Banned Books Week · Reading notes

A place on the shelf: milk and honey and Banned Books Week

There is a signed copy of milk and honey on our shelves. This week, there is a good reason to open it.

On October 5, the American Library Association (ALA) announced its list of the 150 most frequently challenged books recorded from 1990 to 2025, marking the association’s 150th anniversary. Rupi Kaur’s collection is No. 45.

What does “challenged” mean?

A challenge is a request to remove a book or restrict access to it; a ban is an actual removal. ALA gathers reports from libraries, schools and the news. This ranking reflects documented attempts to limit reading, rather than literary merit, and does not mean every listed book is banned throughout the United States. ALA explains the distinction here.

Banned Books Week runs October 4–10, 2026, with the theme “Let Books Be. Protect the Freedom to Read.” You needn’t admire every book on the list to care whether others can read it. Borrowing one, reading it and making up your own mind is a useful place to start.

Before the label, the poems

Rupi Kaur is a poet, artist and performer who wrote, illustrated and self-published milk and honey in 2014. The lowercase lettering is deliberate: she connects it to the Gurmukhi script of her Punjabi heritage, which makes no distinction between upper and lowercase letters.

The collection moves through four sections: “the hurting,” “the loving,” “the breaking” and “the healing.” Short poems and spare drawings make room for experiences that can be difficult to speak about: abuse, sexual violence, intimacy, loss and recovery. The language is accessible; the subject matter can be painful.

If you know Kaur only through isolated lines shared online, try reading a whole section in sequence. Notice what changes between the poems, and where a drawing makes you pause. You may find the directness moving, or prefer poetry that leaves more unsaid. Either response begins with time spent on the page.

The copy in our shop

Our signed 2016 hardcover of milk and honey is a first printing of that hardcover edition, with its dust jacket and Kaur’s signature without a personal inscription. It came after the original 2014 self-published edition. The listing includes photographs of the cover, signature and copyright page, along with condition details.

For someone who already keeps these poems close, a signed copy offers a personal connection to their author. If you are meeting the book for the first time, start with the poems. This week is a good invitation.

Author and book sources: Kaur’s own account; publisher’s description.