Things I have withheld : essays / Kei Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miller, Kei, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Discrimination.

Prejudices.

Race discrimination.

Genre:

Essays.

Physical Description:

xv, 208 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Grove Press, 2021.

Summary:

"In this moving, critical, and lyrical collection of essays, by the acclaimed Forward Prize winner, Kei Miller explores the silences in which so many important things are kept. Miller examines the experience of discrimination through this silence and what it means to breach it-to risk words, to risk truth; and through the body and the histories those bodies inherit-the crimes that haunt them, and how the meanings of our bodies can shift as we move through the world, variously assuming privilege or victimhood. Through letters to James Baldwin, encounters with Soca, Carnival, family secrets, love affairs, questions of aesthetics, and more, Miller powerfully and imaginatively recounts everyday acts of racism and prejudice from a black, male, queer perspective. Through a disarmingly personal lens, this collection is an account of his experiences in Jamaica and Britain, working as an artist and intellectual, making friends and lovers, discovering the possibilities of music and dance, of literary criticism, culture, and storytelling. With both the epigrammatic concision and conversational cadence of his poetry and novels, Things I Have Withheld is a great artistic achievement: a work of innovation and beauty which challenges us to interrogate what seems unsayable and why-our actions, defense mechanisms, imaginations, and interactions-and those of the world around us"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Letters to James Baldwin

2. Mr Brown, Mrs White and Ms Black

3. The Old Black Woman Who Sat in the Corner

4. The Crimes That Haunt the Body

5. An Absence of Poets and Poodles

6. The Boys at the Harbour

7. The Buck, the Bacchanal, and Again, the Body

8. Our Worst Behaviour

9. There Are Truths Hidden in Our Bodies

10. The White Women and the Language of Bees

11. Dear Binyavanga, I Am Not Writing About Africa

12. Sometimes, the Only Way Down a Mountain is by Prayer

13. My Brother, My Brother

14. And This Is How We Die.

Notes:

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Canongate Books Ltd.

ISBN:

9780802158956

0802158951

OCLC:

1260169927