Feminism has always shared the big part of her poetry after Milk and Honey (2015), and The Sun and Her Flowers is also with no exception. Kaur's own life is very much present in her poems and boldly describes all trau-matic experiences that would make the readers feel her pains especially if (PDF) The Sun and Her Flowers. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330287406_The_Sun_and_Her_Flowers [accessed Nov 05 2019].

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Book Review

Asian Women

December 2018, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 121-124, https://doi.org/10.14431/aw.2018.12.34.4.121

The Sun and Her Flowers

Rupi Kaur. Kansas: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2017, 248 pages

Muhammad Imran

Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

Contemporary representations of feminist activists tend to rebuff tor-

tuous streams of earlier opinion, particularly, the Western thoughts about

Third World women and the strong orientalist whim along with the power-

ful patriarchal system in the Indian subcontinent. In her essay Can the

Subaltern Speak?, Gayatri Spivak (1988) raised a voice for the rights of Third

World women and their identity and dilemma of being silenced between

the double oppression of patriarchy and imperialism through critical exami-

nation of 'suttee', the self-immolation of females in Indian-subcontinent.

Like Spivak, Kuar, being an Indian by origin and a representative of Third

World women, also speaks for the voice of the downtrodden and the

subaltern. Feminism has always been a significant part of her writings and

by discussing feminist issues she makes her readers motivated. Throughout

her works, she talks about oppressed and subaltern class, the women.

Therefore, she discusses openly the issues of feminism and infanticide in

relation to Indian society where having a baby girl is considered a curse.

Rupi Kaur, a 24 years old Indian born Canadian poet, artist and theater

performer in her second book The Sun and Her Flowers (2017) chronicles

the lives of young females in a contemporary context through the experi-

ences of migration, diasporas, revolution, love, loss, femininity, trauma,

healing, and female identity. She skillfully highlighted the experiences of

growing up as a girl, the objectification of the female body, experiences of

sexual abuse and breakups and their aftershocks. Further, she rejoices in

the traditional Indian family love through images of parents and siblings in

poems and pays homage to their struggle in life being immigrants and

refugees.

Feminism has always shared the big part of her poetry after Milk and

Honey (2015), and The Sun and Her Flowers is also with no exception. Kaur's

own life is very much present in her poems and boldly describes all trau-

matic experiences that would make the readers feel her pains especially if

122 ❙ Muhammad Imran

the reader is an Indian or belongs to any South Asian regions. He/she can

associate her experiences with theirs. Being an Indian, she spotlights in-

fanticide and feminism, marginalization, suppression, and victimization

through sharing experiences of her mother for being an Indian woman and

an immigrant. Kaur explores both immigrant women's issues and her local

Indian patriarchal culture through the illustrations of mixed emotions thor-

oughly eminent in all sections at once of sadness, self-loathing, frustration,

happiness and anger together.

The Sun and Her Flowers addresses body dysmorphia, abuse, and rape and

counteracts them with verses on feminism and self-love. However, the

method she adopts to highlight the female issues is very unique in its style

that there is no male-bashing in the name of feminism throughout the

book and the pages are not mud with self-pity and soaked in tears. The

narrative framing of this volume is a life cycle of a flower which Kaur ma-

nipulates to consider the metaphorical deaths through which we all have

to go in order to finally blossom. The book is carefully divided into five

sections: Wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming, and each acknowl-

edges a distinct matter and time in the author's life.

Kaur composes heterogeneously longer prose poems designed as books

within the book in which she spotlights the basic causes of her mistakes,

oversights, and impulses. Further, this collection spotlights her cultural up-

bringing and her mother's sacrifices being a traditional Eastern Indian immi-

grant woman and the stereotypes that females never speak up. Kaur emits

a sagacity and reverence for life that she merges with the social justice ideals

of feminism and egalitarianism. She also enunciates to teens' struggles to

acknowledge, to exonerate, and to love with intensity and respect.

The first section, entitled "Wilting", sheds light on the author's struggle

with lost love and provides not only the author's lament on a failed rela-

tionship, but also emphasizes on counteractive advice and the importance

of self-love. The section begins with poems titled using bleak words and

phrases such as, "Cemetery", "Jealousy", "Pretend", "Hunger" and many

more. The verses called "the construction site of our future" portrays the

author's relationship with her lover as an abandoned construction site, a

powerful metaphor that implies that they have forsaken their love and fu-

ture that they could have had. By questioning the definition of love, Kaur

puts a spotlight on the hazardous obsession with romantic affection, while

also solidifying the significance of other relationships like those of family

Asian Women 2018 Vol.34 No.4 ❙ 123

and friends, and the joy in giving and loving. Furthermore, the journey to-

wards self-acceptance and Kaur's struggles with depression are presented in

passages such as "Questions."

Whereas "Wilting" talks about heartbreak, the second section discusses

a far more tabooed topic, rape mostly in the eastern part of the world

where Kaur, herself, is from. The haunting poems in this portion of the

book meticulously depict intense feelings of pain and sorrow. Kaur further,

and far more candidly, portrays ongoing battle with depression, especially

in a poem titled, "Depression is a Shadow Living in Me." Here, Kaur also

states her puzzlement with the idea that rape , which is so common in the

world, is considered a vile thing to discuss; while also illuminating her dis-

gust with the backward idea that women should have to hide their bodies

to avoid the stares of men. This s ection goes on to address the actions

women take to make themselves appealing not to others, but to themselves

in passages such as 'I am both the poison and the antidote' and 'all you

own is yourself'.

The next section "Rooting", depicts the process of regaining one's

strength and self-worth. The fourth section, "Rising", involves improve-

ment and growth. The poem "Celebration" clearly summarizes the idea of

the whole section as it compares humans and their lives with orange trees,

implying that their trees do not bloom unless they have bloomed first.

Kaur gives significance to the idea that in order to grow we must let go

of our pasts and refusing to do so is simply rejecting the idea that there

is a tomorrow.

The final section adorned with the title, "Blooming", reaches the climax

of the author's journey. Here, Kaur acknowledges her past, observes all the

sacrifices she has made. "Blooming" is the final process when a flower

reaches its final form and has achieved maximum and complete growth.

All in all, The Sun and Her Flowers has successfully achieved multiple com-

mendable aims. Kaur in a soft, simple but comprehensive style emphasized

the basic issues of females at various stages of life in an immigrant as well

as patriarchal society, flaunting multiple personal experiences. She urges

readers to accept that we are not the masters of this earth; rather, her visi-

tors for a short time and must enjoy this time with its fullest till the last

moment with hope and comforts for others. This book evokes various

emotions, mostly sympathy, and empathy and teaches the readers to love

themselves before they love the world.

124 ❙ Muha mmad Imran

References

Kaur, R. (2015). Milk and honey . Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Spivak, G. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Crossberg (Eds.),

Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271‒ 313). Cary Nelson and Lawrence

Grossberg. Urbana: University of Illinois Press

Biographical Note:

Muhammad Imran is a Ph.D. student in the School of

Foreign Languages at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. His

research interests include post-colonial literature, women lite rature and

comparative literature. Recently, he is working on his doctoral dissertation

based on female identity in the context of patriarchal ideology presented in

Asian Anglophone literature. Email: imranjoyia76@gmail.com

... They were able to express their emotions and feelings and reached out to the national and international community and have become representative voices for their fellow women who could not express their emotions and feelings openly. Autobiographies are among the texts that provide the first-hand description of the lives of persons and give good insights into how personal experiences have been crucial (Imran, 2018). These illustrate how women are undergoing a transition in their fight against typical mindsets of patriarchal society. ...

This article focuses on Afghan women's courage in resisting physical and other violence and victimization through their writings. It argues that the absence of a strong Afghan female voice has led numerous female writers to highlight women's issues in Afghanistan. It demonstrates the courage and gradual awakening of women in Afghanistan to fight against violence and victimization in a culturally complex and patriarchal society. Thus, this is an appraisal of their struggle and highlights women's issues in order to spread awareness about gaining a voice by women being vital for survival.

... Salman (2018), chooses foothold as the primary concern of study and says, the plot of Foothold revolves around Saleem, a beguiled Economics professor in search of answers to his existential dilemma. The play itself is primarily Absurdist, though not only because of the subject matter, rather, because of the setting; it begins and concludes on a dusty train station amidst an interplay of the past and the present (Imran, 2018). An avid audience may be able to tell that the playwright was influenced by the Absurdist theatre in Britain and beyond. ...

This study aims to investigate the protagonist: Saleem"s journey for searching the self and the endurance he has faced to discover the reality. The objective of this study is to get the spiritual way to accomplish personality. A scrutiny of the text demonstrates that Saleem bears the characteristics like Buddha (Four Noble Truths) sketched out by Guatama Buddha. To shape the theoretical structure of this exploration Gautama Buddha's philosophy of life (four Noble truths) had been used. Saleem's character has been concentrated under the focal point of the Spiritual setting. Saleem strays into the wild to look for confidence like Buddha. He doesn't surrender his mission as he gets back to his loved ones and discovers that confidence can be found and polished among his community. The play presents the wonders of picking up God's interest by making harmony between the physical and spiritual world. The play makes a profound figure, who isn't cut off from the physical world, and faces and searches the arrangement of his issues. The play presents a pioneer like Buddha who has a typical existence and accomplishes his happiness in having the option to go through a time on earth which unravels ordinary undertakings. As there is a lack of analysis on Foothold thusly, the understandings for this exploration have been gotten from buddha's works. This exploration would be valuable to those scholars who wish to consider the Foothold in a postcolonial setting. Besides, the extent of this task stretches out to Sufism, Mysticism, and Imagism.

  • Trishna Deka

Purpose of the study: This study attempts to explore the multiple aspects of feminist perspectives in milk and honey by Rupi Kaur. Methodology: This study is description through analysis. Gaze theory, concepts like 'écriture féminine' and objectification are applied as a medium of the theoretical framework. Secondary sources are used for analyzing the chosen topic. Main findings: The study shows that the poetry of Kaur (n.d.) in milk and honey amalgamates multiple aspects of feminism. Although a reading of feminist ideologies in literary works is not a new research area, yet the merger of many issues of feminism in the same collection of poetry is quite impressive. Social implications/Applications: The study contributes towards being familiar with the movements of feminism in the digital age. It highlights how the feminist perspective in the digital age has pioneered a unique way of presentation. The novelty of the study: The novelty of the study lies in the way it reconnoiters the various feminist thoughts intertwined together in the poems of the same collection.

Abstract: This paper aims to analyze the ideology of alienation in modernist fiction as embedded in social isolation and incompleteness of human needs in Mansfield's Miss Brill and Carey's Life and Death in the South Side Pavilion. Although, Mansfield and Carey belong to two eras; modern and postmodern but they present the concept of social alienation and incompleteness of basic human needs in similar ways. Their character sketches of Miss Brill and Shepherd 3rd class link alienation with the lack of love and belongingness, on one hand, while self-esteem and challenges of capitalist, metropolis and industrialist attitudes on the other hand. Therefore, this paper explores that how both Miss Brill and Shepherd 3rd class reflect the life of the people entangled in solitude, alienation, separation, and affected by globalization and industrialization especially urbanization of the early and mid of the 20th century.