The Sun and Her Flowers

The Sun and Her Flowers

Author	Rupi Kaur
Language	English
Genre	Poetry Romance
Publisher	Andrews McMeel Publishing
Publication date	October 3, 2017
Publication place	United States
Preceded by	Milk and honey

The Sun and Her Flowers is the second book of Rupi Kaur's poetry collection. It was published by Andrews McMeel Publishing on October 3rd 2017. It is composed of five chapters as well as illustrated by Rupi Kaur. She takes readers on the journey of wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming throughout the 248 page novel.

Summary

Wilting

This is the first chapter of The Sun and Her Flowers. Kaur wrote about her last days of love through well-written poems to bring love back and to talk the regret of abandoning the construction site of her relationship.

i could be anything

in the world

but i wanted to be his

Kaur establishes the theme of her loss within the chapter. She goes into detail about the loss of someone/something she was passionate about. She also talks slowly about moving on with her life into a positive light. Kaur ended this section with more of a positive poem in which time tells how to continue with your life even with the losses you withhold.

rise

said the moon

and the new day came

the show must go on said the sun

life does not stop for anybody

it drags you by the legs

whether you want to move forward or not

that is the gift

life will force you to forget how you long for them

your skin will shed till there is not

a single part of you left they've touched

your eyes finally just your eyes

not the eyes which held them

you will make it to the end

of what is only the beginning

go on

open the door to the rest of it

-time

Falling

Kaur opens the next chapter, falling with a poem:

i notice everything i do not have

and decide it is beautiful

This section is about understanding her own failings and her inability to appreciate what is in front of us. She wrote about her positives in her life and the reality when it comes to a positive life. She also wrote about the realization that waiting is not the same as living. This section ended with a poem that includes every section of the novel. This poem is also on the back of the book as well, therefore Kaur really wanted this poem to be emphasized a lot.

this is the recipe of life

said my mother

as she held me in her arms as I wept

think of those flowers you plant

in the garden each year

they will teach you

that people too

must wilt

fall

root

rise

in order to bloom

Rooting

This section of the book is Rupi Kaurs favortite out of this collection. In order to establish the tone of this section, Kaur opens up her chapter of Rooting with the poem immigrant:

they have no idea what it is like

to lose home at the risk of never finding home again

to have your entire life

split between two lands and

become the bridge between two countries

Kaur establishes the theme of her culture within the chapter. She dives into deep detail about her parent's past and their lives in India before migrating to Canada. She also highlights that her parents created a healthy, strong family with her dad not knowing what a vowel was or her mother not knowing how to construct a perfect sentence in English. Kaur lives through her mother’s past and tries to understand the concepts of fear, sadness, arranged marriage, and true love. Kaur also expresses her contrasting views with her family’s religion and explains her own beliefs:

my god

is not waiting inside a church

or sitting above the temple’s steps

my god

is the refugee’s breath as she’s running

is living in the starving child’s belly

is the heartbeat of the protest

my god does not rest between pages written by holy men…

Rising

Within the third chapter of The Sun and Her Flowers, Kaur expresses the bliss and joy the early stages of a relationship bring. She utilizes the natural beauty of nature in order to convey the raw emotion she feels for her significant other:

this morning

i told the flowers

what i’d do for you

and they blossomed

Throughout this chapter, Kaur focuses a lot on trust and the commitment of lovers. She continues to address the promise of loving her partner into eternity and into their next life in the poem commitment:

when death

takes my hand

i will hold you with the other

and promise to find you

in every lifetime

Blooming

Coming to the realization of her true roots, Kaur also understands that there are many others who have faced the same hardships as her family. She eases into the last chapter of her book with the poem i refuse to do a disservice to my life:

i will no longer

compare my path to others

Kaur also highlights the importance of community no matter what race, background, or what god one believes in. She focuses on the love the world needs in order to heal it; she believes that love, equality, and peace can heal the current state of our world. In order to convey the sense of community, Kaur writes in her poem family:

what good am i

if i do not fill the plates

of the ones who fed me

Structure

Kaur splits her sophomore book into five sections: Wilting, Falling, Rooting, Rising, and Blooming. Wilting touches the subject of immense heart break and the feeling of there being no light at the end of the tunnel. The two major themes of loneliness and heartache are conveyed within the first section.

