47 Books You Should Add To Your Shelf, According To Poet Rupi Kaur

Rupi Kaur has vision beyond her years.

At 24, the Indian-Canadian artist and poet decided to create a menstruation-themed photo series for a college project. She posted one now-famous photograph to Instagram, showing herself lying on a bed facing the wall, period blood staining her sweatpants and the bedsheet. Instagram repeatedly took down the photo from Kaur’s account, but the image went viral, attracting international attention. Though still a college student, she was something of an Instagram star already, thanks to her luminous and striking poetry, which she posted on the account.

She told HuffPost at the time that she was galvanized in part by the stigma attached to menstruation ― an aspect of her project unwittingly reinforced by Instagram’s removal of the photo. “I always see women complaining — I’m one of them — about how much our periods suck,” she said. “But they’re also so beautiful. They give rise to life.”

Less than two years later, a publishing house put out Kaur’s book of prose and poetry, Milk and Honey (originally self-published in 2014), and it began dominating best-seller charts. The text and illustrations ― both by Kaur ― examine the emotional states of a modern young woman. Her work is simply but powerfully expressed, and viscerally captures both universal human experience and the particular struggles of a young woman today.

Kaur’s art has meant opening a window into her mind and bodily experiences for audiences, whether through candid poetry or realistic (though staged, with fake blood) period portraits. Another intimate revelation ― what’s on her bookshelf. The brilliant artist and writer shared her 47 picks with The Strand, where she curated a bookshelf. For those who aren’t in New York City, here’s an alternative to browsing her hand-picked display.

Check out Kaur’s bookshelf below.

1. 1984 by George Orwell

Find it here.

2. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Find it here.

3. A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf

Find it here.

4. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Find it here.

5. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Find it here.

6. Between The World And Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Find it here.

7. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

Find it here.

8. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Find it here.

9. Feminist Theory by bell hooks

Find it here.

10. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

Find it here.

11. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Find it here.

12. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Find it here.

13. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

Find it here.

14. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

Find it here.

15. Matilda by Roald Dahl

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16. Maus by Art Spiegelman

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17. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

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18. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

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19. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

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20. No Logo by Naomi Klein

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21. Notorious RBG by Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik

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22. Odes by Sharon Olds

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23. Oh, The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss

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24. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

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25. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X (as told to Alex Haley)

Find it here.

26. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

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27. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

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28. The Butterfly’s Burden by Mahmoud Darwish

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29. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

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30. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

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31. The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton

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32. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

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33. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

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34. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

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35. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

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36. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

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37. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

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38. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

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39. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

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40. The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

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41. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

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42. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

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43. This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz

Find it here.

44. Wayside School Is Falling Down by Louis Sachar

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45. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

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46. White Teeth by Zadie Smith

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47. Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Find it here.