Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color is a fantastic non-fiction collection of facts and individual stories of Black, Indigenous, Latinx women and female-identifying individuals and their experiences with the police. This book should have been in conversations last summer when we were talking about Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, the California lynchings, and all the other lives stolen by racism, hate, and unhinged law enforcement. I’m a bit upset that it wasn’t, to be honest. A bit upset that books about racism by white women got many more sales, while Invisible No More was so difficult for me to find.

This book is deceptively short. There is a long introduction, and many, many pages of sources at the end. Yet, it’s not a book to read in a weekend. It’s heavy with stories of violence and sexual assault. Ritchie delivers the stories of the abused and murdered with a calm matter-of-factness that, from a literary sense, makes the book flow together well. From a more personal perspective, the ease with which she is able to fill these pages with harrowing accounts of casual shootings, rapes, threats… it’s heartbreaking. Ritchie is a police misconduct attorney and I’m sure she could easily fill several more books with experiences of her clients and community.

Invisible No More is one of the most intersectional books I’ve ever encountered. Care is made to portray experiences not only of Black women, but also Indigenous and Latinx experiences. And, not only of cisgender women, but transgender, gender non-conforming, and Two Spirit experiences as well. Stories come from heterosexual experiences and the LGBTQIAP+ community. I also appreciate that Ritchie addressed the conversation about intersectionality in our approach to understanding and dismantling systemic racism and police brutality – that shining a spotlight on a range of peoples does not weaken the argument, but strengthens it.

As any book about racism and racist acts… Invisible No More is overflowing with content warnings. Any type of violence – physical, sexual, and emotional – can be found in these pages. It’s an important book for self-education, but like any book that shows racism instead of just talking about it in a vague sense… it could be very triggering. While I recommend this book so highly, be aware of the content.

While, due to the nature of its content, I hesitate to call Invisible No More one of my favorite non-fiction books… it falls into that range of appreciation. Well-researched, well-delivered, and powerful, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to be an ally to suppressed communities. It explains the laws, how they were developed, how they are acted upon, and the results they have carried. It’s a devastating yet important tool to have in your antiracism toolbox, and I highly recommend picking up a copy. ( )

A necessary and riveting book. ( )

The narrative of police violence against people of color has been heavily focused on the experiences of men. Before the death of Sandra Bland, the mainstream media paid little attention to the experiences of female victims of policy brutality. This book attempts to correct that omission- to make clear how frequent and deadly the encounters are. This book catalogues the experiences of police violence against women of color, and the experiences are pervasive. The situations become especially deadly when gender identity and mental illiness are part of the equation. Ritchie highlights areas in which police are especially intrusive in women's lives, with motherhood being the most significant example. While lived experience and scholarship have both shown that mothers of color face extra scrutiny, Ritchie shows how that scrutiny far too frequently becomes violent. Women are victims of police violence as often as men, and deadly force is used to respond to the most trivial of offenses. Philosophies of "broken windows policing" have exacerbated the problem. They have also served to criminalize poverty.

Ritchie offers some suggestions for reforms. Central to them is the idea of using community mediation instead of law enforcement to respond to local incidents. Police have become so dangerous to people of color, Ritchie argues, that extra-police solutions are necessary.

As this is a first book on an understudied topic, it is the first in what will become a larger scholarly conversation. Because of this, Ritchie privileges the primary sources, allowing for significant excerpts of first-person narratives. This gives voice to those who have not often been heard.

I received this book for free through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers.

This was such a powerful read. Andrea Ritchie did an amazing job making the invisible visible. Women are often left out of the narrative when it comes to police brutality and mass incarceration. I love how inclusive she was of all women of color (including the much overlooked indigenous population) and their experiences. In addition, she highlights the intersections of race, class, gender, disability, sexual identity and sexual orientation extremely well, providing a well rounded analysis of the female experience.

Overall, this is a must read. ( )

The purpose of Invisible No More is awareness-raising about the experiences of Women of Color (WOC) at the hands of the police. (‘Women’ is construed broadly to include lesiban, bi, gay, trans, Two Spirit, and Gender Nonconforming individuals). It beats a repetitive drum: with regards to WOC who encounter law enforcement, police disproportionately exploit their power through coerced sex and violence. Ritchie argues that this is nothing new, if anything, these exploitations are but another tired reiteration of this nation’s obscenely racist treatment of various Persons of Color throughout our short history. Her exhausting task is to continue to beat the drum, to participate, to #SayHerName & #MeToo again & again, in all kinds of media, & to collaborate by organizing & hearing & (re)telling the same unfortunate stories of the overlooked “female” individuals ground up in the machine of police brutality.

The aggregation of historical accounts of police violence against women leads Ritchie to the (un)expected conclusion that police intrusion into the lives of WOC is so toxic & pervasive that mere reform is too weak an antidote; what is needed is an abolition of the institution & its funds diverted to social services & legal remedies that will directly impact the poor, working poor, & working middle class WOC. ( )