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Yellow
Yellow, is a collection of poetry and prose on the blooming and the wilting. the healing and the growing, the rebirth of seeds in different soil, scattered but never lost. Yellow is a collection of pieces translated from the heart. It is a celebration of growth, shedding, healing, and ultimately, all things love. Yellow is, among many things, a survival story, a testament & an honoring of still breathing, & still thriving on the journey.
202 pages, Paperback
Published June 30, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 19, 2023
The cover of Ravina Wadhwani’s debut publication, Yellow, depicts a hand in front of a cityscape, holding a bouquet of sunflowers. It’s as if the cover is telling the reader, “Here, take these. Keep them. Let them open your heart,” and that’s exactly what the reader experiences in the almost 200 pages of poetry and prose contained in the collection.
Wadhwani’s book is divided into five sections, each continuing the floral theme in its title: Seeds, Stems, The Wilting and the Blooming, Petals and Pollen. Each section, even Pollen, the shortest section at only five pages long, drives forth dense narratives with a range of subject matter.
After her formal introduction, Wadhwani’s opening poem (and also the title poem), gives the reader a taste of what they’re about to savor, a glimpse into who Wadhwani is.
[Yellow] is the cream in the middle of the cookies that Naani used to eat / with her chai. and it is the color of dal served for dinner. Yellow / is my mother’s turmeric stained fingers.
Themes of lineage, place, and self-discovery resonate throughout the collection, but Yellow is not all flowers and warm spices with matriarchs. Wadhwani is not afraid to unpack serious societal issues facing our nation — familial abuse, gun violence, and systemic racism to name only a few. And these callouts are not decoratively camouflaged in allegory, metaphor, or feathery language. With titles such as “For Gabriel Fernanadez and all Other Boys Who Have Been Failed,”
When you needed loving arms around your 8-year-old body,
they gave you wounds.
When you needed a safe soft place to sleep,
they gave you sin.
“Mass Shootings in the United States of America,”
Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe.
and “This Country is Caging Our Children,”
Amerikkka tells my students to cut themselves into pieces
that are digestible enough.
tells them they are not enough
before telling them, they are too much.
Wadhwani grabs ugliness by the hair and drags it to center stage for everyone to see it, not out of hatred, but rather out of a love for beauty and for justice and for the knowledge that we, as a collective, have so much more work still on the to-do list.
As haunting as some of her pieces are, it is clear that each piece was crafted with deliberate intention, delivering firm messages with the tenderness only a poetess of her caliber could accomplish.
In juxtaposition to the harsh elements, Wadhwani also explores traditionally depressive subject matter — funerals — and engages with humor and light-heartedness
My passing will be a goddamn celebration…
Tell my best friend to take the aux cord
and attach it to the speakers we would blast our favorites from…
Let my friends tell you my deepest secrets.
the ones infused with too much tequila.
I’ll let them make fun of me one last time.
She can create light, she can create darkness, and she can also take darkness and add light to it.
Peppered throughout her titled pieces, the reader also finds short quips in script font. These are some of my favorite gems from this collection, particularly:
Isn’t it something?
that the moments in which there is a
complete loss of words
are the same moments in which poems
full of words are born.
villages can be born from emptiness.
Most of Wadhwani’s work is long-form poetry, but a few pieces sock a gut punch in just a few lines. A memorable and relatable piece “Throat Chakra” left me with a gut punch.
I do not have to know you for a lifetime to love you.
I have loved you since we met.
I have an abundance of it in my heart,
plenty of it in my body,
and ocean of it in my mind,
just a shortage of it in my throat.
Yellow is a collection that will, undoubtedly, leave the reader with much to meditate on. It’s at the same time beautiful and heartbreaking, harsh and gentle. The reader will smile and maybe shed a tear. As she writes from the beginning: “Yellow is soft, yet tough and just a little rough / around the edges.”
In her concluding section, Pollen, Wadhwani writes,
I tell you the gift of the sunflower is this:
That no matter its fragile stem,
no matter how dainty she appears…
She can still see the soil she comes from,
still thrives in it no matter how infiltrated it may be.
But here is where I will dare to disagree with Wadhwani. I tell you, the gift of the sunflower is the inspiration that led to the creation of this collection — a true gift of poetry that needed to take root and bloom.
