Ethermac Exchange-Brittney Griner's book is raw recounting of fear, hopelessness while locked away in Russia

Midway through her book "Coming Home,Ethermac Exchange" Brittney Griner is informed of fellow American Trevor Reed’s release from a Russian penal colony. It is April 2022, and Reed is finally going home after being wrongfully detained for nearly three years. The news both elevates Griner’s spirit and breaks her heart, bringing her to tears. 

"Only someone who has lived, prayed, cried and slept in a Russian prison can truly comprehend the daily indignities, the deep isolation that weighs on your spirit," Griner writes. 

The memoir, which is available Tuesday, is a detailed accounting of Griner’s harrowing journey through a Russian legal system known for its corruption. Griner describes it as "a rigged system where the house always won." In February 2022, just a week before Russia invaded Ukraine, Griner was detained at the Moscow airport on her way back to UMMC Ekaterinburg, the Russian team she’d played with for nearly a decade during the WNBA offseason. 

In her carry-on, Griner had forgotten to remove two small vape pens with cannabis oil, a minor infraction in the U.S. but a major violation in Russia, a country known for draconian drug laws. Back home in Phoenix, a doctor had prescribed Griner medical marijuana for a litany of lingering sports injuries. Griner owns the mistake of leaving the cannabis oil in her bag, writing "I didn’t deserve the hell I was put through, and yet my forgetfulness on that February morning had cost us dearly."

If you followed Griner’s plight in real time, you’ll be familiar with all the major plot points. The details she shares are both jarring (she was forced to strip in prisons more than once, as Russian guards photographed her body) and bizarre (during her trial, as the court broke for judge deliberation, the prosecutor asked the American superstar for some photos). She passed time, and kept her sanity, by playing Sudoku and scribbling notes in the margins, a makeshift diary. She talks frankly about how often she’s felt other’d in her life − "when you’re born in a body like mine, a part of you dies every day, with every mean comment and lingering stare," she writes − and how her time in Russia was merely the latest, and cruelest, version of that reality.

It is a raw recounting of a hellish 10 months that ended with her release Dec. 8, 2022. Griner’s shame, fear, hopelessness and heartache are evident. 

And that’s why everyone should read it. 

As Griner’s story played out in the national media, many people − loudly and publicly − picked sides. Some fought for Griner’s release, posting daily to social media about how President Joe Biden’s administration needed to do whatever necessary to bring her home. Others railed against the idea of an openly gay, Black woman’s freedom being prioritized, especially if it came at the expense of trading a notorious Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout, who was serving a 25-year sentence in the U.S. Some were furious that a basketball player was released while military and longer-term political prisoners, including Paul Whelan, were left behind. Wasn’t this just one more example of a sports star receiving special treatment? 

Polarization might make headlines but the truth is, the majority of Americans probably are somewhere in the middle. 

It’s likely that there are thousands of Americans across the country who are happy Griner is home, but aren’t quite sure how they feel about the finer points of the situation − about if the trade was "fair," about if she needed to go to Russia in the first place, about if she deserved her punishment for possessing the cannabis oil.

But read her book, a 300-plus page deep dive on an experience many of us wouldn’t have been able to recover from, and I suspect your empathy will grow − for her and all of humanity. 

Maybe you won’t be lining up to get season tickets to the Phoenix Mercury or purchasing a purple Griner jersey, but I bet you'll see the world differently. Especially if you followed the story only tangentially and know bits and pieces but not all the horrifying details. I’m thinking it will make you say out loud, "I’ve never thought of it that way." 

Maybe your thoughts on Griner will remain complicated. But maybe your thoughts on other issues related to her − pay equity, the reality of being Black and gay in both Russia and America, protesting the national anthem in the name of social justice − will broaden. Maybe you won’t subscribe to WNBA league pass, but you’ll decide to support your local high school team. Maybe you’ll speak up at the Thanksgiving table when someone says something crass about the LGBTQ community. Maybe the next time you see a tall, awkward kid who is obviously struggling to fit in, you’ll offer them a kind smile and encouraging word. 

It’s rare that change happens overnight, for a major event to immediately turn the public consciousness. But the ripple effect in life is real, and if Griner’s honesty helps even a dozen readers see the world differently, that impact, her impact, will be felt for years. 

Griner's book will get people talking to each other, and that's when real change begins.

Email Lindsay Schnell at [email protected] or follow her on social media @Lindsay_Schnell