Things I Have Withheld

Kei Miller's collection of essays explores the silence of discrimination, the experience of breaking it, and the histories our bodies inherit. It recounts everyday acts of racism and prejudice through letters to James Baldwin, encounters with Liam Neeson, Soca, Carnival, family secrets, love affairs, and questions of aesthetics. It is a great artistic achievement that challenges us to interrogate what seems unsayable and why.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 05 May 2022
Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd

Winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction
Shortlisted for the Baillie GIFford Prize
Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing


In this remarkable collection of essays, the award-winning poet and novelist Kei Miller delves into the profound silence that shrouds many significant aspects of our lives. He explores the experience of discrimination through this silence, examining the consequences of breaking it—the risk of speaking up, revealing the truth. Moreover, he considers the histories our bodies inherit, the crimes that haunt them, and how our understanding of ourselves and the world around us can evolve as we navigate different contexts, assuming varying positions of privilege or victimhood.


Through a series of letters to James Baldwin, encounters with Liam Neeson, Soca, Carnival, family secrets, love affairs, white women's tears, questions of aesthetics, and more, Miller vividly and imaginatively recounts everyday acts of racism and prejudice. With the epigrammatic concision and conversational cadence of his poetry and novels, Things I Have Withheld emerges as a remarkable artistic achievement—a work of beauty that compels us to confront what seems unspeakable and to question the motivations behind our actions, defenses, imaginations, and interactions, as well as those of the world around us.

Weight: 154g
Dimension: 198 x 129 x 14 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781838852825
Edition number: Main