Instructions for Banno

$18.95

In her debut poetry collection, Kiran Bath travels through the timelines and geographies of the women in her family to understand the inherited consequences of becoming a South Asian bride (banno). Threading stories of pre-partition matriarchs, migrant mothers, and first generation daughters, she renders themes of subjugation, domestic violence, honor killings, and infanticide alongside unrequited love, sisterhood, motherhood, and devotion in cathartic form. The result is the set of instructions left for BANNO, a diary that ruptures the institution of filial duty and embodies the tradition that survives it—an insistence for declaring our humanity.

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Kiran Bath is the author of INSTRUCTIONS FOR BANNO (Kelsey Street Press, 2024). She has received fellowships and support from Poets House, the Vermont Studio Center and Brooklyn Poets. Kiran is a Kundiman Fellow and a Tin House alumnus. Her writing appears in wildness, The Adroit Journal, The Brooklyn Rail, and other journals. Raised in Sydney, she still calls Australia home and claims Punjab as the cradle. Kiran is currently based in Brooklyn.