Things I Have Withheld
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Things I Have Withheld
Buy for $17.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Kei Miller
-
By:
-
Kei Miller
About this listen
By acclaimed Forward Prize-winner, novelist, and poet, Kei Miller's linked collection of essays blends memoir and literary commentary to explore the silences that exist in our conversations about race, sex, and gender.
In a deeply moving, critical, and lyrical collection of interconnected essays, award-winning writer 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. An almost disarmingly personal collection, Kei dissects his experiences in Jamaica and Britain, working as an artist and intellectual, making friends and lovers, discovering the possibilities of music and dance, 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.
©2021 Kei Miller (P)2021 Canongate Books Ltd.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Augustown
- By: Kei Miller
- Narrated by: Dona Croll
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 133
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 118
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 119
Ma Taffy may be blind, but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don't, and plenty of things that shouldn't happen do.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
SUPERB
- By ** on 06-25-17
By: Kei Miller
-
The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
- By: Kei Miller
- Narrated by: Kei Miller
- Length: 1 hr and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 17
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 17
In this prize-winning poetry collection, we watch as the cartographer, used to assuming control over a place by mapping it, is gradually compelled to recognise a wholly different understanding of place as he tries to map his way to the rastaman’s eternal city of Zion. As the book unfolds the cartographer learns that every place name comes freighted with history, and not every place that can be named can be found.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Authentic genuine beautiful
- By L. Shine on 09-20-24
By: Kei Miller
-
The Last Warner Woman
- By: Kei Miller
- Narrated by: Kei Miller
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 24
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 23
Adamine Bustamante is born in Jamaica, inside one of the island’s last leper colonies. When she goes to a Revivalist Church, she discovers her gift of warning. But no one has bothered to warn Adamine that when she migrates to England her prophecies of hurricanes and earthquakes will no longer be respected. People will think she is crazy and lock her away in a mental hospital.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Incomplete
- By bw on 01-09-23
By: Kei Miller
-
If I Survive You
- By: Jonathan Escoffery
- Narrated by: Torian Brackett
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 147
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 132
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 131
In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on first through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.”
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Good except for the ending
- By Morris Nelms on 11-20-22
-
River Sing Me Home
- By: Eleanor Shearer
- Narrated by: Debra Michaels, Eleonor Shearer
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 266
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 230
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 230
The master of the Providence plantation in Barbados gathers his slaves and announces the king has decreed an end to slavery. As of the following day, the Emancipation Act of 1834 will come into effect. The cries of joy fall silent when he announces that they are no longer his slaves; they are now his apprentices. No one can leave. They must work for him for another six years. Freedom is just another name for the life they have always lived. So Rachel runs.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Good debut.. with a few quarrels in my opinion
- By Alize on 07-24-23
By: Eleanor Shearer
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 10,838
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 10,056
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 10,054
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
Augustown
- By: Kei Miller
- Narrated by: Dona Croll
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 133
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 118
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 119
Ma Taffy may be blind, but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don't, and plenty of things that shouldn't happen do.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
SUPERB
- By ** on 06-25-17
By: Kei Miller
-
The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
- By: Kei Miller
- Narrated by: Kei Miller
- Length: 1 hr and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 17
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 17
In this prize-winning poetry collection, we watch as the cartographer, used to assuming control over a place by mapping it, is gradually compelled to recognise a wholly different understanding of place as he tries to map his way to the rastaman’s eternal city of Zion. As the book unfolds the cartographer learns that every place name comes freighted with history, and not every place that can be named can be found.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Authentic genuine beautiful
- By L. Shine on 09-20-24
By: Kei Miller
-
The Last Warner Woman
- By: Kei Miller
- Narrated by: Kei Miller
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 24
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 23
Adamine Bustamante is born in Jamaica, inside one of the island’s last leper colonies. When she goes to a Revivalist Church, she discovers her gift of warning. But no one has bothered to warn Adamine that when she migrates to England her prophecies of hurricanes and earthquakes will no longer be respected. People will think she is crazy and lock her away in a mental hospital.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Incomplete
- By bw on 01-09-23
By: Kei Miller
-
If I Survive You
- By: Jonathan Escoffery
- Narrated by: Torian Brackett
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 147
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 132
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 131
In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on first through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.”
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Good except for the ending
- By Morris Nelms on 11-20-22
-
River Sing Me Home
- By: Eleanor Shearer
- Narrated by: Debra Michaels, Eleonor Shearer
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 266
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 230
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 230
The master of the Providence plantation in Barbados gathers his slaves and announces the king has decreed an end to slavery. As of the following day, the Emancipation Act of 1834 will come into effect. The cries of joy fall silent when he announces that they are no longer his slaves; they are now his apprentices. No one can leave. They must work for him for another six years. Freedom is just another name for the life they have always lived. So Rachel runs.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Good debut.. with a few quarrels in my opinion
- By Alize on 07-24-23
By: Eleanor Shearer
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 10,838
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 10,056
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 10,054
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
Hungry Ghosts
- A Novel
- By: Kevin Jared Hosein
- Narrated by: Don Warrington
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 52
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 46
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 46
Trinidad in the 1940s, nearing the end of American occupation and British colonialism. On a hill overlooking Bell Village sits the Changoor farm, where Dalton and Marlee Changoor live in luxury unrecognizable to those who reside in the farm’s shadow. Down below is the Barrack, a ramshackle building of wood and tin, divided into rooms occupied by whole families. Among these families are the Saroops—Hans, Shweta, and their son, Krishna, all three born of the barracks.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Gave up
- By Kirk A Mann on 08-29-23
-
Maame
- A Novel
- By: Jessica George
- Narrated by: Heather Agyepong
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 982
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 874
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 872
It’s fair to say that Maddie’s life in London is far from rewarding. With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana (yet still somehow manages to be overbearing), Maddie is the primary caretaker for her father, who suffers from advanced stage Parkinson’s. At work, her boss is a nightmare and Maddie is tired of always being the only Black person in every meeting.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A dang good book!
