Book Review: Megha Sood’s, Language of the Wound is Love

Language of the Wound is Love by Megha Sood

FlowerSong Press, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-963245-96-7 / 96 pages.

--- Dr. Belinda Román

 

Megha Sood’s, Language of the Wound is Love, is a deeply redemptive eye-of-the-modern-immigrant-oeuvre where the reader is compelled to witness the barbarous inequities in society, conveyed via a poet, whose social activism is intently conscious. Her writing acumen derives from her ability to empathize with suffering and expose the pulse of modern society in all its contrary, sometimes sordid machinations, reflective of her unfolding awareness of this world’s failures and successes.

The long-held argument; can you separate the artist from the art? Is divisive in creative fields. On the one hand, is a creative like Bukowski with rampant hatred of women, able to be appreciated for his superlative output, regardless of who he was as a man? Same with Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Picasso and many more. Whichever side you land, I would argue, we may say we can divorce the creator from the creation, but it’s a lie. Perhaps we choose to in order to appreciate their work regardless of who they were in real-life. But unless we don’t know the creatives real-life experiences, it’s likely we’ll never really separate them, in part because a creatives creativity and output IS inextricably linked to who they are.

The contagion sitting boisterously

hiding in the bushes

will be ready to spring at us

at any given moment

while we will split between

the pain of burying our past

and grieving for the future

we once had (Of Today and Tomorrow).

 

I make this argument because Megha Sood, author of Language of the Wound is Love, is described as a social activist. In my mind, you cannot separate a social activist from their work because their work is the social activism. Thus, the two are symbiotic and you read one, with the other in mind. Sood came out of relative obscurity, having mastered the English language on her journey from India to America: stranded on our islands / cooped in the isolated corners of our little home (Shelter in Poetry). She started out writing a blog and joining writing prompts before being catapulted into the spotlight through some clever partnerships with big projects. Those included the highly successful Black Fire This Time, (Ed. Dr. Kim McMillen) Her literary partnership “Life in Quarantine” with Stanford University, and her work being part of LunarCodex project in collaboration with NASA/SpaceX. Sood was also co-editor of The Kali Project, (Indie Blu(e) Publishing) a highly successful award-winning anthology of Indian women poets. Her collection My Body Lives Like a Threat, won first place in the BookFest Awards, 2024.

In the collections opening poem, Poem and Its Hunger, there are lines that stay with you throughout:

There is always a death standing at the end of the sentence,

not every enjambment gives meaning.

Some lines are meant to be left orphaned. Like the day they found

an old crumpled picture of my bombed city in my wallet.

 

Beyond what is being said, there is another layer, that of inextricable displacement and loss, an unfinished picture, a demolition with only a photograph as witness, being carried through time. There is figurative death as well as literal, a sense of dislocation and hunger; memories of mother’s hair and loss, urging to reclaim.

They always forget only your skin has a color

that sets you apart

your soul is colorless. No taste and no odor,

like water (A False Arrangement).

 

This is the nuance only a poet can convey; whereby we understand the surface message but also the deeper one; what is not quite said, but hinted at. By not being overt, the poet saves themselves the ultimate exposure, but lends enough pain to join our own experiences with theirs and expand outward to a greater awareness. Not just as a first-generation immigrant, a woman, a person of color, an Indian living in America. But all those things and then, far more, until we’re all connected without barriers dividing us.

Empathy stems from the mouth of love, of hunger, of acceptance

an incessant desire to be known as a countryman in a town full of

wonders. (My Identity as a First-Generation Immigrant).

 

Sood would come to describe herself as a social activist as her work increasingly took on social themes, not least George Floyd (awards won). Sood’s outrage at racism, her hard-won fight during #metoo and #BLM are symbolic of what matters most to Sood at a primal level. The basic right for all people’s to be treated the same. In Sood’s earlier works, there are numerous references to the disregard society has for ‘other’ and her own experience as an immigrant, as an Indian-American, as a woman, as a woman of color, are what became her social activism on a larger scale.

We are all the same

same heartbeats

sliced and splintered into a million pieces,

and the same God we worship

holding books with different verses (Brotherhood).

 

Positioned geographically in an intense melting pot of voices, Sood’s grew exponentially and her 4^th collection, Language of the Wound is Love, really evidences this growth both as a writer and social activist. In no way denigrating earlier work, it is clear Sood’s writing has taken on another layer of depth and sophistication in how she selects her activism and describes it: Pain is always interred in our memories and takes shape in our vivid dreams. (Every Pain Has a Story). The crux of her writing has always been, we are more similar than we are dissimilar; one of her basic long-standing-themes: the isolation of the immigrant and the necessity for compassion and outrage when equity is revealed.

I want to rip apart this entrapment

pry open the obstructed view of the open skies

let the fraying ends come loose (Unclaimed Freedom).

 

Her language has expanded and become honed through experience and working through what it really means to be ‘other.’ One could argue, Sood’s writing is the quintessential outsider’s experience, where she can bring a thirst for belonging, alongside the reconciliation of love for all humanity.

Don’t be a mute spectator

they will speak through you

like an apparition,

like a ghost in the machine

and will beg you to stay.

Be a Messiah

ready to be burned at the stake. (Rise).

 

The dehumanization of society is a theme that Sood is eloquently able to articulate through myriad poems, with a deliberate urgency in her pace, she questions and rages at the injustices of her adopted country, whilst retaining hopefulness and a belief healing is possible. Like where she says: What a terrible act of survival. It’s either them or us. The existence is beautiful and yet so devastating. (The Beautiful Death Around Us). Whilst always personal, Sood’s writing is universal in its appreciation for our shared experience; and it is this that renders her an activist, because she never writes in isolation. Sood’s language is a unique blend of her Indian ancestry and her adopted countries vernacular, and in this, she is distinct and memorable; a witness to what she observes with her eyes wide open.

Sound cannot travel in a vacuum

It needs a medium for itself to carry

the fear of the unknown

of hate and anxiety,

of skin color not known to use

poisoning minds of the free. (The Perfect Solution).

 

The purposing of social activism is to not simply speak but act upon those words, as when she says: But every day in me, I find myself a bridge that needs to be built. / A dark corner that needs to be lit. (A Bridge Needs to be Built). The abstraction of love is a vein that runs throughout these works, because without love there is no empathy or mercy, no way to reconcile the pain. At the same time, the Indian heritage of these words is what elevates them to a higher beauty than the mundane; ensuring themes are evoked throughout beauty as well as outrage.

A zoetic language: a soft growl turning into a wail,

aunting that resonates, leaving me like a thrumming harp wire

such is the riveting effect of his words

an unraveling of his intricate mind (On Listening to Jericho Brown).

 

Poets who write for social justice, utilize their platforms to educate, elucidate and electrify to action, those seeking truth and change. Words alone may not suffice, but a social activist use their own experiences to express global suffering and suggest methods by which we can individually and together, make the greatest impact. We share collected grief, the collective truth that makes us human. (To Begin Something, Something Needs to End). There is a historical tendency to look to poets and writers for ideas and themes to galvanize to action. This is the crux of social activism as a writer, something you become when you live it, rather than report it. Just as when Sood says: There is more to this mysterious life / than your mere needs and wants (Needs and Wants). As an immigrant, as a woman of color, as an Indian woman far from her own culture and land, Megha Sood goes well beyond reporting her observations; she asks us, what are we going to do to make things fair? It is both a demand and a necessity that we respond to this.

This perplexing state of existence

has pushed me toward the edge, every time

but despite this, I turn around, driven by my hunger

that says to me aloud;

Stay here, Look, we all are dying

living in a collective state of disbelief (The Collective State of Disbelief).

***

Belinda Roman

Megha Sood’s Bio:

Megha Sood is an Award-Winning Asian-American Poet, Editor, Author, and Literary Activist based in New Jersey, USA. She is an Associate Editor at MookyChick (UK), BrownStone Poets (USA), and a Literary Partner in the project “Life in Quarantine” with Stanford University, USA.

Dr. Román’s Bio:

Dr. Román received her Ph.D. at the University of Western Ontario (Western), where she concentrated on the application of Complexity Science to Border Studies. She also taught courses on the encounters between First Nations and Europeans. She began Román Economics 2015, a small consulting firm, with particular insight into BIPOC and minority marketplaces. She is a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal economic forecasting survey and President of the San Antonio Business and Economics Society (SABES).

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Setu, April 2025