WNBA Star Brittney Griner Imprisonment & Release

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Teri Gross

I'm Tyria Gross. It's been less than one and a half years since my guest, WNBA star Britney Greiner, was released from a russian penal colony where she was serving a nine year sentence. Shed already spent 293 days incarcerated in russian prisons. Now shes preparing for her second season, reunited with her team, the Phoenix Mercury. Like many WNBA players, her salary was so low that back in 2014, in the off season, she started playing for a team in Russia where the pay was considerably better than in the US.

She continued playing in Russia during the offseason until 2022. Then, when she arrived at the airport in Moscow, she was unexpectedly stopped, questioned, and asked to empty the contents of her luggage. She discovered that there were two nearly empty cartridges of cannabis that shed neglected to remove before the trip. She had a prescription for medical marijuana to ease the chronic pain of basketball injuries. But in Russia, theres no such thing as medical marijuana.

And she was accused of having a significant amount of cannabis, which was just not true. Her imprisonment made national headlines, and a movement formed to demand her release. The Biden administration eventually was able to negotiate a prisoner swap. In return for releasing Greiner, America handed over Viktor Boot, an infamous russian arms dealer known as the merchant of death. Griner is a womens basketball star.

In her senior year playing for the Baylor Lady Bears, she was named the most outstanding player of the final four. She was the WNBA's number one overall draft pick in 2013. The following year, her team won the WNBA championship. She holds the WNBA record for most dunks. She won olympic gold medals in 2016 and 2020.

Now that she's reunited with her wife, they're expecting a baby in about three months. Brittany Greiner has a new memoir called coming Home. Brittany Greiner, welcome to Fresh Air. Congratulations on your freedom. Congratulations on playing again.

Congratulations on being reunited with your wife and of expecting a baby. Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here right now. So I just want to say before we start, for real, that I know cause you write about this, that when you got back from your imprisonment in Russia, you had trouble. You kind of withdrew for a while and had trouble even talking with your wife about what you'd experienced because it was so traumatic.

And I know you've written a memoir, but it's one thing to work on a book and another to be interviewed on, Mike. So if I ask anything that would be too traumatizing, too upsetting to talk about, I hope you'll let me know, and that way I can be guided and drop it. Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate that. So let's start with how are you now?

How are you physically? Physically doing good now? Doing better than definitely. When I first came back, there was a lot of growing pains and just getting the body back into normal shape and then trying to get it back into athletic shape. Has your back recovered?

You had cracked your back in high school playing basketball, and I wasn't sure when you said you cracked your back, whether that meant you broke a bone or displaced a disc. It was a disc vertebrate. Kind of smashed together a little bit. I went up, went up, actually for a dunk, and it got hit in the air and came down really bad, but definitely better. Now I have a little flare up here and there, but it's just all the years of play.

Yeah. And you have no cartilage left in your knees from playing. You also had a bad ankle and leg injury from a game in 2017. And you're right that all this pain came back when you were put in cages way too small for you and you couldn't straighten out. This happened, you know, during long car rides and, you know, at times in detention, in the courtroom, you were really uncomfortable.

Can you describe some of the most uncomfortable positions you were put in? And particularly for you, who are six foot nine, you know, a confined, small space is really terrible. It's not ideal, I'll tell you that. I mean, the beds that we had to sleep on, I mean, I basically had just metal rods going up my back, you know, every night just trying to find somewhere comfortable to lay. But it's really no way you can lay when the mattress is just a little bit of fabric and some stuffing in it.

Brittney Griner

Those metal rods go right through, basically. But one of the toughest times, honestly, is probably the transportation going back and forth from the detention center to court, and then from court back to the detention center. You're inside this small. It's like a small van, and in that van, there's little metal cages all around the outside. I do not fit.

There was a couple of rods and a couple of different vehicles that they would switch up, and literally to close the door, I had to pick my legs up, and they would shut the door, and then my knees would literally be on the metal door frame for about an hour, hour and a half to get from the detention center down to the. Down to the courthouse. And then did you have to live with residual pain for a long time after that? Definitely. I mean, my knees that first year, coming back from all that, not being able to move, not being able to stretch out and then being forced, you know, my knees up against these metal doors, I definitely felt it.

