Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm standing Fragoso. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 1: In honor of National Poetry Month, we're returning to our
Speaker 1: conversation with Rupy Khorr. She's the author of four poetry collections,
Speaker 1: including Milk and Honey, The Sun and Her Flowers, Homebody,
Speaker 1: and Healing Through Words. Collectively, those books have sold over
Speaker 1: twelve million copies. That's not a typo, and have been
Speaker 1: translated into over forty languages. Her debut collection, Milk and Honey,
Speaker 1: which she actually self published as a student in college,
Speaker 1: has become one of the highest selling poetry books of
Speaker 1: the twenty first century. Again not a typo. That debut
Speaker 1: arrived a decade ago now, and to celebrate its anniversary
Speaker 1: this year, Core will be re releasing the book on
Speaker 1: October first. This special edition also includes a new chapter,
Speaker 1: an archive of original photos, and a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: diary entries that she's excavated from these past ten years.
Speaker 1: To pre order the book and to learn more about
Speaker 1: Rupee and her work, be sure to visit our show
Speaker 1: notes at talkeeasypod dot com. When Rupy and I first
Speaker 1: sat in the spring of twenty twenty two, she was
Speaker 1: about to embark on what became a sold out global tour.
Speaker 1: These shows are poetic, theatrical experiences where she addresses themes
Speaker 1: of family, love, heartbreak, and womanhood. And so today we'll
Speaker 1: be revisiting some of those pieces, including a couple personal
Speaker 1: poems inspired by her childhood in Canada as part of
Speaker 1: an immigrant family from Punjab, India. We also dive into
Speaker 1: how she's processed trauma through writing the emotional Toll in
Speaker 1: the last decade and the aftermath of her Milk and
Speaker 1: Honey fame. With that, I want to issue a quick
Speaker 1: warning here at the top. It's the same warning I
Speaker 1: gave listeners back in twenty twenty two, which is that
Speaker 1: some of the poems and stories shared in this conversation
Speaker 1: include details of sexual violence. They're certainly not the bulk
Speaker 1: of this conversation. It doesn't dominate the dialogue, but it
Speaker 1: is part of it. We've marked those moments in the
Speaker 1: description of this episode, which you can find on your
Speaker 1: phone or on our website at talkeeasypod dot com. As always,
Speaker 1: if you want to give us feedback or suggest future episodes,
Speaker 1: you can reach us at sf at talk easypod dot com.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next Sunday with a new episode of
Speaker 1: the podcast. It is with someone that I don't want
Speaker 1: to spoil it, but it is with someone that I've
Speaker 1: been trying to have on Talk Easy for five six
Speaker 1: years now, So stick around for that until then. Here
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite conversations of twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: with the one and only rupeecre.
Speaker 2: Enjoy rupe Core.
Speaker 1: Nice to meet you, Nice to meet you. How are
Speaker 1: you feeling?
Speaker 3: I feel good, A little bit tired. I had a
Speaker 3: show last.
Speaker 4: Night, but I feel grateful and excited to be here.
Speaker 1: You're about to embark on a forty one city global tour.
Speaker 1: Is that correct?
Speaker 4: I think even more cities than that. It's more cities
Speaker 4: than that, definitely. We're near fifty where definitely nearing like
Speaker 4: seventy ish seventy. There's lots of stops that haven't been
Speaker 4: announced yet, and then there's lots coming in other parts
Speaker 4: of the world in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: I just don't like to think about that part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's not think about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's stressful. Let's think about the the Let's think
Speaker 3: about the next two months. And it's forty cities.
Speaker 1: Rupe's like, I want to go home. Now you're going
Speaker 1: to travel across the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, the UK.
Speaker 1: For most people, this would be a very daunting undertaking.
Speaker 1: How does one prepare for something like this?
Speaker 3: You know what I feel like. I spent the last
Speaker 3: twelve years preparing. This is the first time I'm intentionally
Speaker 3: doing it. Whereas you know, I hit stage as teenager
Speaker 3: in high school. They didn't even know what I was doing.
Speaker 3: I was just a sad teenager who's not a sad teenager.
Speaker 3: And I saw this little flyer. It was like a
Speaker 3: local open mic night and I was like, well, everything
Speaker 3: is wrong with my life already. Things can't get anywhere,
Speaker 3: so let me go see what this is about.
Speaker 1: How old are you here?
Speaker 3: Sixteen seventeen?
Speaker 4: And I went and it was such a nice feeling.
Speaker 4: I feel like it was the first time I felt hurt.
Speaker 3: And listened to.
Speaker 4: So I was like, I love this. I want to
Speaker 4: come do it again. So I was just doing open mics.
Speaker 3: I loved it.
Speaker 4: It was a hobby and it snowballed into a self
Speaker 4: published book and then these tours and I feel like
Speaker 4: I got on this train and the train never stopped
Speaker 4: like I was expecting it to like let me off,
Speaker 4: and it kept going and going and going and going
Speaker 4: until twenty twenty the pandemic hit and I was like, okay, wow,
Speaker 4: so I've been going NonStop. Now I get to stop
Speaker 4: and be still. I guess all those years prepared me
Speaker 4: for this next tour. Those shows were tough because I
Speaker 4: had no clue how to take care of myself. So
Speaker 4: I feel like I've fingers crossed seen the worst of it,
Speaker 4: and now I'm going in knowing what I need and
Speaker 4: what I can do, and I feel very good about it.
Speaker 4: Like I used to get nervous before every other show
Speaker 4: that I did, and for some reason, my first show
Speaker 4: back after two and a half years was this Saturday,
Speaker 4: and it just inside my body is like a steady heartbeat.
Speaker 4: I don't get nervous, I don't get excited. It just
Speaker 4: is because I'm like, Okay, finally, let's go.
Speaker 1: I want to walk through all those train stops that
Speaker 1: you're talking about. I think to do that, we have
Speaker 1: to go back to your childhood. Isn't it true that
Speaker 1: your first performance came in performing classical Indian music? What
Speaker 1: was that experience? Like?
Speaker 4: Definitely not an experience I chose for myself. It was like,
Speaker 4: you know, immigrant parents trying to make sure their kids
Speaker 4: don't lose their culture and heritage. And I was going
Speaker 4: to opunjubby classes on weekends, learning to read the language,
Speaker 4: write the language. I grew up in Malton and Brampton,
Speaker 4: which are two very heavy working class immigrant suburbs in Canada,
Speaker 4: in Ontario, so it was very normal for all of
Speaker 4: the kids to learn music, and so I did enjoy it.
Speaker 4: I did enjoy it. I did it for about seven years.
Speaker 4: That was the first sort of being on stage experience
Speaker 4: I ever had, singing and playing the harmonium.
Speaker 1: I gotta say the way you're saying I enjoyed it,
Speaker 1: I think you're saying it so reluctantly.
Speaker 2: I did enjoy it.
Speaker 3: It was scary. I'm not gonna lie that. My teacher
Speaker 3: was like, very scary. How so a lot of tough love.
Speaker 4: Very normal in our community him virgilately. But if I
Speaker 4: got a note wrong, you just smack my hand and
Speaker 4: start screaming away. You know, it's being twelve years old,
Speaker 4: thirteen fourteen. I would be like, oh my god, every
Speaker 4: day I'm just going to go to get yelled at.
Speaker 4: And would we be preparing for competitions, it would be
Speaker 4: that every single day for weeks.
Speaker 1: From that experience, what propels you into wanting to do that?
Speaker 1: If that first experience is it's fun, but there's this
Speaker 1: sort of restrictive element to it. I know you ended
Speaker 1: up pivoting a little bit into speech competitions in middle school?
