When You Ask Me Where I'm Going by Jasmin Kaur

Abstract

Reviewed by: When You Ask Me Where I'm Going by Jasmin Kaur Karen Coats Kaur, Jasmin When You Ask Me Where I'm Going; written and illus. by Jasmin Kaur. Harper, 2019 [256p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-291261-9 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 78-0-06-291263-3 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 9-12 In this mixed-genre collection of poetry, prose, and illustrations, Kaur draws on her experience of being a Sikh woman in Canada to express feelings of anger, grief, [End Page 127] and tentative hopefulness that will resonate deeply with young women who feel unheard and unseen because of their ethnicity, their immigration status, and/or their experience of domestic abuse. Despite occasional showstopping poems that stand alone with a glittering brilliance, however, mixed genre translates here to mixed quality and levels of accessibility in the collection as a whole. Rather than a coherent narrative or speaker, there's a sequence divided into six sections that seem to trace the experiences of a girl suffering abuse in Punjab; a pregnant, undocumented immigrant in Canada; the daughter of an undocumented mother; and other less defined speakers. It's therefore difficult to track the voices and thus the topics or immediate context of the lyric poems or prose segments, though their language is consistently arresting. Minimalist sketches attach to some of the poems, literalizing metaphors without necessarily adding to their significance. Readers seeking a story or character arc to follow will thus be disappointed, but those willing to treat this as an anthology of poems related to each other only through topical attention to issues commonly taken up in slam and spoken word, including sexual assault, sexism, racism, and depression, will find many gems here. Copyright © 2019 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois