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My Body Is Not an Apology
This chapbook is a true reflection of the feminist soul that I carry. All the poems in the collection are centered around body politics and its toxicity. My poems are a deep exposition of gender-based discrimination, sexual and reproductive rights violations that references my experience emanating from gender-based bias and proliferation of hate speech against women. These poems are not only the reflection of blatant violation of body rights but also address the human rights violation in today's toxic political environment as a whole. The first half of the collection with poems like" False Ownership'', "An Exercise in Futility" and'' My body Is Not An Apology", talks about body and female subjugation. For poems in the latter part "Resistance", "Even my grief should be productive", "When Men explain me things", and "How to be Woman" I have tried turning them on their heads to show not just how oppressive but also how ridiculous it is to rule and punish by gender division. The middle part of my collection including the poems" Peace - a metaphor for denial", "A Just Immigration Policy", "Unforgivable", "An Act of Self Defence" reflects how the body politics never remains an individual level but molds and morphs into a social monster birthing problem like human rights violation, immigration, gun violence, and racial discrimination. The tail end of my collection with poems like "Path to my freedom", "My Survival Story" and "My Body Like A Threat" talks about the strength and resilience which directs and guides me through the turbulent times and paves my path towards my survival. This chapbook highlights my journey, gives it a voice, and strengthens the fact that how the body is so central yet it remains invisible and still acts as a threat. This chapbook of mine is a clarion call towards eradicating gender-based discrimination and body shaming. It is not a request but an unapologetic and unfettered demand to see your body as a prayer, not an apology but a safe space where your soul can reside without any contempt or disdain. As a woman of color and surviving a patriarchal society these poems of mine build a discourse around feminine strength. It is a testimony of my survival story of living in a society full of misogyny. This is a book full of hope and empowerment.
46 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 20, 2021
Praise for My Body Is Not an Apology by Megha Sood
My Body is Not An Apology is a testimony of female rebellion and a journey of self-discovery in a most wanted and unwanted way. The poems roar to voice the pain of silent torture, cruelty, and agony of a woman’s heart to reclaim her dignity not only as a female but also as an individual. This book is a fierce approach to life in poetry, and the poet dissects the ironies of women’s existence with razor-sharp language, intellect, and courage like Simone de Beauvoir. In the poet’s own words, it is a triumphant proclamation and an unfettered declaration.
–Kalpna Singh-Chitnis (Poet, Writer, and Filmmaker)
Sometimes with acerbic irony, sometimes with wise comeuppance, but never with hopeless resignation no matter how bleak the refracted rays of reality, Megha’s stanzas find their way through the blind alleys of patriarchy and misogyny looking it unblinking in the eye. The vulnerability of her perception is also her strength, as each stanza duals with difficult truths using the female body and the form of poetry as weapons of grit and gumption. This little book is a fist of fury and unveiling.
–Rochelle Potkar, Author of Paper Asylum & Bombay Hangovers
These poems recognize the body as the ‘eye of the storm’ in the turbulent churning of our age. The guttural cry of the feminine forges these poems with a primal rawness cast in images as varied as radishes, pickles, broken book spines, and armchairs. Megha Sood joins her unapologetic voice with urgency to erase any error of ambiguity, ‘You don’t own shit’. These poems will ‘sit like a welt’ on the tongue of the world.
–Usha Akella, Poet & Founder, Matwaala, South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival
A unique feminist exploration through the written word, investigating the body and the world society overlays atop women, Megha Sood does justice uncovering, discovering, and discarding herself to find an inexorably beautiful woman within. Sood’s My Body Is Not an Apology chisels away at the construct our society imposes on women, revealing an exemplar poet of the highest caliber.
–Joshua Corwin, author of Becoming Vulnerable
Megha Sood’s “My Body is Not an Apology” is a powerful debut with poetry that contains multitudes. These poems are fierce and unapologetic as they explore the toxic culture around gender-based discrimination and reproductive rights. Sood crafts with cutting precision as we read about personal experience and the influence of these issues in the wider world. Far from a desperate cry of the disenfranchised, these poems raise a fist and demand to be heard from a position of strength. Woven in and around every poem is the question that asks: what would life be like if we could change this? This book is a clarion call to eradicating gender-based injustice. It is also a book full of hope and empowerment.
