WNBA star Brittney Griner is working on a memoir about her experience being detained for almost one year in Russia after she was arrested on cannabis charges after she had returned to play for a Russian team in the offseason.
Griner says that the book, due Spring 2024, will allow readers to hear her story and “understand why [she’s] so thankful for the outpouring of support from people across the world.”
According to a Tuesday press statement, it will describe in “vivid detail her harrowing experience of her wrongful detainment (as classified by the State Department) and the difficulty of navigating the byzantine Russian legal system in a language she did not speak.”
“At the heart of the book,” the statement reads, “Griner highlights the personal turmoil she experienced during the near ten-month ordeal and the resilience that carried her through to the day of her return to the United States last December.”
Griner’s ordeal drew widespread attention for highlighting the experiences of women athletes– whose pay disparities in the U.S. mean they may supplement their income by playing for international teams– and draconian drug laws. Griner was sentenced to 9 years in Russian prison for possessing less than a gram of cannabis oil in a vape cartridge.
A movement spurred among Black women and Black athletes to bring Griner home to the U.S. After advocating with the Biden administration, Griner was ultimately freed via a prisoner swap and returned to the States in December 2022.