Yes, Milk and Honey Is Banned!

Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey became a publishing phenomenon when it was released in 2014, eventually selling over 3 million copies and spending years on the New York Times bestseller list. The collection is divided into four sections: the hurting, the loving, the breaking, and the healing. Kaur’s poems are short, lowercase, and illustrated with her own line drawings. They deal with abuse, trauma, heartbreak, self-love, and femininity with a directness that resonated with millions of readers, particularly young women. The book essentially launched the Instagram poetry movement and made Kaur one of the most recognizable poets alive.

Milk and Honey was challenged 13 times in the 2024-2025 PEN America data, with bans across Florida, Georgia, and Iowa school districts. The challenges cite sexual content, references to sexual violence and abuse, and age appropriateness concerns. Kaur’s poems about surviving abuse are among the most frequently flagged passages, which creates an uncomfortable dynamic: the content being censored is a survivor processing trauma through art. The book’s massive popularity with teenage readers, the exact audience book challengers claim to be protecting, suggests that young people are finding something valuable in Kaur’s words that adults would rather they didn’t access.