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" I was born in India, and we came from a poor family and lived in a rural village. My dad came over to Canada as a refugee, and years later, we were able to join him. "
Rupi Kaur
Family
Canada
Village
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" 'Milk and Honey' was written with me being honest to myself, kind of pulling at the things that I hear the most and saying that out loud, and you know, that thing that we hear the most is most universal, and so that rings true with all folks. The language used in the poetry is extremely, extremely accessible. "
Rupi Kaur
Language
Poetry
Me
" When I was little, my dad told me about Anandpur Sahib and the court of Guru Gobind Singh. That we came from a tradition of poets, warriors and artists who created when it was illegal to create... we're groomed to be reckless in the defense of what we feel is right. "
Rupi Kaur
Me
Feel
Create
" I was always writing for myself. I wrote what I needed to write and hear - that's what makes it powerful. "
Rupi Kaur
Write
Powerful
Myself
" I did not start out thinking I'm going to become a feminist poet. It was a tag I was given. "
Rupi Kaur
Start
Thinking
Poet
" I write from the various experiences I live. Not every poem comes from my personal experience, though. It could be something that a friend lived, or a person from my community here, or a woman anywhere around the world. "
Rupi Kaur
Community
Live
Here
" Before I begin to write, I listen to music that inspires me. I listen to folk Punjabi music, sufi music. "
Rupi Kaur
Listen
Music
Before
" My dad studies and practices homeopathy and Ayurveda medicine. He's a strong believer in both honey and milk as forms of healing. Honey is the one food that does not die. It does not expire. Growing up, he'd always be mixing up almonds or turmeric or gram flower with milk to cure a cough or a cold. "
Rupi Kaur
Food
Healing
Medicine
" I think social media is... really cool in the sense that I don't think that a writer like me would've found a readership if maybe Instagram wasn't there. "
Rupi Kaur
Me
Think
Social Media
" I feel social media can be very distracting, unhealthy, and harmful to one's self-confidence. I don't even log on to it on my phone except when I post something on Instagram. "
Rupi Kaur
Self-Confidence
Media
Social Media
" I won the speech competition in class, and I always say this was my first 'spoken word performance.' It was the first time I got on stage and recited something. I fell in love with the stage at the age of 12. "
Rupi Kaur
Speech
Age
Competition
" For some of my young female readers, it will be the first time they will have seen a Punjabi author be successful in the West. Because I'm dealing with topics that aren't always easily discussed, I know they will look up to me, because I would have done the same. So I just want to make sure I do right by them, wherever this takes me. "
Rupi Kaur
Successful
Time
Done
" You have to really understand that although certain memories or stories make you sad, you are not sad. Pull yourself out from that emotion and remember that. "
Rupi Kaur
Yourself
Memories
Remember
" I love Roald Dahl, Sharon Olds, Nizar Qabbani, who is a poet, and Junot Diaz. "
Rupi Kaur
Who
Sharon
Poet
" I can sit down with my sisters, and they can talk about my body in a certain way, and I will laugh about it with them. That's such a comfortable and loving relationship. But if a stranger I meet in a party makes the same comment, depending on their tone, that's not okay. "
Rupi Kaur
Laugh
Relationship
Meet
" Feeling 'ugly' or 'unattractive' seeps into your life like poison, and it affects everything. Feeling worthless does the same. We internalise these limitations, and it takes an internal revolution to get rid of them. "
Rupi Kaur
Ugly
Feeling
Life
" The trauma of South Asian people escapes the confines of our own times. We're not just healing from what's been inflicted onto us as children... it is generations of pain embedded into our souls. "
Rupi Kaur
Pain
People
Own
" I think I only started to speak to people in grade four. "
Rupi Kaur
People
Only
Speak
" I'm a brown girl from a Punjabi pind raised in Toronto. I don't expect literary critics and purists to understand the nuances of my experiences, and the experiences of the people around me... And my tradition holds that there is a magic in the written word. So how I write, what I write of, and why I write all comes naturally. "
Rupi Kaur
Tradition
Magic
Girl
" I want to leave behind a literary legacy. "
Rupi Kaur
Behind
Literary
Legacy
" I felt voiceless for so long, I wasn't ever able to say what I felt out loud. I didn't know how to say it. Posting online presented itself as a comfortable medium. I could say what I wanted to say in a way I still felt comfortable. Whenever, however I wanted to. "
Rupi Kaur
Know
Way
Say
" For me, the power of the poetry in 'Milk and Honey' is the feeling you get after finished reading the poem. It's the emotion you feel once you've read the last word, and that is only possible when the diction is easy, and you don't get stuck on every other word, you don't know what the word means. "
Rupi Kaur
Honey
Know
Me
" My parents didn't allow me to do all the things the cool kids could do. I was quiet, reserved, and at some points, taken complete advantage of simply because of my sex and gender. For a while, in high school, I was so deep into self-hate. "
Rupi Kaur
High School
Parents
Deep
" I sat with myself one day and asked, 'Who is in those prestigious literary circles? Do they represent me? Do they appreciate the topics I write about and the style in which I write? Do those gatekeepers let a demographic like mine through the door?' And the answer was no. "
Rupi Kaur
Me
Appreciate
Day
" When things get better, there's a swing to the pendulum where things get worse for others. "
Rupi Kaur
Pendulum
Others
Better
" We are not outraged by blood. We see blood all the time. Blood is pervasive in movies, television, and video games. Yet, we are outraged by the fact that one openly discusses bleeding from an area that we try to claim ownership over. "
Rupi Kaur
Time
Television
Movies
" My gut is so strong. I feel like I have a lot of books in me, and they're going to come out because I said so. It's going to happen. "
Rupi Kaur
Feel
Said
Strong
" My favourite character in fiction was probably either James from 'James and the Giant Peach' or Ender from 'Ender's Game.' They were just ordinary people who were living under various amounts of struggle, and just to follow their journeys and see them break out of that and live extraordinary lives - I think that gave me a lot of hope as a kid. "
Rupi Kaur
Struggle
Character
Hope
" The pain that all people experience in life and the light that helps them champion through it all - it's their lives and their stories and their love and will to keep living that moves me to write. "
Rupi Kaur
Love
Me
Pain
" Being that my parents and I were immigrants to Canada, I didn't have the most lavish life growing up. "
Rupi Kaur
Canada
Growing Up
Parents
" Poetry and art are key influences in changing how we look at taboos. "
Rupi Kaur
How
Poetry
Look