![]() ![]() Rather, they feel like kinds of notes-to-self. ![]() ![]() I would venture to say that they aren’t intended for the readers at all, despite the implied imperative. And quite possibly / the most important things / will be the ones that I withhold.” Pair this with Miller’s poem that appears in the front of the author’s note: “Consider, for a moment, / the silence - / this terrible white / space / all the things / we never say, / and why?” These are both instructive without being didactic. After speaking to a white audience, Brand, a Black woman, wrote in reflection “…there are some things / that I will say to you / and some things that I won’t. Miller borrowed the title of the collection from the poet Dionne Brand. 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. In his new essay collection, Things I Have Withheld, 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. We encounter silence in our everyday lives in the same way we talk or don’t talk about sex, gender, and class. It only hardens the resolve of those who deny its existence. To not talk about it, to shut ears and eyes and deny its existence which we continue to see play out again and again, only gives it space to fester and grow. In part, the power of white privilege, or its staying power at least, resides in the silence. Which is just another way of saying shhhh! People will hear you and learn our secret, will try to change things. Those who want to keep privilege intact tell us we’re wrong, that it doesn’t exist. And when (or if) we do try to call attention to it, we are shouted down in the loudest voices. Too often, this privilege (call it white privilege that’s what it is) is never mentioned, never spoken of by those of us to whom it has been gifted. It’s something given to me based on my appearance alone, because I’m a cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, white male of a certain height and a certain build. I have done nothing to earn this privilege, I have not worked for it. I cannot deny-will not deny-that I walk around this world with a certain cachet of privilege. ![]()
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