Poetry
Rupi Kaur Hits New York Times’ Bestseller List …
Now For The Tenth Week!
GREGORY COWLES
I the paperback trade fiction list, a debut collection called “Milk and Honey,” by the Sikh-Canadian writer Rupi Kaur, is going strong at No. 8 on the New York Times Bestseller List, after nine weeks.
Rupi Kaur is a 23-year-old social media phenom from Toronto, Ontario, Canada who gained attention last year when she fought Instagram’s removal of a photo she posted showing menstrual blood.
As her audience grew - she now has 475,000 followers on Instagram and 34,500 on Twitter - Rupi earned a reputation not only for her photos and sketches but also for brief, plain-spoken poems tackling feminism, love, trauma and healing in short lines that can be as smooth as pop music (“love will hold you / love will call your name”) or as jagged as rusty metal (“the hurt / the loss / the pain / the breaking”).
Much of Rupi’s appeal comes from this artless vulnerability, like a cross between Charles Bukowski and Cat Power, and from an ingénue’s willingness to blurt out whatever is on her mind.
“I was always writing for myself,” she said this month. “I wrote what I needed to write and hear - that’s what makes it powerful. And it’s this honesty that has got me where I am today.”
Well, that and some serious marketing savvy.
Besides “Milk and Honey,” which she initially selfpublished, visitors to Rupi’s website can also buy jars of artisanal honey branded with her name, “from the hives of distinguished queen bees.”
And she has ideas about how to expand her reach.
“There have been articles saying that all women need to read my book,” she says. “I ask, why not all men? In fact, that would be even more valuable because we women want to sit down with men and tell them - this is how we feel, this is what we go through.”
[Courtesy: The New York Times. Edited for sikhchic.com]
June 20, 2016