–Juliette van der Molen, Poet, Writer,Feminist
My Body is Not an Apology by Megha Sood is a woman’s journey through gender-based discrimination. It is a cry and a plea as Sood questions, “How can you live a life like a broken spine of a book?” In her poems, we see a parallel to Sylvia Plath, and her words bring alive the voices of the Bronte Sisters, Emily Dickinson, and Phyllis Wheatley. At the same time, we see similarities to Sarojini Naidu’s rage and certitude when Sood says, “But I never give up …as I learned from the footsteps of warriors.” Sood’s My Body is Not An Apology is a whimper, a roar, an awakening in the feminist world.
–Meenakshi Mohan, Ed.D., Professor, writer, painter, critic
Megha Sood’s poems show a vulnerability that is welded to resilience in remarkably ingenious ways because poetry occupies the interstice between the felt and the unspoken.
Don’t let the aroma leave the pickle jar
Keep the lid tight
my granny used to say–
Some things are better left unspoken. (Even My Grief Should Be Productive)
Here’s the wisdom of an entire civilization. Sometimes it comes pickled in a jar. Call it Indian or South Asian, or what you will. It teaches you how to hold one’s own, anywhere.
–Lakshmi Kannan, Poet, Novelist, Short story writer, and Translator.
Megha Sood’s chapbook, My Body Is Not An Apology is exactly what the title says. The human body is not an apology for anyone. It’s not meant to make us feel ashamed simply for being born as we are, for existing, for belonging to any race, religion, gender, age, or any diversity markers that exist in our world. Our body is also not space where anyone can reside with abuse, disdain, or evil. Our body is a temple where our soul lives protected and safe. Megha through her deeply sensitive and poignant poems urges readers to ponder, deliberate, and act upon ensuring that our body is not an apology. Megha’s poems are fierce and tender at the same time. They are like raging storms or quiet whispers; both compel us to listen, look and consider. Megha delves into a plethora of issues that plague the human mind and in consequence the body. She questions and pulls the reader back again and again to her poems leaving behind a memory of heightened awareness. Very few writers can do as such. This collection of twenty-five poems will surely leave a mark upon your heart. Among the contemporary diaspora writers, Megha Sood is one to definitely read!
–Anita Nahal, poet, professor, flash fictionist & children’s writer. Find her works at: https://anitanahal.wixsite.com/anitan...
“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
The gripping, riveting poems of Megha Sood’s chapbook ‘My Body Is Not An Apology’ carries the inherent legacy of the truths that our exemplary literary predecessors Virginia Woolf, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, Nikki Giovani, Alice Walker, Kamala Das, and others, embodying unabashed feminism, upheld in their poetic creations.
When the poet utters her angst and her rhetoric reflects a discourse, built around the quintessential strength of a woman, these lines are born from her pen: “My body is not an apology/ it’s a roar: a declaration/ an unapologetic/ unabashed/ straight truth in your face/ a war cry:/ a deafening scream from the silence.” These lines hit the nail at just the right place, confronting the age-old power dynamics of a patriarchal social structure. As a strong woman of color, as a sensitive poet, her verses in the collection are like smoking cinders of the thinking feminine voice, empowering and liberating the feminine psyche. In the growth of her poetic voice, she has successfully absorbed the little nuances of her Indian roots and her grandmother’s legacy of truth (reflected in the poem ‘Even My Grief Should Be Productive), at the same time, having the deep insight of a woman acknowledging that her ‘body goes from a shade darker than yesterday’, as she gives birth to her ‘own revolution’. In the collection, the body and being of the poet as a woman reaches its zenith of celebration as she categorically unfolds the themes of the feminine identity, body politics, repression of womanhood, and also, the rampant rhetorics of violence ingrained in our postmodern society. Her voice is both subtle and empowering, essential and redeeming, hence the chapbook will indeed be an asset in the ever-evolving arena of feminist writing and art.
