Brittney Griner has taken a bold step beyond the game. With the release of her new book, focused on living with integrity, Griner invites readers into a journey of personal growth and ethical living that she passionately believes can transform lives.
“I wrote this book to share what I’ve learned about integrity and how it can shape not only your personal life but also your impact on the world,” Griner shared in a recent interview. Her sincerity and commitment to this message shine through in every chapter, offering practical insights and personal anecdotes that resonate with readers from all walks of life.
In promoting her book, Griner doesn’t just rely on her celebrity status; she passionately advocates for its value, stating unequivocally that it’s “worth every penny.” Her conviction stems from a belief that integrity is not just a personal virtue but a catalyst for positive change in society.
Brittney Griner’s ordeal riveted the nation. Now she tells her own story.
The WNBA star’s book, “Coming Home,” delves into the dehumanizing indignities she suffered after being arrested in Russia and held prisoner for 10 months.
The beginning of Brittney Griner’s new memoir is shockingly mundane — a hurried packing job in preparation for what had become for the Phoenix Mercury star a routine overseas trip.
Griner, who supplemented her WNBA income by playing for the UMMC Ekaterinburg team, was off to Russia. She sailed through security in Phoenix and then New York before landing in Moscow, where she and several other foreigners were subjected to further searches. A sniffer dog showed no sign that it had detected anything, so Griner was surprised to be asked to unpack her carry-ons. That’s where she unearthed not one but two partially used canisters of cannabis oil. They were legal in Arizona, where Griner was a licensed medical marijuana user, to help her cope with sports-related injuries. In Russia, they were contraband.
The been-there-done-that opening sets the tone for a book that careens from the ordinary to the surreal. Readers may well recognize missteps they have made getting through security in the sudden crisis Griner faces — and recoil in horror at what comes next.
“The agent picked up the cartridge and glared at me. I couldn’t speak, think, breathe,” she recalls. “Even after the second cartridge was discovered, I was hoping he’d let it slide, give me a strong warning.”
Griner’s passport was taken and then, after much panicked waiting, she was pressured into signing a Russian document she didn’t understand. “Maybe if I sign this, I can go,” she thought. Instead she was ushered into an unmarked car and taken to a red-brick building where she was interrogated and later read her charge: smuggling narcotics into Russia.
“I left Phoenix in a frenzy,” Griner recalls. “Three hellish days later, just before dawn, I lost my freedom, my peace, my life as I’d known it … The future was unimaginable.”
The broad outline of Griner’s ordeal is well known. But “Coming Home” delves unflinchingly into the dehumanizing indignities the Olympic athlete suffered during the 10 months she served out of a nine-year sentence. The too-tight cuffs, the too-short beds and the strip searches; the hours spent crouched in cages; the bewildering multiday transfer to a penal colony; the backbreaking toil sewing military uniforms; the efforts to find allies among the few imprisoned English speakers; the indigestible food and stinking toilets. Her faith helped her avoid sinking into suicidal thinking.
“Coming Home” is also a reminder that sudden detentions rewrite the lives not just of those who are wrongly held but of the family members, other supporters and former hostages who work to bring them home. Griner’s wife, Cherelle, who was then in law school, became her chief advocate, marshaling players, politicians and prominent Black women, including Gayle King, behind a powerful #WeAreBG campaign.
Still, Vanessa Nygaard, then coach of the Phoenix Mercury, focused on the attention Griner’s case was not getting, arguing that LeBron James would have been brought home more quickly. “It’s a statement about the value of a woman. It’s a statement about the value of a Black person. It’s a statement about the value of a gay person,” she said.
Written with Michelle Burford, founding senior editor of O, The Oprah Magazine, who has also channeled the stories of actress Cicely Tyson, gymnast Simone Biles and singer Alicia Keys into print, “Coming Home” is bound for the talk-show circuits and probably the bestseller lists.
The text resonates with the emotional clarity of Griner’s voice — and sometimes her desperate text messages — shifting, a little jarringly, to sections written in a more descriptive journalistic style. It does not share the literary artistry of another recently published memoir, “American Mother,” the joint work of novelist Colum McCann and Diane Foley, whose son Jim was publicly beheaded in 2014 by ISIS terrorists. But it is a riveting read.
Some will question the wisdom of Griner’s trip in February 2022, as Russia was poised to invade Ukraine. The financial incentives were clear, but there were signs from early on that Griner had entered an unsavory world: Women players had become sports royalty in Russia, thanks largely to Shabtai Kalmanovich, a KGB spy and sometime diamond trader who poured millions into the game his third wife played and was later assassinated in a drive-by shooting on a Moscow street.
There’s nothing new about Russia’s strategy of arresting innocent Americans. In the early days of the Cold War, my father-in-law was held for two months, sometimes in solitary confinement, after he and his college friend Warren “Jim” Oelsner cycled from West Germany into the Soviet Zone, where they were arrested and accused of espionage. Dean Acheson, then secretary of state, condemned the students’ detention as “an illegal, outrageous and improper thing to do.” Now, with the threat of a second Cold War looming, Griner’s book leaves readers with questions that go beyond the scope of this memoir:
How her release was secured and then executed as a one-for-one trade on an Abu Dhabi tarmac in December 2022, where Griner was exchanged for the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout.
What lies ahead for the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich particularly in an election year when Russia may be reluctant to give President Biden an electoral boost? Gershkovich has been held for more than a year in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison after being accused of spying — a charge that he, the Journal and the Biden administration deny.
And why, after more than five years, does former Marine and corporate security executive Paul Whelan linger in a Russian penal colony?
All legitimate questions.
Meanwhile, Griner’s return to the United States has swung between celebrations and new threats. There were joyful shindigs as well as red-carpet invitations to the White House correspondents’ dinner and the Met Gala. Griner saw the Biden administration taking further steps to raise awareness, with the passage of bipartisan legislation in 2023 to create the National Hostage and Wrongful Detainee Day, which is observed each March. Griner is determined to use her celebrity status to secure the release of others and to right social injustices.
“I can use my darkest moment to shine a light on American hostages all over the world,” Griner writes. “On equal pay for female athletes and understanding of LGBTQ+ people. On the experiences of Black women, whose expressions of anger, while no different from anyone’s, brand us as always irate.”
But the joy of Griner’s homecoming was sullied by racist and homophobic attacks, including vitriol from some who saw a sports star who had taken a knee during the national anthem at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement (she now stands) as less worthy of the high-profile trade than Whelan, who had served in the Marines. Overbearing journalists appeared on her doorstep, and threatening letters piled up in the mailbox, prompting Griner to flee with Cherelle to an Airbnb and hire full-time security guards. Then, last June, as Griner was traveling with her teammates through Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, a man accosted her, demanding to know whether she thought it was fair to trade her for Bout, the “Merchant of Death.”
The couple decided to seek refuge in the desert mountains. Griner describes a blissful paradise “surrounded by cactuses and quiet.” But that paradise also represents one more forced relocation, putting a disconcerting twist on the meaning of “Coming Home” to today’s deeply divided America.
Frances Stead Sellers, an associate editor of The Washington Post, is a 2024 journalist in residence at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public and International Law.
