Brian H. Williams
The Bodies Keep Coming: Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal
(Broadleaf Books, September 2023)
Listen to Dr. Brian H. Williams’ Appearance on The Red, Blue, & Brady Podcast
Listen To The Interview with Dr. Brian H. Williams on KUT News
Listen To/Read The Interview With Dr. Brian H. Williams on WABE Atlanta
Listen To An Interview With Dr. Brian H. Williams on WBEZ Chicago
Read Dr. Brian H Williams’ Op-Ed in USA Today
Read An Excerpt from The Bodies Keep Coming in AAMC
Watch Dr. Brian H. Williams on MSNBC’s Deadline White House
Watch Dr. Brian H. Williams Discuss The Bodies Keep Coming on MSNBC’s Morning Joe
A tour de force that diagnoses the structural root of the violence that plagues us all.
Trauma surgeon and professor Dr. Brian H. Williams has seen it all: gunshot wounds, stabbings, and traumatic brain injuries. In The Bodies Keep Coming, Williams ushers us into the trauma bay, where the wounds of a national emergency amass.
As a Harvard-trained physician, Williams learned to keep his head down and his scalpel ready. As a Black man, he learned to swallow the rage when patients told him to take out the trash. Just days after the tragic police shootings of two Black men, Williams tried to save the lives of white police officers shot in Dallas in the deadliest incident for US law enforcement since 9/11. Thrust into the spotlight in a nation that loves feel-good stories about heroism more than hard truths about racism, Williams came to rethink everything he thought he knew about medicine, injustice, and what true healing looks like.
Now, in raw and intimate detail, Williams narrates not only the events of that night in 2016, but the grief and anger of a Black doctor on the front lines of trauma care. Working in the physician-writer tradition of Atul Gawande and Damon Tweedy, Williams diagnoses the roots of the violence that plagues us. He draws a through line between white supremacy, gun violence, and the bodies he tries to revive, and he trains his surgeon’s gaze on the structural ills that manifest themselves in the bodies of his patients. What if racism is a feature of our healthcare system, not a bug? What if profiting from racial inequality is exactly what it was designed to do?
Black and brown bodies will continue to be wracked by all types of violence, Williams argues, until something changes. Until we transform policy and law with compassion and care, the bodies will keep coming.
Read An Excerpt from The Bodies Keep Coming in D Magazine
Read An Excerpt from The Bodies Keep Coming in The Dallas Morning News
Read An Excerpt from The Bodies Keep Coming in Medpage Today
Read The Profile on Dr. Brian H. Williams in The Dallas Morning News
Read An Interview With Dr. Brian H. Williams in The Buffalo News
Praise for The Bodies Keep Coming
“In the mode of Atul Gawande and other doctors of color, Brian H. Williams tells riveting stories about the traumas inherent in our country, while laying out how racism infects and weakens our health care systems. This is a page-turner.”
—MARY KARR, New York Times bestselling author of The Liars’ Club, Cherry, and Lit (Liars’ Club series)
“An engrossing account of Dr. Brian H. Williams’s quintessentiallyAmerican journey from military brat to Air Force Academy graduate to nationally recognized trauma surgeon, set against the backdrop of a nation still struggling to reconcile its democratic ideals with its racist origins. Bold and incisive, The Bodies Keep Coming examines how this contradiction manifests in hospitals throughout America and offers a pointed analysis for a better future.”
—DR. DAMON TWEEDY, New York Times bestselling author of Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine
“The hallmark of a great surgeon lies beyond the ability to perform surgery. Those who transform medicine, make us question medical and societal establishments, and are brave enough to put racial equity front and center are the real heroes. Dr. Brian H. Williams is one of those extraordinary physicians. In The Bodies Keep Coming, he shares frontline stories through his eyes as a trauma surgeon. Dr. Williams is a masterful storyteller, and you can hear and feel his authenticity on every page. Empathy, anger, humor, and, ultimately, hope accompany you as he takes you on this literary ride.”
—DR. NANCY SNYDERMAN, surgeon and former medical editor for NBC News
“In this beautifully written memoir, Dr. Brian H. Williams reveals through jarring personal remembrances the destruction of violence in the American medical system and our society. Although he could have simply offered up a narrative devoid of hope, Williams leaves readers hopeful that healing exists for us all through love.”
—DR. DEIRDRE COOPER OWENS, author of Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology
“Dr. Brian H. Williams’s stunning book is simultaneously an inspiring testament to the skill and dedication of the people working on the medical front lines of America’s enduring tragedy of gun violence, and a searing indictment of the pervasive institutional racism that brought us that tragedy in the first place and continues to sustain it. It is not a comfortable read, but it is an essential one.”
—DR. ELLIOTT CURRIE, author of New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A Peculiar Indifference: The Neglected Toll of Violence on Black America
“Profound and powerful, The Bodies Keep Coming takes us on an extraordinary journey into the high-stakes world of trauma surgery. In this deeply affecting book, Dr. Brian H. Williams takes us along as he works, often as the only Black surgeon in the ER, to save hundreds of gunshot victims in some of America’s busiest urban hospitals. This is a must-read for anyone interested in questions of race, violence, and medicine. It’s the rare case of an introvert cracking himself open to let us step inside his world. The trip left me spellbound.”
—JAMIE THOMPSON, journalist and author of Standoff: Race, Policing, and a Deadly Assault That Gripped a Nation