"The Rivers of Punjab Flow through My Bloodstream": From to Do Lists to Postcolonial Trauma in the Writing of Rupi Kaur

Abstract

This paper explores and analyses the different representations of suffering in the poetry collections of Rupi Kaur, namely Milk and Honey, The Sun and Her Flowers and Home Body, with a special emphasis on the poems' postcolonial features. Throughout her writing, the author comments on a variety of topics, switching from domestic violence and mental health issues to productivity anxiety and ecological concerns in just a few pages.

Suffering in her poetry could therefore be perceived as an umbrella theme: it appears both as a to do list in case of a breakup and as a reflection on a long-standing problem of abortions in Punjabi community in Canada. Coming from a Sikh family that fled India in the aftermath of the British Raj, Kaur reclaims the (post)colonial heritage, acknowledging the trauma of the insurgency in Punjab.

However, while this bond is enough to take into consideration as a part of literary analysis, could it also be sufficient to perceive Kaur as a postcolonial writer and recognize suffering in her works as a projection of diaspora experience? To answer this question, the paper will close read the selected poems from the three collections as it will additionally review some of the general characteristics of her writing. Finally, by discussing and debating Kaur's works in depth, this paper will also try to fill in a certain gap: her poetry has often been perceived as needless of a heavy analysis while she has been labelled as a poet of Instagram.