Review: Rupi Kaur's 'The Sun and Her Flowers' is beautifully and brutally honest

After selling 2.5 million copies of “Milk and Honey” and topping The New York Times' best-seller list every week for over a year, 25-year-old Punjabi-Canadian Rupi Kaur is back with more – hitting the nerves of many young females.

Kaur’s highly anticipated new book, “The Sun and Her Flowers,” is a collection of poetry with her own mesmerizing sketches. It's divided into five chapters: wilting, falling, rooting, rising and blooming. 

Kaur covers the same themes she did in “Milk and Honey” -- loss, heartbreak, abuse and femininity. These themes are related to love and the power it has in all directions – from the acceptance of immigrants, to the degradation of rape, to the journey of returning to yourself after heartbreak, to women supporting other women without hatred.

For a 25-year-old woman, Kaur’s wisdom speaks volumes to the sensitive and the suffering and encourages them to become strong and self-loving. 

“the irony of loneliness

is we all feel it

at the same time

-together”

“The Sun and Her Flowers” feels the same pain, growth and empowerment that “Milk and Honey” captures. It's intense yet invigorating, and encourages femininity in its most natural form. Kaur often compares the physical body and its emotions to flowers, to the sunshine and the moon and to the recipe of life. 

The wonderful genius behind Kaur’s writing is that it's so relatable. Her poetry speaks the words that people don’t always have the courage say. They're the kind of powerful words that are often thrown into the voided, unfair category of “fluffy.” 

“The Sun and Her Flowers” is beautifully and brutally honest, and snags modern female readers by the heart. Kaur succeeds in making feelings matter; she understands the value of the human heart and the respect that a living, breathing, creating person deserves. 

Kaur is the voice of a generation full of broken-hearted dreamers who may think they feel too much. Her poetry provides a path of healing that often goes overlooked – and it's a path that makes her readers understand that there's an entire universe of positivity to live for beyond the negative.

@laurashanny

arts@dailytarheel.com