Speaker 1: Were those also kind of daunting and scary?
Speaker 4: I actually I think I did it for like sevenish years.
Speaker 4: I never wanted to stop. Was it scary? Were there
Speaker 4: bad days?
Speaker 3: For sure?
Speaker 4: But I think I did love it because it is
Speaker 4: such a meditative experience and a very communal experience that
Speaker 4: you have with your people. And then the speech competitions,
Speaker 4: that was really a teacher who was like, I want
Speaker 4: you to do this, try it, And I'm like writing
Speaker 4: a speech about the War of eighteen twelve, and like,
Speaker 4: I don't even remember what I said, but I do
Speaker 4: remember that speech.
Speaker 3: It was seventh grade.
Speaker 4: Was the first time I think most people probably heard
Speaker 4: me speak because I grew up so shy.
Speaker 1: Is it true you didn't learn English till the fourth grade.
Speaker 4: Definitely didn't know it in kindergarten, and then in grade
Speaker 4: one and two I was learning it, but like grade
Speaker 4: three four, I was good. I was talking to my
Speaker 4: one friend that I had.
Speaker 1: You moved from India to Canada around age three and
Speaker 1: a half. The idea that by seventh grade that person
Speaker 1: is like I'm gonna do speech competitions is kind of remarkable.
Speaker 1: Did you think, Wow, this is I can't believe I'm
Speaker 1: doing this.
Speaker 4: In seventh grade, definitely, I was like what am I doing?
Speaker 4: Why am I doing it? And regretting it the whole time.
Speaker 4: But you know, he was His name was mister Vermont,
Speaker 4: and he was just like one of those teachers that
Speaker 4: like definitely changed my life.
Speaker 3: How So he sort of just saw me.
Speaker 4: I feel like, when you're in a class of like
Speaker 4: thirty people, that quiet individual who sort of like blends
Speaker 4: into the background is usually never seen. And that was
Speaker 4: usually my life, and I was comfortable with that. He
Speaker 4: was like, no, no, no, you very much like pushed
Speaker 4: me out of my comfort zone. But I was definitely
Speaker 4: reading more than I was speaking out loud, and so
Speaker 4: I think that's where my love for books came from.
Speaker 4: And then people like mister Vermont in seventh grade continue
Speaker 4: pushing me in that direction.
Speaker 1: I mean I was the same way. Yeah, I didn't people.
Speaker 4: Before also like third graders, nobody should be friends with
Speaker 4: third graders are horrible. Kids are so mean. Kids are mean. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and I was very sensitive.
Speaker 1: How did that manifest?
Speaker 4: I feel like my mom always says that I was
Speaker 4: one way in Punjab when we lived there, and then
Speaker 4: I was a completely different person when we landed in
Speaker 4: Canada and we arrived in this like cold city. We
Speaker 4: arrived in Montreal the year of this horrible ice storm,
Speaker 4: and it just was like everything sort of about me flipped.
Speaker 1: On your website in twenty sixteen, you wrote, I was
Speaker 1: always stuck between two worlds, but never fully belonging to one,
Speaker 1: on a land that does not want me. Coming from
Speaker 1: a land that no longer considers me its own, I
Speaker 1: had no place to call mine. I had to build
Speaker 1: a bridge between these two worlds and attach them together
Speaker 1: to build my own foundation. Do you think the foundation
Speaker 1: of that bridge started when your mother told you try drawing?
Speaker 4: I think so. Drawing was for sure the first thing
Speaker 4: that I learned to do for myself. There was not
Speaker 4: much that we had access to. I remember pencil crayons, drawing,
Speaker 4: and there was an older bunjabbisick couple upstairs. Maybe they're
Speaker 4: in their seventies. I called her Auntie. She would take
Speaker 4: sequence off of her clothing and we would sit and
Speaker 4: we would make little elephants and little animals out of them.
Speaker 4: And that immediately became the thing that I would do
Speaker 4: when I was feeling too much, when there was a
Speaker 4: situation happening at home, or I could sense any form
Speaker 4: of stress, step away.
Speaker 3: And I would be drawing.
Speaker 1: You said, as a child, I turned to expression because
Speaker 1: there was a lot going on at home that I
Speaker 1: didn't know how to deal with. Like I said, you
Speaker 1: moved from India to Canada. Your father was a long
Speaker 1: distance truck driver while your mother held down the fort.
Speaker 1: What was going on at home, It.
Speaker 4: Was just us as individuals, but just a larger sense
Speaker 4: of what was going on with us as a community. Like,
Speaker 4: for example, my dad was a refugee to Canada. He
Speaker 4: has injured and seen things at the hands of like
Speaker 4: the Indian state that are horrible. I think that definitely
Speaker 4: changes a person. When we were reunited with him, because
Speaker 4: I didn't see him for the first three and a
Speaker 4: half years of my life.
Speaker 1: He wasn't there when you were born, right, No, he wasn't.
Speaker 4: He was trying to get out because the police had
Speaker 4: picked him up, and then they were targeting at the time,
Speaker 4: any visible sick minority men with a turbine beer. Young
Speaker 4: boys as young as thirteen were being disappeared, and so
Speaker 4: people were like, shit, we got to go. Tens of
Speaker 4: thousands of people went missing and we still don't know
Speaker 4: where they are. So that generation carries all of that trauma,
Speaker 4: and like, those were the people that I grew up with.
Speaker 4: I know uncles who have scars all over their bodies
Speaker 4: from being tortured bullet wounds. That was like something I've
Speaker 4: been used to for my entire life since I was young.
Speaker 4: When I was reunited with my dad, he was definitely
Speaker 4: a different person. We've never really talked about that, but
Speaker 4: I think it impacted his mental health a lot. There's
Speaker 4: no such thing as mental health in my community yet,
Speaker 4: like learning kind of deal with that. So the home
Speaker 4: was where that sort of stress came out. Not in
Speaker 4: a physical way, but I was very scared of him.
Speaker 4: I was a really timid kid, and I think the
Speaker 4: weight of all the mothers to all the wives eventually
Speaker 4: came over. Of these men who had fled, they don't
Speaker 4: know English, they're stuck in these homes all day and
Speaker 4: they were pressed, and so many of them wanted to
Speaker 4: go back, but there was nothing to go back too.
Speaker 4: I just took that in and I sort of stored it.
Speaker 1: And how did your mom deal?
Speaker 4: She's very, very strong. She did really well, a lot
Speaker 4: better than the other moms. What do you mean my
Speaker 4: mom was able to? And I'm not saying that this
Speaker 4: is the right way to do it, There is no
Speaker 4: right way, but she sort of just went numb to
Speaker 4: it all and survived for her kids and just put
Speaker 4: everything within us. And I know so many other people
Speaker 4: weren't able to and experience lots of like suicidal ideations
Speaker 4: and attempts, but my mom, for some reason, was just
Speaker 4: like she had four kids. I know that she went
Speaker 4: numb because I asked her the day that I graduated.
Speaker 4: She came to my graduation and we were driving back
Speaker 4: home together, and I was like, how did that make
Speaker 4: you feel? Like when you were all in Montreal and
Speaker 4: all the wives were together, and can you tell me
Speaker 4: the emotions, like what were you feeling? And She's like,
Speaker 4: I don't understand the question. And I was like, what
Speaker 4: do you mean you don't understand the question? For forty
Speaker 4: five minutes. I tried to explain to her what an
Speaker 4: emotion is, and I was like, just like, what did
Speaker 4: you feel sad? Did you feel like this? And she
Speaker 4: didn't answer the question. She was very confused, and that's
Speaker 4: when I was like, oh, now I know why you're
Speaker 4: still here. She actually lost her brother a year before
Speaker 4: she got married, and then a year after she got married.