Falling is the second section within the book, and Kaur focuses on finding the little things about one's self and loving it. Since heartbreak and loneliness leads some to blame the issue on themselves, Kaur stresses the importance of forgiving yourself and truly loving yourself for who you are.

Rooting is the third section, and Kaur's favorite, of the book. Within this chapter, Kaur digs deeper into her ancestry and culture, and she tries to understand the struggles her parents faced being immigrants.

The last section of The Sun and Her Flowers is Blooming, and it focuses on the joy Kaur finally coming to love and accept her roots, herself, and the world around her. She also comes to realize her mission in this world: equality and love for all genders, races, and backgrounds.

Publication and Reception

Development

After self-publishing, her first novel Milk and Honey, Kaur signed a two-book deal with Simon and Schuster. Due to "Milk and Honey" selling two million copies and being on the New York Times Best Sellers list for over 73 weeks, Kaur found it extremely difficult to start creating her second novel. She felt as if her new book needed to exceed the sales, beauty, and attention that "Milk and Honey" received. Kaur attempted to begin the new book's journey for months, but nothing she wrote satisfied her expectations. Writing about death and immigration, Kaur quickly denied the ideas due to her having the concept of what "The Sun and Her Flowers" was to be filled with. However, Kaur eventually came to the realization that she needed to stop fighting her mind and told herself, "I'm just going to write what comes."

Kaur's main goal throughout The Sun and Her Flowers was to focus on was the corrective experience that occurs. Kaur expressed her love for the poems about death, mainly because death has been something she's been contemplating for quite a while. Mentioning her first book "Milk and Honey"-a collection of poems that tackles tough themes such as rape, violence, alcoholism, trauma- Kaur describes "The Sun and Her Flowers" as a grown-up version of her first book, but she goes deeper; it's more emotional.

Publication

The Sun and Her Flowers was published on October 3, 2017. A week after the book was released, it landed itself number two on Amazon's best-seller list. Within its first two weeks of publication it landed on the top ten New York Times Best Sellers list. Since its release “The Sun and Her Flowers” has currently been vying for No. 1 on Amazon, along with Dan Brown’s novel “Origin” and John Green’s “Turtles All the Way Down.”

Reviews

As with Kaur's previous book, The Sun and Her Flowers was met with a lot of mixed reviews. Kaur's first book Milk and Honey created controversy implying that Kaur's work wasn't original and that her stories reflected the experiences of others and not the experiences of her own.

The New York Times published an online article two days after the release of The Sun and Her Flowers about a New York City reading that consisted of a reporter attending the event in order to speak with some of Kaur's fans. In the article, the reporter describes both sides of Kaur's works, starting with the cons by saying, "The underlying message of all this criticism is that Ms. Kaur’s work isn’t “real literature.” The literary world doesn’t have a great track record of embracing or even acknowledging artists like Ms. Kaur, who are different in some notable way, but who attract an enormous and fervent audience." Then, the reporter continues to state the positive side of Kaur's work, "Many fans told me they share her poems with friends via Instagram or screenshots sent as texts, as encouragement or as a way to let Ms. Kaur’s work speak for them."

Another article that reviews the pros and cons of Kaur's work comes from The Guardian, and within it, the reporter utilizes poems from Kaur's book and explains how simplistic the language often is. The reporter states, "Even if you like her writing, these little jabs at her plaintive voice are spot on: one of Kaur’s actual poems muses “If you are not enough for yourself/you will never be enough / for someone else” and, while that gained 175,000 likes on Instagram, it has the air of the slurred advice you might overhear at the back of a Wetherspoons." However, the reporter then continues to defend Kaur's concise, and somewhat condensed, poetry by saying, "But to read Kaur’s success as an omen of the death of poetry would be to unfairly dismiss writing that contains bravery, beauty, and wisdom. Frankly, the literary world is saturated with white male voices of dubious quality. Kaur’s poetry should be given the same freedom to be flawed."

The Sunday Times, a European newspaper, published an article to review The Sun and Her Flowers. Before reviewing the book, they first described "[Milk and Honey]" as "alluded repeatedly to the personal damage of growing up in a world of abusive men, while being full of determination to recover." Jeremy Noel-Tod, the journalist who wrote this article, clearly took a positive stand with Kaur's work by stating, "So if you don’t like Kaur, scroll on." In order to emphasize the raw beauty of her earthy connections to her life experiences, he truthfully asserted, "Kaur’s style is artless and therefore sincere; its lack of workbench polish is the mark of immediacy."