MR BROWN,
MRS WHITE
AND MS BLACK

This short story comes from an award-winning collection of essays called Things That I Have Withheld. In the front of that book, Miller writes:

"This is what comes to mind when I consider the silence: how I saved my words for the stairwell right outside the flat I lived in at the time; how I would sit there many nights, a little shell-shocked, and mumbling to myself ...

"I suspect it is the same for a great many of us. We keep things to ourselves. We withhold them because of fear -- because those things that we need to say, or acknowledge, or confess, or our own failings that we need to own up to -- they can feel so important, it is hard to trust them to something so unsafe as words ...

"Each of these essays is an act of faith, an attempt to put my trust in words again. They are attempts to offer, at long last, a clearer vocabulary to the things I only ever mumbled, at night, sitting there on the stairwell outside my home."

REFLECT: Why is it important for authors to write things we cannot say aloud?

Jamaica is an island in the Caribbean. The native Taino people lived there long before the Spanish began to settle there in the 1500s. The Taino were gradually exterminated and replaced by enslaved people from Africa. England took the island in 1655 and established a plantation economy based on sugar, cocoa, and coffee. The end of slavery in 1834 freed a quarter million people, many of whom became small farmers. In 1958, Jamaica joined other British Caribbean colonies in forming the Federation of the West Indies. Jamaica withdrew from the Federation in 1961 and gained full independence in 1962. Economic conditions worsened in the 1970s. This led to gang violence, drug smuggling, and other problems that the country still faces today.

Jamaica is home to almost 3 million people. About 92% are Black, 6% are of mixed ethnicity. Less than 1% of the population is white. English is the official language, but there are also local variations.

REFLECT: What conflicts or challenges do you think Jamaicans face every day?

1. "It seems to Mr Brown that brownness is like a magical cloak in Jamaica." What does he mean by that?
   

2. Mrs White wants to say to her housekeeper, "There is a story I could tell you, but there is no bench long enough for us to sit down together." Why does she think that? And why does she not say it aloud?
   

3. Ms Black suggests that, for her, classism and sexism are worse problems in Jamaica than racism. "Surely race is not part of the texture of their lives." Does she really believe that? Or is it only "wishful thinking" (something she hopes would be true, but she knows it is not)?
   

4. Given their differences, why do you think these three people meet for a dinner party?

1. Mr Brown wonders to himself, "How does one unlearn privilege, especially the kind that is given to you daily and without question, so it does not seem like privilege at all but simply the everyday-ness of life?" Is this possible? How?
   

2. "When [Ms Black] allows herself the simple joy of talking in her own language and with its own fluency, and she finds herself able to think in that vocabulary, then everything is clear to her, and she thinks she could explain the world to itself. But during the day, she is not allowed the use of this language – the language of her thoughts." Do you ever have this experience? What do you do?
   

3. Watch this short video in which Miller reads from and describes the book that includes this story. He says the stories are about a "journey through bodies and silence." How are those two themes -- bodies and silence -- connected?
   

4. Mr Brown believes it is more accurate to say that "So-and-So is racialised as black" instead of "‘So-and-So is black." Or "So-and-So is racialised as white" rather than "So and So is white." What does racialised mean? Do you agree with this idea? Why or why not?