Speaker 4: She was an immigrant, so I think from that point
Speaker 4: on she got very used to just going and going
Speaker 4: and sort of not processing.
Speaker 1: Is there a piece in Milk and Honey that you
Speaker 1: think kind of encapsulates what you're talking about here?
Speaker 4: There's definitely You.
Speaker 1: Looked at the cover of the book like you almost
Speaker 1: forgot the title.
Speaker 4: Performance.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll stop giving you any shit.
Speaker 4: Okay, No, all good, Okay, let's read it. Father. You
Speaker 4: always call to say nothing in particular, ass what I'm
Speaker 4: doing or where I am, And when the silence stretches,
Speaker 4: oh my god, I think I'm gonna cry. Okay, this
Speaker 4: is what happens when you stop taking medication and you
Speaker 4: are like feeling real emotions again. Who bother? You always
Speaker 4: call to say nothing in particular. You ask what I'm
Speaker 4: doing or where I am, and when the silence stretches
Speaker 4: like a lifetime between us, I scramble to find questions
Speaker 4: to keep the conversation going. What I long to say
Speaker 4: most is I understand that this world broke you. It
Speaker 4: has been so hard on your feet, and I don't
Speaker 4: blame you for not knowing how to remain soft with me.
Speaker 4: Sometimes I stay up thinking of all the places you're hurting,
Speaker 4: which you'll never care to mention. I come from the
Speaker 4: same aching blood, from the same bone, so desperate for
Speaker 4: attention that I collapse in on myself. I am your daughter.
Speaker 4: I know the small talk is the only way you
Speaker 4: know how to tell me you love me, because it's
Speaker 4: the only way I know how to tell you.
Speaker 1: You read the first line, you were good. You read
Speaker 1: the second line, and something was produced. Yeah, what was
Speaker 1: going on?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's been a while since I've even felt my own poetry.
Speaker 4: I think I'm only recently beginning to feel it again.
Speaker 4: I used to feel it when I first wrote it,
Speaker 4: and then I got on that train and it was
Speaker 4: so fast that I stopped feeling any of it, and
Speaker 4: then I got extremely depressed, and now I'm not anymore.
Speaker 4: Hence I'm off the medication, trying that, And so now
Speaker 4: I read it and I experience it all like exactly
Speaker 4: what I was feeling when I wrote that. The weight
Speaker 4: of it sort of hits me and I'm brought back
Speaker 4: into that.
Speaker 3: It feels very human. Yeah, I don't mind it.
Speaker 1: What were you feeling when you wrote it?
Speaker 4: I have this like one year, especially with my father,
Speaker 4: because in our community, the men definitely do not know
Speaker 4: how to talk about anything. They are very like scary
Speaker 4: figures who are like, I'm going to work, make sure
Speaker 4: you memorize your multiplication tables, and then they disappear, and.
Speaker 1: It's always math.
Speaker 3: It's always math.
Speaker 4: And beyond that, we never really had a relationship as
Speaker 4: his daughter, and we've had a very complicated relationship that
Speaker 4: I think is finally not complicated anymore. And so my
Speaker 4: biggest fear is my dad is sixty years old this year.
Speaker 4: And then I do the math and then I'm like, what,
Speaker 4: you have thirty years left or twenty and that's not
Speaker 4: a very long time, and will I learn more about
Speaker 4: you between our time is done? And I know that
Speaker 4: he wants to have conversations now like we never saw
Speaker 4: him growing up. He was definitely absent, but that's because
Speaker 4: he had to be. And now I I see him
Speaker 4: as this sixty year old man who was like so tired,
Speaker 4: so physically sick from this like labor work, and I
Speaker 4: see him wanting to have a relationship with his children
Speaker 4: and wanting to know them at an age when his
Speaker 4: children are like now grown and gone. And I know
Speaker 4: that he will never learn how to have a conversation
Speaker 4: and I will have to learn how to have a
Speaker 4: conversation with him, and that's so much responsibility. But I
Speaker 4: know that I need to figure my shit out and
Speaker 4: learn how to have that conversation before he leaves this place,
Speaker 4: and I have to live with that regret forever.
Speaker 1: You're not alone in that fear.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I realize that recently, as have been like sharing
Speaker 4: those kind of anxieties around with my parents, that so
Speaker 4: many people feel that too.
Speaker 1: It's that weird push and pull because you are twenty nine.
Speaker 1: I'm twenty seven.
Speaker 4: My god, you're so young. When I first listen to
Speaker 4: your podcast, i'ming this person has to be fifty because
Speaker 4: you're so well spoken.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, sure that was a compliment.
Speaker 3: No, it's definitely a compliment. Yeah yeah, yeah, so well spoken.
Speaker 1: God, he sounds shifty and uh three.
Speaker 4: I think this person has probably seen so much talking
Speaker 4: to you know so much like you talk a Marina
Speaker 4: Brahimg Margaret Atwood.
Speaker 3: I love those conversations.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, But we're at that age you're only
Speaker 1: two years older than I am where you do think
Speaker 1: we're living our lives, and yet our parents are in
Speaker 1: that sixty age range where they're now kind of getting
Speaker 1: comfortable with sharing. It sounds like my parents were a
Speaker 1: little more forthcoming. But nevertheless, that lingers for me, and
Speaker 1: I know it lingers for people listening. There's always an
Speaker 1: expiration day, there.
Speaker 4: Is, but it almost feels like the moment we do
Speaker 4: realize that it's there, it almost feels like, shoot, there's like.
Speaker 1: Not enough time. You have some work to do to
Speaker 1: figure that out. Yes, but it has to be a
Speaker 1: two way street, you know it does. Even if you
Speaker 1: got to drag him, he still has to be willing.
Speaker 4: He is willing, he's willing. I just it's so hard
Speaker 4: to start the conversation. We don't talk in my family
Speaker 4: like we talk. My dad loves to talk philosophy, politics, Oh,
Speaker 4: but when it comes to feelings, barely.
Speaker 1: Ever do you think that's why you turned to the page.
Speaker 3: Definitely.
Speaker 4: My dad had this rule growing up that we weren't
Speaker 4: allowed to cry in the house.
Speaker 1: That's a great rule.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I cried a lot.
Speaker 4: There was a running joke that, oh, I'm so sensitive
Speaker 4: that I would cry at the snap of anybody's fingers,
Speaker 4: and it was true. And if you cried, you would
Speaker 4: get yelled at. I don't know why. I think it
Speaker 4: was seen as a sign of weakness, but now I
Speaker 4: see it as like, Wow, you just maybe didn't want
Speaker 4: us to cry because you just were so holding it
Speaker 4: like this. You didn't want to see anyone else do it,
Speaker 4: and you told yourself and you told everybody that it's
Speaker 4: bad and that it's weakness, and that was your way
Speaker 4: to survive. But now you know, we cry all we
Speaker 4: want at home and he can't say anything because there's
Speaker 4: four women in the house and my brother who will
Speaker 4: cry with us, and then him, and he's like, oh,
Speaker 4: you're all ganging up on me. None of this is fair.
Speaker 1: It's the odd man out.
Speaker 4: He is so funny. He spent his entire life telling
Speaker 4: me how sensitive I am, and now we're like, you
Speaker 4: are the sensitive one.
Speaker 3: Get it together.
Speaker 1: We're really getting into the heart of this here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wasn't. I wasn't expecting to.