Wadhwani’s book is divided into five sections, each continuing the floral theme in its title: Seeds, Stems, The Wilting and the Blooming, Petals and Pollen. Each section, even Pollen, the shortest section at only five pages long, drives forth dense narratives with a range of subject matter.
After her formal introduction, Wadhwani’s opening poem (and also the title poem), gives the reader a taste of what they’re about to savor, a glimpse into who Wadhwani is.
[Yellow] is the cream in the middle of the cookies that Naani used to eat / with her chai. and it is the color of dal served for dinner. Yellow / is my mother’s turmeric stained fingers.
Themes of lineage, place, and self-discovery resonate throughout the collection, but Yellow is not all flowers and warm spices with matriarchs. Wadhwani is not afraid to unpack serious societal issues facing our nation — familial abuse, gun violence, and systemic racism to name only a few. And these callouts are not decoratively camouflaged in allegory, metaphor, or feathery language. With titles such as “For Gabriel Fernanadez and all Other Boys Who Have Been Failed,”
When you needed loving arms around your 8-year-old body,
they gave you wounds.
When you needed a safe soft place to sleep,
they gave you sin.
“Mass Shootings in the United States of America,”
Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe.
and “This Country is Caging Our Children,”
Amerikkka tells my students to cut themselves into pieces
that are digestible enough.
tells them they are not enough
before telling them, they are too much.
Wadhwani grabs ugliness by the hair and drags it to center stage for everyone to see it, not out of hatred, but rather out of a love for beauty and for justice and for the knowledge that we, as a collective, have so much more work still on the to-do list.
As haunting as some of her pieces are, it is clear that each piece was crafted with deliberate intention, delivering firm messages with the tenderness only a poetess of her caliber could accomplish.
In juxtaposition to the harsh elements, Wadhwani also explores traditionally depressive subject matter — funerals — and engages with humor and light-heartedness
My passing will be a goddamn celebration…
Tell my best friend to take the aux cord
and attach it to the speakers we would blast our favorites from…
Let my friends tell you my deepest secrets.
the ones infused with too much tequila.
I’ll let them make fun of me one last time.
She can create light, she can create darkness, and she can also take darkness and add light to it.
Peppered throughout her titled pieces, the reader also finds short quips in script font. These are some of my favorite gems from this collection, particularly:
Isn’t it something?
that the moments in which there is a
complete loss of words
are the same moments in which poems
full of words are born.
villages can be born from emptiness.
Most of Wadhwani’s work is long-form poetry, but a few pieces sock a gut punch in just a few lines. A memorable and relatable piece “Throat Chakra” left me with a gut punch.
I do not have to know you for a lifetime to love you.
I have loved you since we met.
I have an abundance of it in my heart,
plenty of it in my body,
and ocean of it in my mind,
just a shortage of it in my throat.
Yellow is a collection that will, undoubtedly, leave the reader with much to meditate on. It’s at the same time beautiful and heartbreaking, harsh and gentle. The reader will smile and maybe shed a tear. As she writes from the beginning: “Yellow is soft, yet tough and just a little rough / around the edges.”
In her concluding section, Pollen, Wadhwani writes,
I tell you the gift of the sunflower is this:
That no matter its fragile stem,
no matter how dainty she appears…
She can still see the soil she comes from,
still thrives in it no matter how infiltrated it may be.
But here is where I will dare to disagree with Wadhwani. I tell you, the gift of the sunflower is the inspiration that led to the creation of this collection — a true gift of poetry that needed to take root and bloom.
October 27, 2025
Yellow by Ravina Wadhwani is a labor of love for herself and for anyone who chooses to peruse its pages. There are so many pieces in this collection that clearly speak to her own personal lived experiences, what she has felt, what she has pondered, what she has survived, how she continued thriving even “after the worst parts tried to get me” (end of “Spine,” page 198), and yet, I could find parts of myself in some of these pieces. I know I’m a few years late to picking this up, but nonetheless, it is wonderful read.
October 20, 2021
You have to read this book. It is a sunshine of an offering full of lessons learned and sunrays of positivity. You learn a lot about the author and her upbringing and how it relates to us all on a very human level. Reading this book made me smile and have hope for the future - and wish to ever write a book as lovely as this.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews