In “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, had 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.”