Praise for Things I Have Withheld:
Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction
BOMB Magazine's Editor's Choice
Best Book of 2021 at Slate and Buzzfeed
Times (UK), 16 best philosophy and ideas books 2021
“[D]ynamic . . . examines personal and professional moments in which silence revealed a truth about race and oppression”—New Yorker
“The Jamaican poet Kei Miller turns to nonfiction in this excellent essay collection exploring the strategic and harmful silences that occur in the family and in the world . . . There’s no didacticism or sermons here, merely curiosity and sometimes anger and a deep commitment to speaking the uncomfortable truths we’d rather not hear. A bold and daring collection.”—Tomi Obaro, Buzzfeed
"Reverent and forthright." —BOMB Magazine
“Miller has a way of writing about widely discussed issues—race, gender, class, sexuality, nationality—that feels fresh and intimate rather than doctrinal or sentimental, and yet is instantly recognizably true . . . Without a doubt, Baldwin would be proud.”—Laura Miller, Slate
“If you’re searching for contemporary voices that echo the brilliance of classic writers such as James Baldwin, Richard Wright and, indeed, Ellison, then you must read Things I Have Withheld by Kei Miller…Kei’s poignant and lyrical collection of personal essays positions him as a writer of unique talent and verve.” — Huffington Post
“Kei Miller probes these silent places: what it means to be silent, to break that silence; what it means to risk one’s words and, in turn, the truth. Using his experience as a Black, Jamaican, queer man, he digs into the silence through letters to James Baldwin, Carnival, conversations with white writers, family secrets, and the experience of discrimination of the body and the histories and stories the body can tell ... Some of the most powerful and moving moments in this powerful and moving collection is Miller performing a kind of literary ventriloquism in which thoughts and ideas and feelings are expressed without always being said.”—Chicago Review of Books
"A wonderfully challenging book that I will dip in and out of for years to come. Through brilliant storytelling it explores issues of gender, queerness, race and class. Miller’s insights and his grace are hard won. As always, this Jamaican rock-star poet’s writing is lyrical, original and engaging. I left it challenged but tanked up with a new vocabulary and an understanding of the extent to which so much is inscribed on the body." —Ingrid Persaud, "Best Summer Books," Guardian UK
“Things I Have Withheld is necessary reading for everyone. Through its unflinching, no-holds-barred honesty to its detailed and intersectional approach to understanding contemporary constructions of race, gender, nationalism, and sexuality—Miller shares his body, his words, as a means of helping us come to terms with the uncomfortable truths that are withheld.” — World Literature Today
“[E]xquisitely vulnerable. Divulging searing conversations he's self-silenced, Miller—a globe-trotting gay Black man—produces a magnificent examination of race, sexuality and identity . . . What he produces from such experiences is a wrenching record—gorgeously encapsulated—of what he's had to withhold to survive. Filling the silence proves lifesaving.”—Shelf Awareness, starred review
“This incisive collection of short essays serves as a tabernacle for stories untold, secrets, and reflections on race and sexuality. . . . Immediately arresting and consistently poignant, Miller's essays engage with the urgency of gripping fiction and the authenticity of stunning poetry. An important voice of the Caribbean, who should be read together with the likes of Safiya Sinclair, Oonya Kempadoo, and Colin Channer.”—Booklist
“Miller’s poetic brilliance immediately awes. [He] excels at writing words that resonate with readers, making them feel able to join him in conversation and to truly listen to the voices meeting them sometimes shyly, sometimes boldly on the page. After reading, one hopes that we will change dominant narratives about certain stories and bodies.”—Library Journal, starred review
“[T]houghtful and impassioned . . . Miller reflects on race, gender, family, language, and, most pointedly, the body . . . A spirited collection from a significant voice of both fiction and nonfiction.” —Kirkus
"Entrancing... Miller vividly depicts the ways colonialism, racism, homophobia, and privilege have shaped his life . . . Sharp as blades, [his] words cut to the core." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Miller's storytelling is impeccable, and his verse is arresting and beautiful. Things I Have Withheld is a remarkable contribution to literature." —De'Shawn Winslow, author of In West Mills
Praise for Kei Miller:
"An expansive talent." —New Yorker
"Miller's writing has a cool immediacy [that] gives more than a nod to García Márquez." —Guardian
"[His work] seduces and shocks you even as it wrestles with the very nature of storytelling itself." —Marlon James
"Kei Miller's considerable skills show vividly in his control of this back-and-forth narration . . . He is equally adept at characterization." —Washington Times
Praise for Augustown:
"Brilliant and moving . . . Each observant sentence in this gorgeous book is a gem." —New York Times Book Review
"A vivid modern fable . . . Richly nuanced and empathetic." —Guardian
"A deceptive spellbinder, a metafiction so disguised as old-time storytelling that you can almost hear the crackle of home fires as it starts. But then it gets you with twists and turns, it seduces and shocks you even as it wrestles with the very nature of storytelling itself. It's the story of women haunted by women, and of the dangers of both keeping secrets and saying too much." —Marlon James
"The richness and heft that is lost in the making of official accounts of the world is one of Miller's favorite themes . . . Where the poet's touch in Augustown becomes detectable is in the novel's epigrammatic concision and in the loping, conversational cadence of so many of its sentences . . . The barely perceptible Caribbean lilt in Miller's prose exerts a hypnotic effect that is one of the great pleasures of Augustown." —New Yorker
"The structure of Augustown is pleasingly loose — a regular feature of novels written by poets, who seem to enjoy sauntering about once they've escaped the house of poetry . . . Miller's poetry provides memorable line after line . . . If anything maps the way to Zion, Miller suggests, it's this continued witness to untold history, this attention to how the glimmer of the future might be seen in the past." —Boston Globe