Speaker 1: There seem to be more of a focus on the
Speaker 1: act of crying rather than the source of the tears.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how you reconcile with that now
Speaker 1: as you're growing up, But you were saying that for
Speaker 1: the last twelve years you've been on this train that
Speaker 1: hasn't stopped. To understand that, I think we have to
Speaker 1: go back to that Instagram post of you. In college
Speaker 1: at the University of Waterloo, You're taking a class for
Speaker 1: visual rhetoric. You create this class project for people that
Speaker 1: may not be familiar. What was this project?
Speaker 4: So I masured in rhetoric studies and so the teacher
Speaker 4: professor was like, Okay, I want you to create some
Speaker 4: sort of visual works that tackles taboo. And at the time,
Speaker 4: I was dabbling in photography a lot, because I always
Speaker 4: say poetry is just one of many mediums that I use.
Speaker 4: And so I had wanted to do this work around
Speaker 4: menstruation periods because like I've always struggled with my period
Speaker 4: with endometriosis.
Speaker 1: You had to go in and out of hospital.
Speaker 4: Yeah, hospital visits when I would get my period. It'd
Speaker 4: be so painful. I just wanted to like hurt myself,
Speaker 4: and my mom would have to like hold me down
Speaker 4: and be like it's going to be fine, and I
Speaker 4: would be like, oh, I hate being a girl. I
Speaker 4: hate being a girl. And then I was like, I
Speaker 4: really need to stop saying this and like start loving
Speaker 4: some part of it somehow. And so I got this idea.
Speaker 4: And then when the professor was like, we want to
Speaker 4: work tackle some sort of taboos, I was like, okay,
Speaker 4: periods like two birds with one stone. So I went
Speaker 4: back home to where my parents lived, got my little
Speaker 4: sister to help me. We show a series of six photos.
Speaker 4: My mom was like, what are you all doing. I'm
Speaker 4: more like concocting blood and stuff, and she's like, I'm scared.
Speaker 4: I don't want to I don't want to know. And
Speaker 4: unfortunately everybody and their mom found out later she was like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, I should have stopped you. Anyways, I
Speaker 4: posted one of the images online because we were studying
Speaker 4: the way people react to the same art differently depending
Speaker 4: on the space that it is in, So like if
Speaker 4: you were to see them Mona Lisa in real life
Speaker 4: in Paris, you would feel differently versus seeing it like
Speaker 4: painted giane on like the side of a building or
Speaker 4: like a stamp. And so I took this photograph of
Speaker 4: me lying down. It's kind of like how so many
Speaker 4: women who men straight wake up like, oh Saturday, shit,
Speaker 4: I got my period and I have like a stain.
Speaker 4: I posted it in different places. It was fine on Tumblr,
Speaker 4: and it was fine in a lot of other places,
Speaker 4: and then Instagram is where it was not fine. I
Speaker 4: honestly didn't think that it was going to be controversial
Speaker 4: because at the time I'd been writing about sexual abuse violence.
Speaker 4: I even was writing about periods. So this photograph to
Speaker 4: me was just like the regular, regular thing that I
Speaker 4: was doing, which I think was very naive of me
Speaker 4: to think, because those were just words and this was
Speaker 4: a photograph, and this was much more disturbing for some people.
Speaker 4: So my readership they were fine with it. But once
Speaker 4: that photo sort of like left MySpace and got to
Speaker 4: other spaces, Instagram removed it, and then I posted a
Speaker 4: second time, removed it again, and then it ended up
Speaker 4: just sort of like going viral, was on the front
Speaker 4: page of everything in twenty fifteen. I was so scared
Speaker 4: because people were so mad. Fifty percent and people were like,
Speaker 4: this is amazing, and the other fifty percent were like,
Speaker 4: we are going to rape and kill you.
Speaker 3: And I was like, I'm so anxious now.
Speaker 1: You said in Rolling Stone. I think from that day
Speaker 1: this anxiety came upon me that's never left, an endless
Speaker 1: stream of hate that came from every corner of the planet.
Speaker 4: It was so much. I was like regular kid, you know,
Speaker 4: going to college, putting my little poems up on Instagram.
Speaker 4: It was like all of the opinions. Nobody told me
Speaker 4: log off and stop reading this shit. So I sat
Speaker 4: there taking in and then it was like all of
Speaker 4: the emails coming in. I don't know how people found
Speaker 4: out about my emails. It was on the Punjabi radio
Speaker 4: stations in my parents' hometown. Like that's how my mom
Speaker 4: found out when the Punjabi uncles are talking about it
Speaker 4: on the local radio station, just to assume everybody knows
Speaker 4: about it, and it's just and you know, she was like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, why did you do this. My dad
Speaker 4: was like, I don't even get it. What's the big deal?
Speaker 4: People get periods, move it along. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: thank god. But it was really scary. I think it
Speaker 4: was just like, it's not human to have that much
Speaker 4: attention and it's not natural to have that many eyes
Speaker 4: looking at you, and that sort of catapult people immediately
Speaker 4: started to treat me differently.
Speaker 1: And you're twenty one years old.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it was like, oh, my followers went from
Speaker 4: thirty thousand to over two hundred thousand. And I'm very
Speaker 4: involved in the sick community and community organizing, and that
Speaker 4: week we had I think it was Sick Heritage Month,
Speaker 4: and when I walked in, it was just different.
Speaker 3: People were like looking a particular way.
Speaker 4: It was if it's fine, it was nice, nobody was mean,
Speaker 4: but I was like, oh, the way that you look
Speaker 4: at me is like definitely changed now, and it's sort
Speaker 4: of like never really stopped. I actually was scared because
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, no, I'm getting all this attention
Speaker 4: for like this photograph, Like do they expect me to
Speaker 4: keep making these photos? But I feel very appreciative because
Speaker 4: like they came for the photo, but then they stayed
Speaker 4: for the poetry.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the way people saw you changed. But
Speaker 1: did you start to see yourself in a different way?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I didn't.
Speaker 4: People were like, like, wow, how does it feel and
Speaker 4: I always said, I don't know, it feels weird, like
Speaker 4: I think you want me to say, it's so amazing,
Speaker 4: But I'm just doing this shit that everybody else is doing.
Speaker 4: I have to go unload my dishwasher, I have to
Speaker 4: like do my laundry. But I think I immediately disassociated
Speaker 4: from my body, and I don't think I stepped back
Speaker 4: into my body till about twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Well, before you step back into your body, you do
Speaker 1: release Milk and Honey first on your own self publishing.
Speaker 1: I think Amazon platform it was the next year at
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, is that right? Yes, it gets republished.
Speaker 4: My publishers Andrew's mcmeehal They're amazing and they I was
Speaker 4: so scared when a publisher approached me because I was like,
Speaker 4: they're gonna tell me to take this out and change
Speaker 4: this and do that, and they were like, no, we
Speaker 4: just want this.
Speaker 1: Was there a particular piece in here that you thought,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they're going to let me publish this?
Speaker 3: Definitely?
Speaker 4: Which one I think, like a lot of the maybe
Speaker 4: is the sexual assault pieces. I think the first chapter,
Speaker 4: so this one is for Milk and Honey Our knees
Speaker 4: pride open by cousins and uncles, and men are bodies
Speaker 4: touched by all the wrong people that even in a
Speaker 4: bed full of safety, we are afraid.
Speaker 3: So it's a lot of pieces like that. I think
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 4: Very unapologetic in the way that I wrote about sexual abuse,
Speaker 4: and I wasn't trying to hide it, And that only
Speaker 4: came from the fact that I didn't think that it
Speaker 4: was going to become a book and sell like over
Speaker 4: eight million copies. Yeah, I thought I was writing it
Speaker 4: for me and my like ten friends.
