The Secrets of Silence : The Everyday Policing of Black Women and Their Stories about Violence

Why black women’s stories of encounters with the police are missing from official and unofficial accounts of police violenceIn The Secrets of Silence, Shannon Malone Gonzalez investigates how the policing of black women is tied to the policing of their stories.Over a period of four years, Malone Gonzalez conducted intimate, life history interviews with black women about their encounters, listening to those who had never shared their stories before, never even been asked to, or had tried repeatedly to speak to those around them to no avail.They all described the unspoken or whispered connections in the ways officers and communities socially control black women to put them “in their place.” Centering black women’s searches for recognition of their violent encounters with police and other people in their lives, Malone Gonzalez examines the pervasive and often invisible forms of everyday policing that render black women’s stories missing from official data, headlines, and community convers