Tried to enjoy this book but it just wasn’t for me. Not sure if it was the writing style but I couldn’t connect with it.

This is the first book I’ve read by Kei Miller, even though I’ve had Augustown on my TBR for literal ages, so I’m very grateful to @NetGalley for providing me with the opportunity to get into Miller’s work. As the tile of the book suggests, this is a collection of essays focused on the things that Miller has previously been reticent to express. The thinking is so broad and the writing so good that I enjoyed every single essay, even as they jumped from topic to topic and location to location. For me, Miller was at his best when he was writing about his travels. From his time back home in Jamaica, spending time with the gay boys of the gulleys, to his attendance of carnival and realisation that the carnival is one of the few times one can be loudly queer in the Caribbean. From visiting the churches of Lalibela, to going to getting mugged in my beloved Nairobi, and realising both times how white people can invade and dominate spaces where they should remain foreign. I really was on the verge of crying with nearly all of these essays.⁠
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There was also an essay that touched on white authors from the Caribbean and how they may overstep their boundaries due to being “from the place” they write about. I wish I understood more about the racial dynamics of Caribbean literature, because I felt that I missed something very big and juicy. I later learned from @ifthisisparadise stories that this essay had been published before and evoked the ire of your fave white Caribbean female authors, so there’s definitely some tea there, and I’d love to learn more.

I enjoyed these essays a great deal and yet I also felt, as I read along, a sense of discomfort, feeling as if someone had sat down at my table at a coffee house and began to tell me their traumas and secrets and I wanted to interrupt them and say: well, gosh, I really don't know you...that I was a stranger, after all, and why were they telling me these things? But then there is the title: 'things I have withheld,' and it's a title that demands of the writer a complete emptying of self of all of the things that have been held back for too long...that need to be said and deserve to be said....and so I put away my uncomfortable feeling and tried to be the best listener I could be. And was rewarded for it.

Kei Miller knows how to arrange his words into sentences that are delicious. This collection is seasoned with family secrets, history and even a sprinkle of folklore. And really, is a collection from Miller even complete without a soupçon of etymology? It is, perhaps, that his aptitude for poetry spills over into everything he writes - these essays are an experience to read and this book impossible to put down.

Miller writes about the body: how bodies are keys that unlock doors through which their owners can walk into privilege or vulnerability; how the physical aspects of the body can sometimes betray the characteristics that are unseen. He gives us a glimpse of the experiences that his body (black, tall, queer) has allowed him, or in other instances ways in which this body has victimized and implicated him. He writes of how his body interacts with the other bodies around him.

It is a taste that is layered and that lingers. I appreciate how candidly Miller writes, how he invites his readers to share in his experiences - carnival, his trip to Africa, the intimate space that is a family gathering - and allows us to scrutinize and ruminate on the sentiments they evoke.

This is a wonderful collection of introspective and retrospective essays. I applaud the author’s courage to delve into some soul-bearing, heart-wrenching experiences and encounters that have shaped his views on humanity, his family, his heritage, and himself. Being a “racialized” Black male author who is also a member of the LGBTQIA community, many of his reflections address systemic racism (and the effect it has on his mental and physical health), homophobia, overt classism, sexism, and abject poverty.

Rarely does each story in such a varied collection resonated with me - but this compilation was layered and multi-faceted. My favorites were The Old Woman Who Sat In the Corner that revealed intimate family secrets, Mr. Brown, Mrs. White, and Ms. Black honed in on Jamaican classism, and my heartfelt for My Brother, My Brother.

Well Done! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review such a moving
experience!

Award winning poet and novelist Kei Miller shows his experience of discrimination in his fourteen essay collections. How it silence him with lots of important things and withheld truths simply because being in a Black body alone is something he cannot control.

There are lots of instances, which I am sure there are more of these, as he treads unchartered territories, recounts everyday acts of racism and prejudice whether in his own country or outside. We know how racism and discrimination works but reading the author experiences first hand make it all the more disheartening.

Almost all the essays here are equally good. Love his style of writing. But my standout are The Old Black Woman Who Sat In A Chair, Boys at the Harbour, There are Truths Hidden in Our Bodies and Mr Brother, My Brother.

This is my first book of the author and definitely not the last. This book is already available in the UK but will be published in the US on September 14. Thank you NetGalley for providing advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Press for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available Sept 14th.

I have been a long time fan of Kei Miller, starting with The Last of the Warner Women and most recently, Augusttown. His lyrical and deliriously gorgeous description of Jamaica casts a mesmerizing spell. In "Things I Have Withheld," Miller lets us into his private ruminations. This collection of essays covers a wide range of subjects including racism, gender and sexuality, police brutality and mental health. From allegorical tales to travelouge, it has a little something for everyone. Along the way, Miller's keen insight and gorgeous prose leave the reader hooked. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

Through this collection of essays, Miller is not only revealing thing which he has held within, sharing his vulnerabilities, he is also exploring the many ways in which we hide ourselves to shield ourselves. Because we have never truly been truly free to express our pain and anger, our disappointments and expectations without the carefully constructed fount of racial stratification reminding us of lines we dare not cross or forget are there.

What will it take for the uncomfortable questions to be asked, for the uninhibited answers to be given; that will make the ones who asked and the ones who answered sit with all that that newly opened discourse truly means. What will honesty cost us? Should it cost us? How will we move forward with each other after feeling as if question and answer has rubbed us raw, jangled our nerves; upending the 'standard' that has always been.

The body forms the central focus of these essays. The ways in which bodies propel, suppress, or halt conversations and reactions, burying the authentic, gut response in favour of propriety or want to not offend; how they can be bound or free, used or discarded, celebrated or denounced; stories told and hidden, power given or taken because of the spaces those bodies occupy or the way in which they are viewed; how when we are unconstrained and attuned, all the truths can be seen.

These essays are a call to be brave, weak, to speak without fear, to face what makes us uncomfortable, to voice our pain, rage, hesitancy; to trace the maps that are our bodies, so that we can truly come to know them. Because in knowing, we are freed.