If I body-shame a woman, it is more a reflection of me being critical of my body, me not being able to keep up to certain standards I have, and so making sure that the women around me feel the same way.
Rupi KaurRead
There was no market for poetry about trauma, abuse, loss, love, and healing through the lens of a Punjabi-Sikh immigrant woman.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the lack of representation for specific experiences in poetry.
Rupi Kaur's quote reflects on the challenges faced by marginalized voices, particularly those of Punjabi-Sikh immigrant women, in the literary world. It emphasizes how personal and cultural narratives related to trauma, love, and healing often go unnoticed in mainstream poetry, suggesting a need for broader acceptance and inclusion of diverse stories in the arts.
In practice
During a literary festival discussing marginalized voices in poetry.
If I body-shame a woman, it is more a reflection of me being critical of my body, me not being able to keep up to certain standards I have, and so making sure that the women around me feel the same way.
There have been articles saying that all women need to read my book. I ask, why not all men? In fact, that would be even more valuable because we women want to sit down with men and tell them - this is how we feel, this is what we go through.
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.
I wasn't entitled to dream so big. The idea of me being a writer wasn't even possible in my mind. Even when I began to write and first published, I couldn't call myself a writer.
The way a small child might dream of visiting Disneyland, I dreamed of writing books. Never did I think my poems would become that.
I was always writing for myself. I wrote what I needed to write and hear - that's what makes it powerful.
From dancing around to Michael Jackson and Madonna as a kid to having my mind blown by the first sounds of punk and indie rock, to getting to play my own songs and have people listen, music is what got me through.
The only thing I really wanted was the freedom to be able to get what I want on film. Iβve dealt with the MPAA since 1973, so I know how to renegotiate and rework.
Prose is like hair; it shines with combing.
Influences come from everywhere but when you are actually shooting you work primarily by instinct. But what is instinct? It is a lifetime accumulation of influence: experience, knowledge, seeing and hearing. There is little time for reflection in taking a photograph. All your experiences come to a peak and you work on two levels: conscious and unconscious.
Making art was really about the problem of the soul, of losing it. It was a technique for inhabiting the world. For not dissolving into it.
The hardest thing about a musical is making sure everybody is working on the same damn show. That is the monster.
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