–Lopa Banerjee, Critically acclaimed author, poet, translator, editor from Texas, USA
My Body is Not An Apology is a testimony of female rebellion and a journey of self-discovery in a most wanted and unwanted way. The poems roar to voice the pain of silent torture, cruelty, and agony of a woman’s heart to reclaim her dignity not only as a female but also as an individual. This book is a fierce approach to life in poetry, and the poet dissects the ironies of women’s existence with razor-sharp language, intellect, and courage like Simone de Beauvoir. In the poet’s own words, it is a triumphant proclamation and an unfettered declaration.
–Kalpna Singh-Chitnis (Poet, Writer, and Filmmaker)
Sometimes with acerbic irony, sometimes with wise comeuppance, but never with hopeless resignation no matter how bleak the refracted rays of reality, Megha’s stanzas find their way through the blind alleys of patriarchy and misogyny looking it unblinking in the eye. The vulnerability of her perception is also her strength, as each stanza duals with difficult truths using the female body and the form of poetry as weapons of grit and gumption. This little book is a fist of fury and unveiling.
–Rochelle Potkar, Author of Paper Asylum & Bombay Hangovers
These poems recognize the body as the ‘eye of the storm’ in the turbulent churning of our age. The guttural cry of the feminine forges these poems with a primal rawness cast in images as varied as radishes, pickles, broken book spines, and armchairs. Megha Sood joins her unapologetic voice with urgency to erase any error of ambiguity, ‘You don’t own shit’. These poems will ‘sit like a welt’ on the tongue of the world.
–Usha Akella, Poet & Founder, Matwaala, South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival
A unique feminist exploration through the written word, investigating the body and the world society overlays atop women, Megha Sood does justice uncovering, discovering, and discarding herself to find an inexorably beautiful woman within. Sood’s My Body Is Not an Apology chisels away at the construct our society imposes on women, revealing an exemplar poet of the highest caliber.
–Joshua Corwin, author of Becoming Vulnerable
Megha Sood’s “My Body is Not an Apology” is a powerful debut with poetry that contains multitudes. These poems are fierce and unapologetic as they explore the toxic culture around gender-based discrimination and reproductive rights. Sood crafts with cutting precision as we read about personal experience and the influence of these issues in the wider world. Far from a desperate cry of the disenfranchised, these poems raise a fist and demand to be heard from a position of strength. Woven in and around every poem is the question that asks: what would life be like if we could change this? This book is a clarion call to eradicating gender-based injustice. It is also a book full of hope and empowerment.
–Juliette van der Molen, Poet, Writer,Feminist
My Body is Not an Apology by Megha Sood is a woman’s journey through gender-based discrimination. It is a cry and a plea as Sood questions, “How can you live a life like a broken spine of a book?” In her poems, we see a parallel to Sylvia Plath, and her words bring alive the voices of the Bronte Sisters, Emily Dickinson, and Phyllis Wheatley. At the same time, we see similarities to Sarojini Naidu’s rage and certitude when Sood says, “But I never give up …as I learned from the footsteps of warriors.” Sood’s My Body is Not An Apology is a whimper, a roar, an awakening in the feminist world.
–Meenakshi Mohan, Ed.D., Professor, writer, painter, critic
Megha Sood’s poems show a vulnerability that is welded to resilience in remarkably ingenious ways because poetry occupies the interstice between the felt and the unspoken.
Don’t let the aroma leave the pickle jar
Keep the lid tight
my granny used to say–
Some things are better left unspoken. (Even My Grief Should Be Productive)
Here’s the wisdom of an entire civilization. Sometimes it comes pickled in a jar. Call it Indian or South Asian, or what you will. It teaches you how to hold one’s own, anywhere.
–Lakshmi Kannan, Poet, Novelist, Short story writer, and Translator.