Speaker 1: In the end, it was not the end you wrote
Speaker 1: the book at eighteen, nineteen and twenty, this book becomes
Speaker 1: massively popular. As you just said, you thought it was
Speaker 1: only going to be for you. Yeah, I'm judging anxiety.
Speaker 1: I can feel the anxiety. I'm inheriting it right now.
Speaker 4: Still not like I don't know, I think it's really
Speaker 4: fucked up. I think it's sold up, just like how
Speaker 4: the personal becomes so big, Like it went from being
Speaker 4: back at college and I'm like writing, writing, writing, all
Speaker 4: the girls are getting ready for the club and putting
Speaker 4: on my Misscara and editing at the same time, and
Speaker 4: multitasking always, and it was definitely very easy for me
Speaker 4: to write about certain things when I didn't think that
Speaker 4: the number of people who are reading them now were
Speaker 4: going to read them. I cannot write about my experiences
Speaker 4: with sexual abuse in the ways that I used to
Speaker 4: write them in that first book. I couldn't write about
Speaker 4: them like that.
Speaker 1: Now. Why is that?
Speaker 4: Because I know that there's millions of people watching, and
Speaker 4: that is like, I don't want to feel naked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But isn't the reason people like you so much
Speaker 1: just because, yeah, you are naked on the phone?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I love doing it for them, Like when
Speaker 4: I am on stage and I'm connecting with them, I'm like, fuck,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna do this for the rest of my life.
Speaker 4: But then when it's the other people who perhaps don't
Speaker 4: like you very much and they take something that's like
Speaker 4: your lived experience and then they rape you to shreds
Speaker 4: for it, I think that's very hard. That's when I'm like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, do I regret doing this or do
Speaker 4: I not? I think people just forget that these are
Speaker 4: real life experiences. I don't want to keep having to
Speaker 4: defend them.
Speaker 1: There's of course plenty of as you're talking about negative
Speaker 1: press that has been written and I as you know,
Speaker 1: because you listen to the show, and I read everything
Speaker 1: before these, So I just had a couple days of
Speaker 1: reading every horrible thing I could find, and it's unnerving.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Ew Sometimes I'm just like, I wasn't built for this.
Speaker 4: I just want to go home and write. But it's
Speaker 4: it is what it is. It's like what I signed
Speaker 4: up for. I guess, Yeah, I think it's fine. I'm
Speaker 4: also tired of lying and saying I don't care anymore,
Speaker 4: because the more I say I don't care, the more
Speaker 4: obvious is obvious it is that I do care.
Speaker 1: You know. It's it's okay to say that it's not fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least on this show.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you say you're not build for this, I
Speaker 1: can see it's like it's like eating at you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that writing something that I truly loved any
Speaker 4: become the person I am today. Like as I was
Speaker 4: writing Milk and Honey, I was I went from girl
Speaker 4: to woman through that book. Then writing became a very
Speaker 4: scary and triggering thing. Like I couldn't walk into bookstores.
Speaker 4: I didn't want to hear the word poetry. I didn't
Speaker 4: even want to hear the word book like people would
Speaker 4: say that, and my entire body would just like because
Speaker 4: it was so many things like when when is the
Speaker 4: next one coming? And like how do I recreate the
Speaker 4: success of the first one? Again, like that ate at
Speaker 4: me and just made me so sick. People expect you
Speaker 4: to do that. Two months I was given to write
Speaker 4: the second book, and of course I did not meet
Speaker 4: that deadline. But then all of a sudden, everyone's like, well,
Speaker 4: you know, if you don't hurry up, if you take
Speaker 4: a break, you're just here today, gone tomorrow. And then
Speaker 4: this ambitious part of me who did the self publishing,
Speaker 4: who did all that, I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: but I like did work really hard, and I don't
Speaker 4: want to be here today, gone tomorrow, so I gotta go,
Speaker 4: I gotta go, I gotta go keep doing it. It's
Speaker 4: like a very hard balance and homebody. The third one
Speaker 4: is about me trying to actually be like, let me
Speaker 4: write the book that I need to write, because The
Speaker 4: Sun in or Flowers was the book that I thought
Speaker 4: the world wanted me to write.
Speaker 1: So after pouring yourself onto the pages of Milk and Honey,
Speaker 1: this thing of writing that you love that you fell
Speaker 1: in love with that was your sort of vessel to
Speaker 1: communicate all the complex emotions you couldn't quite in your childhood.
Speaker 1: As we've talked about, it got corrupted to the point
Speaker 1: where the word poetry you had a physical response to that.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it would make me sick. When I was
Speaker 4: writing that second book, I couldn't like digest food. My
Speaker 4: whole nervous system physically broken. I could not get up
Speaker 4: for weeks, Like the migraines were so bad for such
Speaker 4: long periods of time that I was like, maybe I
Speaker 4: do need to go to a hospital. That was me
Speaker 4: trying to keep pushing it all down just so I
Speaker 4: can make the deadline.
Speaker 3: Do it, do it, do it, do it, And like.
Speaker 4: A part of me is like, I am glad that
Speaker 4: I did it, because I do think if that deadline
Speaker 4: wasn't there, perhaps I would have never done it, because
Speaker 4: it's very difficult to do the second thing.
Speaker 3: And nobody told me that.
Speaker 4: Like the people that I grew up with are all
Speaker 4: like factory workers and people who work labor jobs, and
Speaker 4: like the fanciest person I knew was an aunt who
Speaker 4: like went from working on the production line to becoming
Speaker 4: a manager on the floor. Nobody in my community could
Speaker 4: guide me or like support me or tell me, you know,
Speaker 4: and so it was kind of like figuring it out alone.
Speaker 1: How the hell do you do that.
Speaker 4: I feel like I got very lucky with my friends.
Speaker 4: They saved and carried me through, like those worst moments
Speaker 4: when I was so depressed and I couldn't leave my
Speaker 4: bed for weeks. My friend Rock we actually met two
Speaker 4: months before that Milk and Honey was self published, and
Speaker 4: she went on, now she's my manager, my business partner,
Speaker 4: and she would come over, sit at my bed and
Speaker 4: we'd work, and then there would be periods where I
Speaker 4: couldn't drive. We had an office at the time, and
Speaker 4: she would come pick me up at six am and
Speaker 4: drive me to work and then drive me home and
Speaker 4: drive me to work and drive me home. And I
Speaker 4: think that I didn't realize also, like shit, now I'm
Speaker 4: doing my MBA, Like I went from being an author
Speaker 4: who writes by herself to now having a team of
Speaker 4: nine people, and I'm like, fuck, there's all these skills
Speaker 4: that I need to do to like manage all of
Speaker 4: these things. And I was only like twenty three, so
Speaker 4: it's been just so much learning. And those women, really
Speaker 4: I had a solid team. I'd have a solid team,
Speaker 4: and I think that's the only reason I'm here. I
Speaker 4: wouldn't have made it.
Speaker 1: After the break, Ruby and I discussed being a young
Speaker 1: person in their twenties making mistakes very publicly for all
Speaker 1: the world to see. That's all coming up next with
Speaker 1: my guest Ruby Kor. You said in some interview that
Speaker 1: the strangest thing about all of this is that in
Speaker 1: your twenties, and perhaps through all of life, but especially
Speaker 1: in your twenties, we make mistakes. Most of us have
Speaker 1: the good fortune of making those mistakes in private. Of course,
Speaker 1: we're all online and there's some documentation, there's some hyper
Speaker 1: visibility for everyone now, but you, especially were to make
Speaker 1: these mistakes in public. How do you make those mistakes
Speaker 1: in public and still continue onward? How do you allow
Speaker 1: yourself to still fuck up in the way that we
Speaker 1: all have to?
Speaker 3: I mean, you're not.
Speaker 4: I don't allow myself to fuck up. I like punish myself,
Speaker 4: and if I fuck up, it's like, wait, what did
Speaker 4: we just do? And then I have to forgive myself
Speaker 4: for fucking up. So I'm not allowing it because I
Speaker 4: feel like I can't afford to fuck up. If I
Speaker 4: fuck up, then it sort of feels like it's done.
Speaker 4: I won't get another chance. You know how many brown
Speaker 4: women are even so visible, and how many of them
Speaker 4: get second chances. But you eventually just have to let
Speaker 4: it hurt and then two weeks later stop crying about
Speaker 4: it and pick up. But that scar is always there,
Speaker 4: cut into your skin, and you sort of keep a
Speaker 4: tally of it.
Speaker 1: Is there a piece in this one or that one
Speaker 1: that's that's hitting on that?
Speaker 4: I think this one, Homebody, the one under the.
Speaker 1: Giving you your books, is I'm back and help it.
Speaker 3: Let me see? Should I read it?
Speaker 1: Let's let's do it.
Speaker 4: This is from It's kind of arrogant, though you.
Speaker 1: Know what we're gonna be. Okay, okay, this is a
Speaker 1: rupee reading from Homebody from twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: I paid in blood to be here. I paid with
Speaker 4: a childhood littered with bigger monsters than you. I've been
Speaker 4: beaten into a silence more times than I've been embraced
Speaker 4: on this earth. You haven't seen what I've seen. My
Speaker 4: rock bottom went so deep I'm pretty sure it was hell.
Speaker 4: I spent a decade climbing out of it. My hands blistered,
Speaker 4: my feet, swelled. My mind said I can't take it anymore.
Speaker 4: I told my mind, you better get yourself together. We
Speaker 4: came here for Joe, and we are gonna feel all
Speaker 4: of it. I've been hunted, killed, and walked back to Earth.
Speaker 4: I snapped the neck off every beast that thought it could.
Speaker 4: And you want to take my seat, the one I
Speaker 4: built with the story of my life, Honey, you won't fit.
Speaker 4: I juggle clowns like you. I pick my teeth with
Speaker 4: fools like you for fun. I've played and slept and
Speaker 4: danced with bigger devils.
Speaker 1: I was essentially a kind of spoken word distrack.
Speaker 4: Definitely, that was that's the dis track, because I usually
Speaker 4: don't respond to the hate, but I was like, fuck it,
Speaker 4: I'm allowed.
Speaker 3: To in my own book.
Speaker 1: That's the response.
Speaker 3: That's the response.
Speaker 1: Is that the response to all the parodying that has
Speaker 1: happened to those people who do that.
Speaker 4: For sure. You know what helps me is like, I
Speaker 4: go back to my roots. That's why I'm sitting here
Speaker 4: healthy today. I think my community and what we've been
Speaker 4: through over the past five hundred years, what we have seen,
Speaker 4: what we have injured, was so much bigger than this,
Speaker 4: and so I think about the people who lost their
Speaker 4: lives so that I could be here today. And that's
Speaker 4: the emotions I channeled while writing that piece. That is
Speaker 4: what I go back to and I pull myself together.
Speaker 1: And you're part of this larger legacy that made the
Speaker 1: work you're doing possible. Yes, I want to pinpoint someone
Speaker 1: in particular, which is your mother. You have this piece
Speaker 1: called Broken English that I want to sit with to
Speaker 1: do that. Can you tell the story of how when
Speaker 1: you were growing up you felt some sense of shame
Speaker 1: around her?
Speaker 4: Yeah, when you're growing up in your minority, all you
Speaker 4: want to do is look like the majority. And I
Speaker 4: just was like, why can't my parents get it together
Speaker 4: and do that? Like, Mom, why do you have to
Speaker 4: wear that? Obviously? When we go to the grocery store,
Speaker 4: just look like a normal person. Stop yelling out in
Speaker 4: Bundubbi while I'm in like an aisle ten looking at candy.
Speaker 4: Do you see anybody else, any of the nice white
Speaker 4: lady screaming?
Speaker 1: You know you didn't see my mom right now? Grocery store.
Speaker 1: So horrible event, traumatizing, so dramatic. She yelled at me
Speaker 1: in English, to be fair, but it was yelling, just
Speaker 1: drag they put you in the cart. You get punished
Speaker 1: in one of those carts.
Speaker 4: It's not fun. And then it was like I don't
Speaker 4: want to eat this food and like that whole thing,
Speaker 4: and that's a normal experience, you know, when you're like
Speaker 4: an immigrant kid, the food from from back, pndube food
Speaker 4: and you know, we spend so much time being ashamed.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, we never really had the nicest things.
Speaker 4: And I was like, can you drop me four blocks
Speaker 4: away from school? I don't want people to see the
Speaker 4: car we're driving me? And then I hit like twenty
Speaker 4: one and then I grew up a little bit. I
Speaker 4: was like, I'm such an asshole. Why am I like
Speaker 4: such a self hater? The fact that they did all
Speaker 4: of those things like deserves an award and I'm here.
Speaker 4: I used to be ashamed of all of that. And
Speaker 4: that's where broken English sort of came from, because especially
Speaker 4: the Indian accent is so mocked and it's like the
Speaker 4: butt of all jokes. And I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: it's like the last thing that my mom has left
Speaker 4: of where she came from. That poem. I was asked
Speaker 4: to write it for an event for Binjabi mothers and
Speaker 4: I wrote it over a couple of days and thought,
Speaker 4: you know, performing at once and gone tomorrow. But that
Speaker 4: is the piece that everywhere I go like, it will
Speaker 4: never leave me. That's the one they want to hear.
Speaker 4: And what's so beautiful and cool is like it doesn't
Speaker 4: matter who's in the audience and what they look like,
Speaker 4: what color their skin is. Everybody feels it in a
Speaker 4: different type of that feels like they connect to it.
Speaker 1: Shall we do it? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Broken English? I think about the way my father pulled
Speaker 4: the family out of poverty without knowing what a vowel was,
Speaker 4: and my mother raised four children without being able to
Speaker 4: construct a perfect sentence in English. A discombobulated couple who
Speaker 4: landed in the New world with hopes that left the
Speaker 4: bitter taste of rejection in their mouths. No family, no friends,
Speaker 4: just man and wife, two university degrees that meant nothing,
Speaker 4: one mother tongue that was broken now, one swollen belly
Speaker 4: with a baby inside, and a father worrying about jobs
Speaker 4: and rent because no matter what, this baby was coming.
Speaker 4: And they thought to themselves for a split second, was
Speaker 4: it worth it to put all of our money into
Speaker 4: the dream of a country that's swallowing us whole. And
Speaker 4: Papa looks at his woman's eyes and sees loneliness living
Speaker 4: where the iris was. He wants to give her a
Speaker 4: home in a country that looks at her with the
Speaker 4: word visitor wrapped around their tongue. On their wedding day,
Speaker 4: she left an entire village to be his wife. And
Speaker 4: now she left an entire country to be a warrior.
Speaker 4: And when the winter came, they had absolutely nothing to
Speaker 4: keep the coldness out, and like two brackets, they faced
Speaker 4: one another to hold the dearest parts of them, their
Speaker 4: children close. They turned a suitcase full of clothes into
Speaker 4: a life and regular paychecks to make sure that the
Speaker 4: children of immigrants wouldn't hate them for being the children
Speaker 4: of immigrants. They worked too hard, you can tell by
Speaker 4: their hands. Their eyes were begging for sleep, and our
Speaker 4: mouths were begging to be fed. And that is the
Speaker 4: most artistic thing I have ever seen. It is poetry
Speaker 4: to these ears that have never heard what passion sounds like.
Speaker 4: And my mouth is full of likes and ums when
Speaker 4: I look at their masterpiece. Because there are no words
Speaker 4: in the English language that can articulate that kind of beauty.
Speaker 4: I can't compact their existence into twenty six letters and
Speaker 4: call it a description. I tried once, but the adjectives
Speaker 4: needed to describe them don't even exist, so instead I
Speaker 4: ended up with pages and pages and pages full of words,
Speaker 4: followed with commas and more words and more commas, only
Speaker 4: to realize that there are some things in the world
Speaker 4: so infinite they could never use a full stop. So
Speaker 4: how dare you mock your mother? When she opens her
Speaker 4: mouth and broken English spills out. Don't be ashamed of
Speaker 4: the fact that she split through countries to be here
Speaker 4: so you wouldn't have to cross the shoreline. Her accent
Speaker 4: is thick like honey. Hold it with your life. It's
Speaker 4: the only thing she has left from home. Don't you
Speaker 4: stomp on that richness? Instead hang it up on the
Speaker 4: walls of museums next to Dolly and Van Go. Her
Speaker 4: life is brilliant and tragic. Kiss the side of her.
Speaker 3: Tent, her cheek.
Speaker 4: She already knows what it sounds like to have an
Speaker 4: entire nation laugh when she speaks. She is more than
Speaker 4: our punctuation and language. We might be able to paint
Speaker 4: pictures and write stories, but she made an entire world
Speaker 4: for herself.
Speaker 3: So how is that for art?
Speaker 4: I remember that day, like I walked into the kitchen.
Speaker 4: I think her and my dad must have gotten into
Speaker 4: a fight because she was cooking, and she was like,
Speaker 4: I'm just so stupid. Well she's saying it in bundubby.
Speaker 4: She's like, I don't even know anything. I haven't done anything.
Speaker 4: I've just been in this house all of these years,
Speaker 4: and I'm like, I've not accomplished a single thing. And
Speaker 4: it just broke my heart. And I remember just crumpling
Speaker 4: to the floor and I was like, how dare you
Speaker 4: say you're stupid? Like everything I do, I'm capable of
Speaker 4: doing it because of you? Are you?
Speaker 3: What are you saying?
Speaker 4: Woman? You gave us your whole life? And I feel
Speaker 4: like I try. I have a whole piece about that.
Speaker 4: How do I make you believe that you are so
Speaker 4: much more than what you think you are?
Speaker 1: Does she believe you?
Speaker 4: I think so. Like I said, that display of emotion
Speaker 4: was very rare for my mom. That was many, many
Speaker 4: years ago. I have not seen it since. But when
Speaker 4: my mom cries, because it's very rare, everybody in the
Speaker 4: house except for my dad because he does not know
Speaker 4: what to do when anyone's crying. All the kids were.
Speaker 3: Like, what did you do to our mother?
Speaker 4: And everyone loses their shit.
Speaker 3: Oh, the whole house will start.
Speaker 4: All of us start crying because like mom can't cry,
Speaker 4: Like mom cannot cry. So it was very, very, very different,
Speaker 4: And I think that she believes it. You know what,
Speaker 4: when she comes to my shows, and she comes to
Speaker 4: a lot of them, it's so sweet because I feel
Speaker 4: like she becomes this sixteen year old girl because she
Speaker 4: gets so much love and attention and she gets to
Speaker 4: be that sixteen year old girl that she never got
Speaker 4: to be, and they'll ask her for her autograph in
Speaker 4: the books. And I think my whole family, at least
Speaker 4: me and my parents have had this, Like there's been
Speaker 4: somewhat of a healing for the parents through that, Like
Speaker 4: when a child of working class immigrant parents says that
Speaker 4: my parents literally sacrificed everything, Like the first time we
Speaker 4: went to dinner out as a family at a restaurant
Speaker 4: was like after I started making book money, Like they
Speaker 4: did absolutely nothing. Our first vacation was in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4: And so this whole thing that's happened with me, it's
Speaker 4: really been big for my parents and my family because
Speaker 4: I'm like I can give you, guys, what I think
Speaker 4: that you deserve, which is comfort.
Speaker 1: So when she sees you on stage now, perhaps on
Speaker 1: this global tour you're about to do, do you think
Speaker 1: that she's able to say to herself, I've done something,
Speaker 1: I hope.
Speaker 3: So I always try to tell her.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I can only do this because of you.
Speaker 4: You gave me the strength and you raise me. You know,
Speaker 4: you gave up the ability to do so much so
Speaker 4: that I could have this. But to be honest, she's
Speaker 4: not that excited about tour. She's like, I don't like
Speaker 4: this idea that you have to leave again. Can you
Speaker 4: just like not find a regular job. That's my mom's
Speaker 4: biggest complaint is that I just didn't become a teacher
Speaker 4: where I could get my summers off. And she's like,
Speaker 4: I don't understand why you need to work so hard.
Speaker 4: And my dad is like, good job. But she's not
Speaker 4: really about it. She's always she's still actually in denial.
Speaker 4: She's like, oh yeah, like you're gonna get off the
Speaker 4: train right, Like when's the next stop? And I'm like, mom,
Speaker 4: like this is my life now, Like there's no stopping.
Speaker 1: Well, so you're still on this train.
Speaker 3: The train did stop during COVID.
Speaker 1: The train stopped during COVID, But outside of that, it
Speaker 1: continues onward.
Speaker 4: It continues onward. But I feel like I'm the conductor.
Speaker 1: Now, That's what I'm I want to ask you about it.
Speaker 1: You're twenty nine, you'll be thirty this year.
Speaker 4: I yeah, I don't know if you feel this way,
Speaker 4: but I just don't know where my twenties went.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 4: I remember being twenty one and publishing that first book
Speaker 4: and then everything in between that. I don't know what
Speaker 4: the hell happened. And yes, I'm turning thirty this year.
Speaker 1: I do feel that way. The pandemic didn't help. You've
Speaker 1: said before that Milk and Honey, Sun and Her Flowers
Speaker 1: it's for the seventeen year old brown woman in Brampton
Speaker 1: who is not even thinking about the literary space, who's
Speaker 1: just trying to live, survive, get through her day. And
Speaker 1: the girl that wrote Milk and Honey is not the
Speaker 1: woman who wrote The Sun and Her Flowers and is
Speaker 1: not the person who wrote Homebody. So I'm curious how
Speaker 1: you're thinking about the evolution of both you and the
Speaker 1: potential person reading the work you're putting into the world.
Speaker 4: The first one, I was just writing, and the second
Speaker 4: one I got confused about who I was writing for
Speaker 4: because suddenly I was like, am I writing for these people?
Speaker 4: And then no, I think I'm very clear that I've
Speaker 4: always been writing for me. And actually it's such a
Speaker 4: freeing thing to accept that. I always just to wonder, well,
Speaker 4: what's this recipe? What was the recipe of milk and honey?
Speaker 4: I need to figure out the recipes so I can
Speaker 4: make the cake again. And the recipe was that I
Speaker 4: was just being honest with me and only writing for me.
