The Distance Between Braids

<p>In The Distance Between Braids the poet charts the intimate terrain of girlhood with remarkable precision and emotional intelligence. Moving from early childhood to young adulthood these poems map the psychological cultural and bodily transitions expected of girls in patriarchal spaces particularly within the contained geography of small-town India.</p><p>This collection interrogates the subtle systemic and structural ways in which girlhood is shaped: through silence surveillance hunger achievement familial duty and unspoken longing. With a language grounded in clarity and restraint the poems foreground the domestic as political the body as archive and memory as an act of resistance.</p><p>Unsettling and deeply humane The Distance Between Braids bears witness to what is inherited enforced undone and reclaimed. It will resonate with readers who recognise girlhood not as nostalgia but as a formative and ongoing negotiation with the self.</p>