"A deeply interesting historical novel, not least because it covers matters little-known beyond Jamaica . . . . Kaia is a lovely portrait of a little boy, and Ma Taffy is only the most important and lively of the people who seem to jump from his pages. Not least of the means used to power them is their Jamaican speech, sparkling with adjective and metaphor, inventive in syntax, studded with old words from England and Africa. Readers can almost see Kei Miller having fun writing this dialogue. Indeed, Augustown feels like a novel that its author enjoyed writing. It's certainly a serious pleasure to read." —Washington Times
"Miller's novel exhales the breathy immediacy of the here and now . . . Augustown offers a compelling variation on the theme that black lives matter . . . it demands [to] be heard." —Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Augustown is a gorgeously plotted, sharply convincing, achingly urgent novel deserving widespread attention." —Booklist (starred review)
"Miller captures the ways community, faith, and class create a variety of cultural microclimates." —Kirkus (starred review)
"A rueful portrait of the enduring struggle between those who reject an impoverished life . . . and the forces that hold them in check . . . Miller infuses his lyrical descriptions of the island's present with the weight of its history." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Miller's new novel uses assured poetic language to create important historical intersections and strong, realistic characters . . . Highly recommended, and not just for lvoers of African and Caribbean folklore. This book will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in fiction that's grounded in community." —Library Journal (starred review)
"Set in the backlands of Jamaica, this is a magical and haunting novel of one woman's struggle to rise above the constraints of history, race, class, collective memory, violence, and myth. Miller's storytelling is moving, poetic, and inventive." —Lisa Lucas, Page Turners for 2017, Martha Stewart Magazine
"The language is as clear as spring water, the characters are vividly drawn." —The Observer
"Miller's storytelling is superb, its power coming from the seamless melding of the magical and the everyday that gives his novel a significant fabular quality." —The Sunday Times (London)
★ 06/14/2021
Jamaican poet and novelist Miller (Augustown) gives a searing voice to “the things I have been trying so hard to write” in this entrancing collection. In 14 essays that code-switch between personas and move from the incisive language of a university professor to Jamaican patois, he vividly depicts the ways colonialism, racism, homophobia, and privilege have shaped his life. As he writes in a letter addressed to the late James Baldwin, “there is little between... the set of circumstances you wrote of, and the set of circumstances we live in now.” In “Mr Brown, Mrs White and Ms Black,” a modern-day parable about the nuances of race, he chalks ethnicity up to being “not so much what you are, as... what people have decided you are.” In “My Brother, My Brother,” he witnesses the clash of whiteness and “brudda”-hood as a tourist poses for a photo in a historic slave dungeon in Ghana, while “The Boys at the Harbour” offers a glimpse of the struggles Jamaica’s gay youth face and “this identity that has left so many of them homeless.” Closing with another letter addressing Baldwin, Miller brings into devastating clarity the dangers confronting Black people in visualizing the final moments of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. Sharp as blades, Miller’s words cut to the core. Agent: Alice Whitwham, the Cheney Agency. (Sept.)
★ 09/01/2021
In this collection of interconnected memoiristic essays by poet and novelist Miller (The Cartographer Tries To Map a Way to Zion), the writer's poetic brilliance immediately awes. He folds readers into the loud silence of the blank page, a paradoxical space of whiteness that can be both an invitation and a systemic, structural force that has stifled the voices of people of color for far too long. Miller is fearless, often invoking moments of diaristic honesty without ever sacrificing or shying away from critical commentary. The essays take readers to Miller's native Jamaica as he reflects on life in Kingston; to Trinidad, where he observes Carnival; to the United Kingdom and the United States, where he teaches writing. Miller excels at writing words that resonate with readers, making them feel able to join him in conversation and to truly listen to the voices meeting them sometimes shyly, sometimes boldly on the page. After reading, one hopes that we will change dominant narratives about certain stories and bodies. VERDICT With Miller's insight and verve in each essay in this rich collection, this unputdownable book will stay with readers long after they've finished.—Emily Bowles, Lawrence Univ., WI
2021-06-24
Meditations on belonging, alienation, and the power of words.
In 15 thoughtful and impassioned essays, prizewinning Jamaican novelist, poet, and essayist Miller reflects on race, gender, family, language, and, most pointedly, the body: “these soft houses in which we live and in which we move and from which we can never migrate, except by dying.” As a queer Black man, Miller considers ways that bodies “can variously assume privilege or victimhood from their conflicting identities” and from the visceral reactions others have toward them. “Too often,” he writes, “the meaning that my black, male body produces is ‘guilty’ and ‘predator’ and ‘worthy of death’ ”—responses that he has encountered in the U.K., where he now lives and works as a university professor. But on visits to Kenya, Ethiopia, and Ghana, where he thinks his body “should make a kind of sense,” he is frustrated to find that “it doesn’t make as much sense as I would like.” In his home country of Jamaica, color—Black, White, and subtle gradations of brown—inflects daily life and self-perception. “When I talk about a place where our bodies make sense,” Miller writes, “what I really mean is a place where our bodies are not seen, where they raise no questions, where they are not worth pondering.” For Miller, though, race is not his only identifier: Immersed in the celebration of Carnival, he realizes that Jamaica is the place where he feels “most comfortably gay” because he knows “the language and the mannerisms of queerness. In Jamaica, I know how to dance. In Jamaica, I do not have to constantly translate my sexuality into mannerisms and speech and dances that sometimes feel to me, profoundly British.” Many of these powerful appraisals of the body come in the form of letters to James Baldwin and Kenyan writer Binyaranga Wainaina, but Miller also offers musings on his family’s secrets, portrayals of homeless gay and transgender boys, and questions of literary appropriation.
A spirited collection from a significant voice of both fiction and nonfiction.