Speaker 4: And there's such a freedom in that because then the
Speaker 4: poetry just sort of comes by itself. And the thing
Speaker 4: is when you are honest and you dig into the
Speaker 4: most like vulnerable parts of you, that is a feeling
Speaker 4: that's most universal. So as long as I can continue
Speaker 4: to write those things, I think I'll be okay. And honestly,
Speaker 4: after the shit storm of the last couple of years,
Speaker 4: it is very clear to me that success and happiness
Speaker 4: are two very different things. And after a lot of
Speaker 4: external success, I've realized more of that isn't going to
Speaker 4: fill me in any sort of spiritual way. And so
Speaker 4: what is that? I always say the thing that makes
Speaker 4: me the happiest in the world is laughing, and so
Speaker 4: that's all I want to do. Surround myself with good
Speaker 4: company and people that make me laugh.
Speaker 1: As we leave, could we read a piece from Homebody?
Speaker 1: M hm that I think is you kind of becoming
Speaker 1: the conductor that you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Okay, we'll do this one in another one.
Speaker 1: Okay, great?
Speaker 4: Today I saw myself for the first time when I
Speaker 4: dusted off the mirror of my mind, and the woman
Speaker 4: looking back took my breath away. Who was this beautiful beastling,
Speaker 4: this extra celestial earthly I touched my face and my
Speaker 4: reflection touched the woman of my dreams, all her gorgeous
Speaker 4: smirking back at me. My knees surrendered to the earth
Speaker 4: as I wept and sighed at how I'd gone my
Speaker 4: whole life being myself but not seeing myself. I spent
Speaker 4: in decades living inside my body, never left it once,
Speaker 4: yet managed to miss all its miracles. Isn't it funny
Speaker 4: how you can occupy a space without being in touch
Speaker 4: with it. How it took so long for me to
Speaker 4: open the eyes of my eyes, embrace the heart of
Speaker 4: my heart, kissed the soles of my swollen feet and
Speaker 4: hear them whisper.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, thank you for noticing. There's one
Speaker 3: more that I think.
Speaker 1: Is like, is there a tit up for this one?
Speaker 4: No? Okay, I think I should really start on the
Speaker 4: title thing. That would make performing them much easier. People
Speaker 4: don't know what I learned from last night, so is
Speaker 4: people never know when I'm done a poem and so
Speaker 4: when to clap, and then when I move on to the.
Speaker 1: Next one, you just tell me when to clap and
Speaker 1: I'll do it.
Speaker 4: Our souls will not be soothed by what we achieve,
Speaker 4: how we look, or all the hard work we do.
Speaker 4: Even if we manage to make all the money in
Speaker 4: the world, we'd be left feeling empty for something. Our
Speaker 4: souls ache for community. Our deepest being craves one another.
Speaker 4: We need to be connected to feel alive. That's the one.
Speaker 1: My final question I guess is you're going on this
Speaker 1: massive tour. Your mom's not happy.
Speaker 3: About it, just not happy about it at all.
Speaker 1: Your father's proud. Yeah, as you move forward as a poet,
Speaker 1: as a human, going on to that stage, what do
Speaker 1: you want to leave behind and what do you want
Speaker 1: to bring with you?
Speaker 4: I'm leaving behind that drill sergeant in my head.
Speaker 3: That's so unforgiving.
Speaker 4: And I am going forward into this tour with the
Speaker 4: idea that it's not that serious. It's fine, I'll fuck up,
Speaker 4: it's great. I'm doing this to be able to look
Speaker 4: those folks in the eye when they're in the audience
Speaker 4: that have the most human experience. Touring post COVID is
Speaker 4: just different. We talk about some heavy shit and there's
Speaker 4: always tears, and there's always laughter, and it's a hole.
Speaker 4: You experience it like all of the human emotion, But
Speaker 4: post COVID, all the emotions are very, very heightened in
Speaker 4: this room, and it's just a reminder of what we need,
Speaker 4: which is that connection. So when I'm standing up there
Speaker 4: and I see all of them having that very visceral experience,
Speaker 4: I just want them to know, as I guess I
Speaker 4: want myself to know that, yeah, we're alone, but we're
Speaker 4: not really all alone.
Speaker 1: All the time you said with the first book, I
Speaker 1: kept thinking, is this all a mistake? Am I just
Speaker 1: a one hit wonder? Then the second book happened and
Speaker 1: I realized that I can do this a third, fourth,
Speaker 1: and fifth time. I just want to give it time.
Speaker 1: I just want to create the best thing going forward.
Speaker 1: When I'm eighty nine years old lying in my bed somewhere,
Speaker 1: I want to feel good about what I've done. Do
Speaker 1: you think you're on your way to being that eighty
Speaker 1: nine year old?
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, I do.
Speaker 4: I promise myself, I'm never going to sign another book contract.
Speaker 4: That is freed my creativity. I am a free woman.
Speaker 4: They get the book when I tell them they're getting
Speaker 4: the book, and they will be happy with the book
Speaker 4: that they get. That's the rule. And it's allowed me
Speaker 4: to become creative again. I don't tense up when I
Speaker 4: hear the word poetry, and I'm falling back in love
Speaker 4: with the thing that people say they love me for.
Speaker 4: And so it's so funny because it took so long
Speaker 4: to get there. But I mean, I already wrote a
Speaker 4: fourth book, but only because I had to free myself
Speaker 4: from the ability to do so, you know, learn to
Speaker 4: get off the train and then like hop back on
Speaker 4: with a nice coffee, get off in a couple stuff,
Speaker 4: smell the flowers and then get.
Speaker 3: Back on sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Well, I wish that for you.
Speaker 3: Thank you, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: He becore, thank you for the time thank you so much,
Speaker 1: and that's our show.
Speaker 2: If you enjoy today's episode, be sure to leave us.
Speaker 1: Five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening.
Speaker 1: If you want to go above and beyond, sharing this
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Speaker 1: you do, all of it really does help new listeners
Speaker 1: find the program. I want to give a special thanks
Speaker 1: this week to Narrative pr and of course our guest
Speaker 1: Rupy Kor to pre order the tenth anniversary Collector's edition
Speaker 1: of Milk and Honey, or to find any of the
Speaker 1: works discussed in today's episode, be sure to visit talk
Speaker 1: easypod dot com for more conversations with other writers. I'd
Speaker 1: recommend Ocean Wong, Jimblahary, Margaret Atwood, Zadi Smith, and George Saunders.
Speaker 1: You can find those in more Pushkin podcasts on Apple, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow
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Speaker 1: always drop me a line at SF at talkasypod dot com.
Speaker 1: And if you want to purchase one of our mugs
Speaker 1: they Come and Cream or Navy, or our vinyl record
Speaker 1: with writer fran Leeboitz, you can do so at talk
Speaker 1: easypond dot com slash shop. Talk Easy is produced by
Speaker 1: Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Jennick sa Bravo. Today's
Speaker 1: talk was edited by Clarice Gavara, with assistants from Sean
Speaker 1: Fitzgerald and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by
Speaker 1: Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Christia Shenoy. Our photographs
Speaker 1: are by Julius Chew, graphics by Ethan Sineca and of
Speaker 1: course our team at Pushkin Industries. Justin Richmond, Kerry Brody,
Speaker 1: Jacob Smith, Eric Sandler, Keira Posey, Jorna McMillan, Tara Machado,
Speaker 1: Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell, Gretacon.
Speaker 2: And Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1: I'm San Fragoso, thank you for listening to Talk Easy.
Speaker 1: I'll see you back here next week with a new episode.
Speaker 1: Until then, stay safe and so on.
Speaker 4: Had a fa