Women’s poetry has been quite into the limelight recently. Remember when Rupi Kaur came up with Milk and Honey? Her unique style of writing caught up soon with a generation budding with words to the brim.
Yeah that was messed up. Rupi Kaur’s writing was expressing more in less words. Here, it was mostly just the lack of words. But what really bothered me, is that the style of writing was adapted and not so much more that the book talked about. The worst is to see that kind of writing being weaved with words that reek of misogyny and abuse. So now, to those, I have a simple solution – Dear Girl by Aija Mayrock.
If you are expecting to find a brand new writing style that’ll break the internet – don’t. That is not the purpose of this book. In fact, it is simple. Plain. Very undramatic. Very truthful.
Hang on to that last word, will you?
The book shows an entire journey of a woman, nay, a girl first. How she is born, with expectations of accepting all that comes her way without question; how she lives her days in the shadow of a male, where equality is denied in the senate board as it is to her on her own dinner table. Of how she is sexualised over her body, over every curve and every dip, with “perfection” defined for her on a palatte where beauty is defined as white and thin.
A woman, any woman, every woman, spends most of her life dealing with the trauma, hers or someone else’s. She lives in fear and she lives in sacrifice, but she lives, and she survives.
The book sums up it all; body image, shaming, abuse and the brutal misogyny.
There are two things that I loved about the book and which really stood out for me. One is the appropriate level of storytelling; nothing is over-exaggerated; it is kept simple and truthful and naked, exactly as it is with no shrouds of metaphors in them for varying degrees. The second is that the poems aren’t meant to be a rant. They do portray the anger and the disappointment, but they are also inspiring. They talk of healing and empowerment and equality and being proud of surviving and talking about your own story.
The emotions break your heart. They made me cry. The honesty of it all is what hurt. That this was literally every day.
The emotions become more volatile as you read them more and more. I can’t say enough for this book so here is what I’ll say instead – if anyone asks me to describe poetry in its bare form with raw emotions that touch the soul, I will tell them to read this gem.
Reviewed by Muskan Rajani
Commenti