Brown Sugar Skin

Brown Sugar Skin attends to the incredible bravery required to open your heart to love in all its forms. With these poems, Tharani Balachandran guides us through a tender and unflinching inquiry into family, otherness, and the Tamil diaspora experience. Stretching from childhood to motherhood, these poems touch all the tumultuous spaces in between while nurturing a balance of nostalgia and humour. Like that one dear friend who knows everything (the one you can call at any time of day for any reason), let Brown Sugar Skin be a comforting reassurance softly reminding you why we must courageously step into love.

-Marie Metaphor Specht, Victoria BC's 6th Poet laureate and author of Soft Shelters.

Brown Sugar Skin is a love song to all things diasporic, nostalgic and transformative. Balachandran's poetry will transport you back in time to re-live the pains of those awkward growing-up years, navigation of family ties, the perils and feverishness of modern dating and the yearnings for motherhood. More importantly, her powerful words will heal you as you look forward with hope and forgiveness. As a woman of colour, I am immensely proud to herald Brown Sugar Skin as the handbook for healing heartbreaks. It is exciting to read Balachandran's wit, and wisdom while reflecting upon her Tamil heritage with diasporic sentiments.

- Amy Lee, Managing Editor, Quail Bell Magazine, New York City.