- By Christina on 02-10-23
By: Jessica George
-
How to Say Babylon
- A Memoir
- By: Safiya Sinclair
- Narrated by: Safiya Sinclair
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 535
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 512
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 512
Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and a militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, was obsessed with the ever-present threat of the corrupting evils of the Western world outside their home, and worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure. For him, a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The ability of Safia to both tell a gut wrenching story while making beautiful art with her words.
- By Grandchampion on 07-21-24
By: Safiya Sinclair
-
Spare
- By: Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex
- Narrated by: Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 71,923
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 66,365
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 66,157
It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Gutterball!
- By Jimmyjoejangles on 01-10-23
-
When We Were Birds
- A Novel
- By: Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
- Narrated by: Sydney Darius, Wendell Manwarren
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 153
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 140
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 138
In the old house on a hill, where the city meets the rainforest, Yejide’s mother is dying. She is leaving behind a legacy that now passes to Yejide: one St Bernard woman in every generation has the power to shepherd the city’s souls into the afterlife. But after years of suffering her mother’s neglect and bitterness, Yejide is looking for a way out.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
PERFECTION!!!
- By Ifayemisi on 07-13-22
-
How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water
- A Novel
- By: Angie Cruz
- Narrated by: Kimberly M. Wetherell, Rossmery Almonte
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 516
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 485
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 484
Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Fascinating
- By Tails32x on 09-20-22
By: Angie Cruz
-
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
- An Oprah’s Book Club Novel
- By: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton, Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 29 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,844
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,533
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 2,519
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s problem on her shoulders.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The Great American Novel is finally inclusive.
- By Margaret on 12-28-21
-
Read Until You Understand
- The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature
- By: Farah Jasmine Griffin
- Narrated by: Farah Jasmine Griffin
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 123
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 106
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 106
Farah Jasmine Griffin’s beloved father died when she was nine, bequeathing her an unparalleled inheritance in closets full of remarkable books and other records of Black genius. In Read Until You Understand - a line from a note he wrote to her - she shares a lifetime of discoveries: the ideas that framed the US Constitution and that inspired Malcolm X’s fervent speeches, the soulful music of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, the daring literature of Phillis Wheatley and Toni Morrison, the artistry of Romare Bearden, and many others.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Brilliant!!!
- By Shenelle Williams on 10-07-21
-
Queenie
- By: Candice Carty-Williams
- Narrated by: Shvorne Marks
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,840
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,417
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,411
Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle-class peers. After a messy breakup from her White long-term boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places...including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The Black Womans Burden
- By LATOYA LEWIS on 05-20-19
-
Rootless
- A Novel
- By: Krystle Zara Appiah
- Narrated by: Clifford Samuel, Diana Yekinni
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 71
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 71
On a Spring afternoon in London, Sam hops the stairs of his flat two at a time. There’s £1,300 missing from his and his wife, Efe’s, shared bank account and his calls are going straight to voicemail. When he finally reaches someone, he learns Efe is nearly 5,000 miles away as their toddler looks around and asks, “Where’s Mummy?”
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Wow
- By Anon on 03-16-25
-
The Island of Forgetting
- A Novel
- By: Jasmine Sealy
- Narrated by: Varia Williams
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 18
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 17
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 17
Barbados, 1962. Lost soul Iapetus roams the island, scared and alone, driven mad after witnessing his father’s death at the hands of his mother and his older brother, Cronus. Just before Iapetus is lost forever, he has a son, but the baby is not enough to save him from himself—or his family’s secrets. Seventeen years later, Iapetus’s son, the stoic Atlas, lives in a loveless house, under the care of his uncle, Cronus, and in the shadow of his charismatic cousin Z.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
authentic narration
- By Simone D. on 07-30-24
By: Jasmine Sealy
-
Quichotte
- A Novel
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 16 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 550
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 502
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 499
Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where “Anything-Can-Happen.” Meanwhile his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
The Best Narration I have Ever Heard
- By Bubikon on 12-12-19
By: Salman Rushdie
What listeners say about Things I Have Withheld
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 01-21-22
Masterpiece, moving...
I've never felt so surgically cut, understood and healed at the same time. Kei left me without enough words to express how this masterpiece made me feel. thank you.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- Chad Nehemiah
- 04-08-23
An intimate account of how we inhabit spaces
As if the veracity of the author reading their own work isn't evocative enough, the discourse around the very essence of what it means to be in the world hits just a little too close to anyone's home. The very contradictions that define us are also what oddly unify us. This collection of essays explores profoundly what it means to inhabit a body, a space, a culture, a time.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- Dominic
- 11-23-22
great listen
Kei Miller never disappoints! The stories were interesting from start to finish. I always enjoy a writer's experiences when traveling around the world
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- KeeKee P
- 06-11-22
Excellent!!!
I was enthralled from the start and could not stop listening. To hear the author’s words expressed in his own voice was not only captivating but I felt a sense of fulfillment and pride. I cried, I nodded my head, i laughed; I was so sad when it ended and plan to listen again to the whole book tomorrow. I have to get anything he writes, I am amazed and I am a fan!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!