The cover lacks the simple beauty of the other two collections Kaur has released to date, but perhaps that has something to do with the comparative ugliness of the subjects addressed. Home Body bursts out of the gate with Kaur putting into words, as best she can, how she was molested at the age of 4, and what effect that had on her going forward. It’s absolutely raw and, if you come away from it without feeling a similar effect yourself, you are a cold, heartless husk.
After this, Kaur bounces around from subject to subject, weighing in on everything from the plight of trans folks to her own insecurities, which stem from imposter syndrome. While this makes for a less focused effort than The Sun and Her Flowers, the overall impact this has on the collection is negligible, and only worth mentioning to point out that, yes, is the inferior one of the two (but only by a fraction).
No matter what Kaur speaks on, no matter if she’s flitting aimlessly from one subject to another or keeping herself tethered to one subject at a time, she finds the beauty and/or raw emotion in all of it. I don’t think there is a topic I wouldn’t love to see her offer her insight on. She has a way with words and with distilling them down to just the bare necessities, and I wish her career wasn’t so young that I only had one collection, her first, left to read. But she’s young and so one can hope there’ll be plenty more, so long as she doesn’t find herself fully crippled by self-doubt.