Blurb:
Milk and honey’ is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. About the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. It is split into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache. ‘milk and honey’ takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.
My Review:
Milk & Honey is a collection of poetries and proses by Rupi Kaur. The central themes are violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. The book is divided into 4 parts - The Hurting, The Loving, The Breaking, and The Healing.
The content is excellent. It touches your heart, and you are instantly able to empathize with the narrator. It is sad but teaches you an important lesson about healing.
The blurb states, “ ‘milk and honey’ take readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look”. I don’t agree with that. The book is like a journal of an abused girl. She shares her deepest secrets and whatever she has gone through. Starting from the abusive father, and being molested and raped by her cousin and uncle. She then talks about moving on, with that pain hidden in some corner of her heart. She falls in love with a guy, who ends up cheating on her. She tries to tell the guy that the new girl would never keep him as happy and satisfied as she could. Gradually, she realizes that all this begging is not worth it and that she needs to learn to love herself first. And hence, she takes her steps towards healing. You can’t find anything sweet in such situations. But you can work on your healing. You can try to forget the past and find things that make you happy.
What made the reading experience a little rough for me was the non-capitalization of words and inconsistent use of “you”. Sometimes it was used for the guy she loved, and sometimes for the reader.
In the first half of the book, the thoughts were presented a bit haphazardly.
It is no doubt an emotional ride and pushes you to work on healing yourself. But if you are very critical of grammar, flow, and structure of a book, then this one is not the best selection for you.