Milk and honey by rupi kaur is a book of several poems that follows rupi kaur’s healing journey. We get insight into the hurt she and her mother have experienced together. We follow her healing journey after a rough childhood and heartbreaking events in her life, through her poems that have her thoughts and feelings engraved into them.
The book is set in four different sections—”the hurting,” “the loving,” “the breaking,” and “the healing”—each a different part of her life that she shares with us. The poems in “the hurting” tell the story of rupi’s childhood, the abuse she faced alongside her mother, an assault that changed her life, and her father who was absent. We get a look at her vulnerable side and the struggles she faced through her writing that is filled with emotion: “You have sadness, living in places sadness shouldn’t live.” The poems in “the loving” surround the stage in life where one meets a love they wish was for eternity. Rupi has fallen in love. We see the lessons being taught, the ups and downs, the tension that builds and the fights that end in passion instead of conversation. Each poem expresses the love and adoration that the author feels towards someone. The intense feelings, the doubts and reassurance that comes along with the relationship: “I am learning how to love him, By loving myself.” In “the breaking,” the poems show a love that is tender but can become so sharp that it ends in one person or the other being shattered. In this case we see the remains of a relationship where the love harmed both partners: “do not beg for what does not want to stay.” In the last section of the book, “the healing” is the final stage where rupi breathes a sigh of relief. She has moved on and is now a better version of herself, and we see that through the messages her poems give. She concludes, “If the hurt comes, so will the happiness—be patient.”
Life comes with struggles, different experiences for everyone, but milk and honey relates to everyone, the traumatized, the ones in love, the heartbroken, and those who are learning to love themselves and heal from all they faced. An amazing set of poems to read that will feel like home. While reading, it will feel like the comforting words from a loved one, a comfort comes with the sadness that is expressed through the pages of milk and honey by rupi kaur, a friend in book form.
Get the book Check out milk and honey by rupi kaur at BMCC’s Library, the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, or the Queens Public Library.
About the author Mj is a lover of psychological thrillers, young adult fiction, and poetry and a psychology major at BMCC.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
