. however, this utilized a lot of longer poems and metaphor and personification of nature, and although it’s still not my favorite style, it’s gotten so much better.

This book was just so much more personal. m&h felt like a ton of blanket statements and tumblr posts, but this one had quotes that actually made me sit back and go “whoa.”

“i even tried to bury myself alive
but the dirt recoiled
you have already rotted it said
there is nothing left for me to do
- self-hate”

AMAZING.

This book adds on an entire section about immigration and refugees, and I thought it was new and powerful as opposed to only talking about feminism, the body, and self-love. also, brown girls NEED to pick up this book. there is so much positivity and messages about acceptance of your skin.

i will say, if you decide to pick this up, don't give up hope until you reach part 2. The whole first part seems like it was a step back from milk & honey? milk and honey was so feminist and focused on recovery and self-love and some of the poems in the first part were like “TELL ME I’M PRETTY I NEED VALIDATION” and stuff like that and I was like ??????? It started out really weak but definitely got better.

Lastly, another thing I wasn’t a huge fan of is none of her poems use punctuation. She had some longer poems unlike anything she had in m&h, but most of those just employed really long-winded run-on sentences and I wasn’t a huge fan of that style. Because of that, it was hard to tell sometimes when one poem ended and another begun because none were punctuated, some didn’t have titles, some were just one sentence, etc.

Regardless, I'm sorta speechless because I expected to hate this and I actually enjoyed it so much. Several of the poems gave me chills. If you gave up hope after milk & honey, definitely think about trying this from a library or something because it is a MAJOR improvement and I think its messages are valuable, and nothing about this feels like a regurgitation of a Tumblr post.

Andreia Butterfly ❤Audiobook Addict❤

Rating: really liked it
"representation is vital
otherwise the butterfly
surrounded by a group of moths
unable to see itself
will keep trying to become the moth
- representation"

"this place makes me
the kind of exhausted that has
nothing to do with sleep
and everything to do with
the people around me
- introvert"

"think of those flowers you plant
in the garden each year
they will teach you
that people too
must wilt
fall
root
rise
in order to bloom"

Nat

Rating: really liked it
This long-awaited second collection of poetry by Rupi Kaur made waves; it was a ride brimming with of every kind of emotion imaginable. Divided into five chapters and illustrated by Kaur, the sun and her flowers is 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.

Kaur's voice is as audacious and brave as ever. She nails to perfection the specific intimate details that made her writing so achingly real in milk and honey. We have poems exploring self-love, self-hate, body-image, girls supporting girls, motherly love, feminism, insecurity, sexual assault, and so much more. I read through it in a whirlwind. I barely put it down, and it was so short I didn't even have to.

The author's smart, poised, and down-to-earth writing oozes inspiration. And I'm beyond eager to share some of my favorite pieces:








































I'll never grow tired of reading Kaur's passionate words. And I hope there's more and more to wait for in the future, regarding her poetry.



Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying The Sun and Her Flowers, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission!


This review and more can be found on my blog.

Melanie (MelReads)

Rating: really liked it
those last two pages! what a beautiful way to walk into the new year💖