Kei Miller essay about white women sparks tensions among Caribbean writers

Miller’s essay has been withdrawn after divisive reception, but supporters say it is part of a necessary conversation about race and privilege

An incendiary essay by the award-winning Jamaican poet Kei Miller that probed at white women writers’ authority to speak for the Caribbean has been pulled from a new magazine after laying bare a long-festering anger in the islands’ literary community.

Miller’s essay, The White Women and the Language of Bees, was published last week in Pree, a new magazine highlighting writers from the Caribbean. Asking “how many years and decades must pass before we can belong to a place and to its words? How much time before we can write it?”, the essay saw the Forward prize-winning author discuss his interactions with four white women writers from the region, evaluating their books, and the way they have interacted with the local literary community.

We’re all trying to write, to draw inspiration from this place ... That doesn’t mean we can’t ask hard questions

All of this is about if people get to write because they’re white... What is considered a valid Commonwealth story?

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