Megha Sood’s chapbook, My Body Is Not An Apology is exactly what the title says. The human body is not an apology for anyone. It’s not meant to make us feel ashamed simply for being born as we are, for existing, for belonging to any race, religion, gender, age, or any diversity markers that exist in our world. Our body is also not space where anyone can reside with abuse, disdain, or evil. Our body is a temple where our soul lives protected and safe. Megha through her deeply sensitive and poignant poems urges readers to ponder, deliberate, and act upon ensuring that our body is not an apology. Megha’s poems are fierce and tender at the same time. They are like raging storms or quiet whispers; both compel us to listen, look and consider. Megha delves into a plethora of issues that plague the human mind and in consequence the body. She questions and pulls the reader back again and again to her poems leaving behind a memory of heightened awareness. Very few writers can do as such. This collection of twenty-five poems will surely leave a mark upon your heart. Among the contemporary diaspora writers, Megha Sood is one to definitely read!
–Anita Nahal, poet, professor, flash fictionist & children’s writer. Find her works at: https://anitanahal.wixsite.com/anitan...
“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
The gripping, riveting poems of Megha Sood’s chapbook ‘My Body Is Not An Apology’ carries the inherent legacy of the truths that our exemplary literary predecessors Virginia Woolf, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, Nikki Giovani, Alice Walker, Kamala Das, and others, embodying unabashed feminism, upheld in their poetic creations.
When the poet utters her angst and her rhetoric reflects a discourse, built around the quintessential strength of a woman, these lines are born from her pen: “My body is not an apology/ it’s a roar: a declaration/ an unapologetic/ unabashed/ straight truth in your face/ a war cry:/ a deafening scream from the silence.” These lines hit the nail at just the right place, confronting the age-old power dynamics of a patriarchal social structure. As a strong woman of color, as a sensitive poet, her verses in the collection are like smoking cinders of the thinking feminine voice, empowering and liberating the feminine psyche. In the growth of her poetic voice, she has successfully absorbed the little nuances of her Indian roots and her grandmother’s legacy of truth (reflected in the poem ‘Even My Grief Should Be Productive), at the same time, having the deep insight of a woman acknowledging that her ‘body goes from a shade darker than yesterday’, as she gives birth to her ‘own revolution’. In the collection, the body and being of the poet as a woman reaches its zenith of celebration as she categorically unfolds the themes of the feminine identity, body politics, repression of womanhood, and also, the rampant rhetorics of violence ingrained in our postmodern society. Her voice is both subtle and empowering, essential and redeeming, hence the chapbook will indeed be an asset in the ever-evolving arena of feminist writing and art.
–Lopa Banerjee, Critically acclaimed author, poet, translator, editor from Texas, USA
December 15, 2025
I remember when this book came out, I bought three copies for friends, who I immediately knew after reading, would adore this as much as I did. It's got all the ingredients you want in poetry; that it's well written, compelling and leaves you thirsting for more, and has an important social reach, namely the way women are treated, especially those of color. As a woman of color and having grown up being discriminated against for myriad reasons, I really related to Megha Sood's writing because hers is not self-pitying but rather, a battle cry to demand better treatment and highlight the existing inequality in our societies and what we can do about it. I found this so feminist and uplifting, empowering and vital in its determination and willingness to 'go there' and say what has to be said. In many ways this could be a manifesto of our times, and I couldn't put it down until I finished it - I'm certain any woman (and many men) will get as much out of this as I did. Absolute brilliance.
December 15, 2025
Superb. The best collection of poetry I read this year - a stunning, unforgettable collection of activist writing, as the title indicates, without apology, reminding us a strong woman isn't going to be quiet, she's going to speak about the injustices and do so eloquently, until someone listens. Megha Sood's voice is beautifully translated into poetry, where there is a good balance between her softer reflections that are both exquisite and memorable, and those that are more socially-provoked, with a more urgent voice. This is the collection we need when we watch the world going mad. A truly gifted writer who is continually reinventing herself and growing her following with each powerful piece of work.
March 28, 2022
I wish more people would read it! Helped me with my own thought process.
June 1, 2023
I listened to this book and it is maybe best read so you can really soak in everything that she is saying.
May 7, 2025
WAY too wordy
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews