Milk and Honey 

Milk and Honey

Author Rupi Kaur

Country Canada

Language English

Genre Instapoetry

Publisher Andrews McMeel Publishing

Publication date 2014

Pages 226 pp (hardcover)

ISBN 9781449496364

Milk and Honey (stylized as milk and honey) is a collection of poetry and prose
by Rupi Kaur. The collection is about survival. It is divided into four chapters, with
each chapter serving a different purpose. Violence, abuse, love, loss and femininity
are prevalent themes.
 Milk and Honey was published on November 4, 2014. This poetry collection was sold
over 2.5 million times. It listed on The New York Times Best Seller list for more than
77 weeks. It has been translated into 25 languages.[1][2]
Kaur has a large following on social media.[3] Critics have called Kaur's
work instapoetry; "instapoets" are poets who have risen to fame by using social
media to leverage their work.

Contents

 1Themes
 2Style
 3Reception
 4See also
 5References

Themes[edit]
The book is divided into 4 themed chapters. The first chapter, "the hurting" is about
the author's experience with sexual assault, abuse and struggles of family issues.
According to one critic it was difficult to read and was compared to the Netflix
show 13 Reasons Why.[4]
The next chapter, "the loving", has a more positive feeling. The poems have been
described as sweet, and they are supposed to remind couples of the good things in a
relationship.[4]
"The breaking" brings the reader back to a dark place in the author's life. These
realistic poems relate to the sad feeling after a breakup.[4]
The last chapter, "the healing" tries to comfort and show women that they should
embrace who they are and that they are valuable, no matter what they had to
endure.[4]

Style[edit]
This collection uses evocative and accessible language. Kaur jumps between first-
and second-person pronouns. She breaks conventional rules of traditional poetry, as
she chose to honor her mother tongue Punjabi. She writes with lower-case letters,
creating grammar and punctuation 'mistakes'. Her style is direct, which enables the
reader to develop a relationship with the author.[5]

Reception[edit]
Rupi Kaur's poetry was described as easy and simple. She is credited with changing
people's views of poetry, because "she tells it how it is".[6]
The book received criticism over claims that Kaur's work plagiarized that of Nayyirah
Waheed. Critics cited similarities between the two poets' writing style of short poems
with jagged punctuation and line breaks, and for the same imagery.[7]
Milk and Honey received criticism regarding InstaPoetry, with Bustle stating that
Kaur and the book have "by far born the brunt of these critiques. For every positive
review of Kaur's work there is at least one scathing critique, ranging from actual
engagement with her writing to cheap shots claiming she had "commodified her
South Asian heritage".[8] She was described as a polarizing figure. John Maher
of Publishers Weekly stated that while a 2015 survey reported a drop in poetry
reading between 1992 and 2012, poetry sales figures doubled in 2017, two years
after Kaur published Milk and Honey.[9]