About this Event
Join us in store to learn more about the The Coroner's Silence with author Terence Keel in conversation with John Conyers III for a book talk and book signing on September 24th.
Let us know you are coming with a free or book Ticket in this link. The event will last an hour and half. It will include a book talk , Q & A and a book signing line.
This event is readers of His Name Is George Floyd and Under the Skin
A landmark investigation into forensic medicine that exposes the systematic concealment of state-sanctioned violence through death investigations
Each year, police officers K*ll over 1,000 people they've sworn to protect and serve. While some cases, like George Floyd's and Sandra Bland's, capture national attention, most victims remain nameless, their stories untold. The Coroner's Silence reveals a disturbing truth about these cases: coroners and other death investigators are often complicit in obscuring the violent circumstances of in-custody deaths.
Through rigorous research—including critical records analysis, public health studies, and interviews with victims' families—this book unmasks the systemic failures within forensic medicine. Terence Keel shows how incomplete autopsy reports, mishandled medical documents, and strategically lost evidence effectively shield law enforcement from accountability.
The Coroner’s Silence uncovers how the current system of death investigation operates as a mechanism of institutional safeguarding. By highlighting the structural powerlessness of coroners and their disconnection from the communities most affected by police violence, Keel demonstrates how bureaucratic processes can render human suffering invisible.
About the Author
Terence Keel is an award-winning scholar, the founding director of the BioCritical Studies Lab, and a professor of human biology, society, and African American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of Divine Variations: How Christian Thought Became Racial Science and co-editor of Critical Approaches to Science and Religion. Keel has received fellowships from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.
In conversation with
John Conyers III is an author, entrepreneur, and Michigan State Senator deeply rooted in Detroit, committed to building economic and political power through public service, business, and civic leadership. The author of My Father’s House, he is the son of former Congressman John Conyers Jr. and former Detroit City Council President Monica Conyers, carrying forward more than a century of his family’s leadership in civil rights, organized labor, and public service.
“The Coroner’s Silence reveals how death investigation itself helps conceal police violence. Terence Keel meticulously exposes a bureaucratic machinery in which science and medicine are weaponized to disguise in-custody deaths as natural or unavoidable. This searing exposé will enrage, grieve, and ultimately galvanize readers toward transforming the institutions that uphold such cruelty.”
—Ruha Benjamin, author of Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want
“[A] stunning achievement. Terence Keel takes us inside the death investigation system and offers a harrowing picture of carcerality in the US. With the eye of a scientist and an artist, and with the help of those who have lost loved ones in the system, he shows us the horror of what happens in American jails and prisons. Reading this book changes how one sees this country and the people who bear the brunt of its contradictions. A must-read in these troubling times.”
—Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin Again
Event venue & nearby stays
Source Booksellers, 4240 Cass Avenue, Detroit, United States
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