This May 7, the memoirs of Brittney Griner, Coming Homewritten in collaboration with Michelle Burfordin which he recounts his traumatic journey through the Russian prison and his return after 10 months.
The narrative spares no detail and offers a vivid picture of the oppressive conditions and relentless fear that tormented their daily lives.
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Griner’s writing, a lifelong refuge from adversity, reveals a deeply introspective person. Griner, who even had pen pals when she was in prison, talks about her vulnerability from her youth, growing up with a tough father and a sweet mother, a combination that made her resilient and, over time, self-assured about all on the basketball court.
In his memoirs, he addresses his harrowing experiences with a mix of raw emotion and therapeutic humor.
“Prison is more than a place. It is also a way of thinking. When I entered Correctional Colony No. 2 – or IK-2, in Mordovia, a region located more than 500 kilometers east of Moscow, I flipped a switch in my head. ‘Now I’m a prey,’ I told myself. ‘I’ll be here for at least nine years.’ I even rehearsed the date of my release: October 20, 2031,” Griner writes. “I knew that could change. Still, focusing on a goal would help me get through the nightmare. As much as I loved my wife Relle and my family, I had to seal that love to a certain extent. I felt like softness would compromise my toughness.”
After being detained and sentenced to nine years for possessing a small amount of cannabis oil in his suitcase when he entered Moscow To finish her seventh season with a Russian team, Griner was released after 10 months in a prisoner swap for a Putin comrade, Viktor Bout, on December 8, 2022.
Griner’s captivity in Russia, vividly captured in the margins of his Bible and his Sudoku book, left an indelible mark on his psyche. His grim expectation of enduring years of confinement is juxtaposed with fleeting moments of freedom, such as his description of a childhood memory in which, upon seeing white Bengal tigers at the zoo during a school field trip, he wondered what they were thinking. She got a good feel for her during her own captivity, especially when she was transported to and from court in a steel cage too small for her 6-foot-10 frame.
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“Coming Home “It begins in the land where my roots developed and is the diary of my sorrows and regrets,” Griner declared to ABCNews. “But ultimately the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions of people who came together to rescue me helped me endure a nightmare.”
In his acknowledgments, Griner expresses his gratitude to the black women in the media who kept her story alive during her detentionunderlining the importance of their activism. Coming Home is a testament to resilience, a moving account of one woman’s struggle to survive and her ultimate triumph over adversity.
Via Benzinga, translated by El Planteo
Photo by УГМК, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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