PRIVATE MAPS

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ISBN9781951675097
5" x 8" 40 pages.
​7 black and white photos.

PRIVATE MAPS is a long poem written by Kuhu Joshi accompanied by the black and white photography of Farheen Fatima. Together, they weave a familiar story of doubt, curiosity, self-consciousness, and growth.
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In Private Maps, we follow a girl-becoming-woman, discovering her body, holding it up against other bodies: the other girls at school, the grandmother wrapped like sushi, the friend’s mother with breast cancer. Layering fresh, powerful images, somehow simultaneously innocent and sensual, Kuhu and Farheen offer us an intimate glimpse into a tender, tactile, and wonder-filled coming of age. A joy to read. 


– Aditi Rao


Kuhu Joshi's long poem Private Maps is a testimony to the warm, difficult experiential truth that is the female body from ages twelve to twenty-five. The poet employs the first-person point of view that is sometimes plural but mostly singular. What unfolds is a cartographic story–a story of discoveries and discomfort, of awkwardness and envy, of love and lust. Joshi draws a map of the many secrets that the female body holds close. Her voice is young, honest, and remarkably unfussy. The stunning photographs by Farheen Fatima weave their seamless way in and out of the frame, in fluid conversation with the poem.  


– K. Srilata