There was a lot of pain that would just come back. How are you emotionally now? I have my moments. You know, I definitely say it's like a roller coaster. I'm starting to string together a lot more better days now than before.

It'll just be a thought that'll pop up in my head sometimes or a dream, and then that turns into just a restless night or just my mood being a little bit off. But it's definitely getting better now. It's something that I've learned to kind of deal with and cope with. You had been having a lot of nightmares. What would happen in your nightmares?

So I had this one reoccurring dream where something was wrong with paperwork or something was wrong, and I had to go back to the embassy in Russia, actually. And when I go back, they take me, and I'm stuck right back in the cell that I was in. There's no talk of coming back. So it's just right back into the place where I spent most of the. Time earlier in your book, you write about how before basketball, there was no place for you because you're six'nine or six'eight.

Teri Gross

I want to get it right. Six'nine. Six'nine. Yeah. So were you that tall in high school, too?

Brittney Griner

I grew the extra inch once I got out of high school and into college, went into 9th grade, six foot, graduated six, seven, grew two more when in college. It's a lot of growing. A lot of growing. A lot of growing. A lot of new clothes.

So I wasn't mad about that. And also, you didn't develop rest, and people always thought, oh, you're really a boy, or later, oh, you're really a man. And you were asked to leave women's bathrooms because people assumed you were a man. And you're right, you were mistaken for what society fears most. A black man, a big black man.

Teri Gross

When you were younger, before you were a basketball star, did you constantly have to explain yourself? Always. Always. I mean, I just made a habit very, very young on just making sure I use the bathroom before I leave the house and, you know, wait till I'm in my locker room where I know I'm safe. I would leave class and go to the locker room to use the bathroom.

Brittney Griner

When I'm at my gym, it's in our locker room. You know, I've made this habit now that it's a little bit easier to do now, but I still don't like having to use public bathrooms because I've been chased after. Literally had security come into the bathroom to get me out of there, and I'm just like, y'all, like, I'm a female. I know you probably don't think I look like one, but I am, and I've literally pulled my pants down and flashed them, like. And they're like, oh, my God.

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. You know, like, what are you doing? It's not like I can flash my chest. Yeah, right.

Teri Gross

It's not like you could flash your chest. Right. And in basketball, your height was an asset, and you were special. What did you fall in love with about basketball? It was just a way for me to channel anxiety, anger, anything.

Brittney Griner

It gave me a focus. Basketball helped me be able to relate to a wide range of people, because, you know, you're not gonna like everybody on your team. Like, it's just life. Like, you're not gonna like everyone. And you have to learn how to work towards a common goal together.

And I think that can be applied to life. I really like that. And being challenged, you know, like, there's always someone bigger and better coming along. There's always someone gunning for you. So you either evolve or you get left behind.

And I love being able to stay in the game as long as I have and hopefully have a longer career. Well, you played in Russia for eight seasons, you know, largely because you needed the money, because especially back when you started women's basketball, pro ball was paid very little. I think things have improved a little, but proportionate to the NBA, there's no comparison. And in Russia, some of the teams are run by oligarchs, so, like, there was money, but, of course, the last time you went, you were detained and arrested. You didn't want to go.

Teri Gross

You wanted to stay home with your wife, and you kind of had a bad feeling, and you decided, okay, this is going to be your last season in Russia. You had just gotten over COVID. You were still coughing. Do you think you had a premonition? I definitely think the universe was telling me to stay at home, honestly.

Brittney Griner

And it was something that I promised myself that I would always listen to my intuition, no matter how big or small I think it is. I'm definitely gonna listen to it cause there was just so many signs of, you know, don't go. But I just heard that voice in the back of my head, you know, I grew up on the morals of, you finish what you start, and, you know, I never wanna leave my teammates in a bad position and we were right there. We were about to go win EuroLeague and russian league, you know, like we always have. So I just wanted to finish it out and then let that be the end.

Teri Gross

Yeah, and you had packed in a hurry, you threw things in your luggage and didn't check to see if anything was in the pockets and that's where the two mostly used up cartridges of cannabis were. And, you know, you had the prescription because of your pain from basketball injuries. You were stopped at the russian airport and it sounds like that was not typical, but there was a whole lot of security people there. I'm wondering if that was because this was a week before the war in Ukraine started. Before Russia started the war in Ukraine.

Do you think that there were special security alerts because of that? I mean, definitely a great possibility. Cause, you know, they knew what they were about to do, they knew they were about to invade and, yeah, I mean, I've made this trip multiple times in a season. You know, we come back two, three times within one season, been there eight years. So I've never seen so much security.

Brittney Griner

Both sides open, dogs. It was very random and, you know, everybody that was getting pulled to the side looked either american or, you know, non russian and, you know, all the Russians were basically just walking through the middle, not getting checked. So it was definitely something that I for sure noticed. Do you think you were targeted? It's hard to say yes or no to that, but, you know, my feeling, I think maybe not me per se, but an american, I think that was a big plus for them.

Teri Gross

What was the first thought that went through your mind about what this was going to mean for the rest of your life?

Brittney Griner

Life changing. I definitely just had a moment of just all the horrible thoughts of just never seeing my family being dragged through the media, through the news outlets, you know, everyone putting in their opinion and all the naysayers, you know, having ammunition to just start spewing out all these things about me that people have never even seen me or they don't even know who I am. Yeah, you were able to get a good russian lawyer and then another lawyer to help too. And your lawyer was able to rent you an apartment nearby the courthouse so that when you were put under house arrest, you'd have a place nearby to see. Well, my team.

Teri Gross

Your team? My team. Oh, your team found that. Yeah. Okay, your basketball team.

But you were given no bail, no house arrest. You were considered a flight risk. So that was, like, crushing. And then you found out you needed to stay in detention for a minimum of 30 days. And then after that time, you were moved to a correctional colony.

And I want you to describe what the conditions were like there. So, I mean, the detention center and the penal colony, IK two, that I ended up in, once I got my nine years, I mean, the conditions were horrible. I mean, trying to find clean water, trying to figure out how to buy water from commissary, that took. I mean, that probably took me about a month, two months to figure out how to even buy, you know, water, bottled water. And then the games began because I was buying so much water.

Brittney Griner

Then I was told, oh, well, there's a limit on how much you can buy, how much you can store in the room because I was buying so much water because our water that everyone uses comes from the bathroom sink, and that water that comes out that sink is just a milky. It looks like a milky water because it's just so much sediment and calcium and just rust because everything is rusted trying to be able to have food because what they serve you is. I wouldn't even give it to a stray animal. Like, it's just disgusting. The bowls that they serve the food out of.

You can see the paint chipping, the rust in it, the bed, how cold it is. One of the things that I noticed when I came back that I hate being cold because it was so cold there. They have these little radiators on the walls, but the whole room is metal and concrete, so it's just like being in an icebox. And you were there during russian winter? Oh, yes.

The blistering, cold, rushing winter. You know, once we were at Ik two, the penal colony, you have morning check every morning and every night you have morning check? Well, they have everyone line up outside in the courtyard, and they come by and they count us one by one. It's very old school counting of us. And you're out there for about an hour, hour and a half, and literally, blistering cold, blizzard, doesn't matter.

Snow literally was building up on my shoulders and my head where people would have to, like, knock it off. Would you describe what bathing and toileting was like in the prison? Oof. So you have three toilets and one shower to serve 50 plus women. Then there's no hot water.

You literally. I had a bucket and a ladle. So you would take a kettle, like a tea kettle, warm up water out the sink, pour it into the bowl, into the bucket. You take the bucket and the ladle into the shower. You squat down in the shower, and you just scoop and pour.

And that's how you take a shower. And you have about maybe five minutes because you have about 1012 other women waiting in the bathroom area to get into that shower. Not everyone showers, though. So some people picture, like, a big farmhouse like sink with multiple faucets on it. So people be over there washing chests, washing their armpits, kicking their feet in the sink.

You're next to them brushing your teeth. You have people washing all kind of body parts. The toilets are side by side, and in front of you, there was five toilets in there, but only three worked. So you had a neighbor right beside you and someone right in front of you, and there's no walls. So it's very intimate.

You get to know your roommates very well, very personally, which was insane, to say the least. I thought it was both upsetting and hilarious that the toothpaste you were given expired in 2007. Yes. You have old toothpaste that they give you. So if your family can't help you and you can't buy things, you just have to live with expired stuff.

But we would use the expired toothpaste. We would put it on the mold on the walls. Cause it would help kill the mold growing on the walls. Oh, gee. Yeah, yeah.

You get really resourceful. You were in a cell with two other women. One of them became a close friend. She spoke good English and translated everything for you, including tv programs, because you were allowed to watch tv, but it was mostly russian propaganda. And then the other roommate you figured out was a spy.

Teri Gross

I have a question about the russian propaganda channel. I want you to describe the clip of Joe Biden, President Biden at the podium where he kind of turns into Hitler. Yeah. So it was channel four. He was up talking, addressing the nation, and they started to distort his voice.

Brittney Griner

And literally, there was two big american flags right beside him. Well, the nazi flag comes down over the american flag. And I immediately jumped up, and I was like, alana, please, like, what's going on? And she was just like, the propaganda channel. You know, they're just talking crap about your president.

And I was just blown away. I never in a million years thought I would see something like that. It was just crazy. Like, even the talk shows, like, she would tell me sometimes about, you know, different. She's your roommate, who was your cellmate, I should say, who was translating for you?

Yes, my cellmate that was translating everything for me. And she would tell me about just a different show, how Nazi Germany is controlling America. And we want to come and take russian land from everyone. And I was just like, wow, we. Need to take another break here, so let me reintroduce you.

Teri Gross

If you're just joining us, my guest is Brittany Greiner, and she's written a new memoir called Coming Home about her life and about her imprisonment in Russia. We'll talk more after a short break. I'm Teri gross, and this is fresh air. The following message comes from NPR's sponsor Saatva. Founder and CEO Ron Rudson is on a mission to bring quality sleep to more people.

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When she didn't see herself in the books she loved, butler wrote her own stories in science fiction and fantasy. Hear more from her interview in the latest FrESH Air plus bonus episode. And get all your fRESh air episodes sponsor free by joining for yourself at plus dot, npr.org dot. With your cellmates who could speak English. When you were in russian prisons, what would you talk about?

Brittney Griner

We talk about all kind of stuff. Honestly, me and Alana, she liked cars, so we would talk about cars a lot. I remember we had this long debate for feel like weeks about what make and model the car was in. Supernatural, the tv show Supernatural. We would literally talk about any and everything.

We would play games where I would say a letter, we would have a category like, I don't know, states. I would say, you know, t and she would say Texas. And then I would have to say, like, a different one, like Tennessee. And we would play games like that. We would just try to come up with something to stay busy.

Teri Gross

Mm hmm. Were most of the women in the prisons where you were there because of drug charges? Yes. Number one thing everyone in Russia is in for is drug charges and then murders. Were you careful around the murderers?

Brittney Griner

I didn't really even think about it, honestly. When I was in there. I mean, there was a couple of women that I was close to, and I knew that they had attacked their husbands. And, you know, that was a very common thing they had in Russia. They relaxed their laws around domestic violence, and a lot of women ended up in really bad situations.

You know, they acted to get out of them, but I wasn't, I never was fearful of them doing anything to me. You know, one of the things that surprised me that I was grateful for is that there were no interrogations in which you were tortured with, like, electric shocks or waterboarding or, you know, anything like that. Were you worried that you would be exposed to that? Yes. After hearing stories from a lot of my roommate who, you know, was translating for me, she would tell me stories about, you know, the men's prison and how they actively will torture people.

They use this little metal thing that we would use to warm our water up with. They would use that to torture people with sometimes. So I knew it was there. I just tried to make sure I didn't give them a reason to do it. You know, I tried to make sure I followed the rules, you know, I didn't act up.

I just kind of stayed in good graces, or at least tried to. Yeah. Do you think being black and gay was held against you? And did they know? Did they know that you were a lesbian?

Oh, they definitely knew. You know, I had pictures of my wife in my little thing of photos that I had. You know, I was asked about her when I had to do a psychiatric test to prove that I was sane during my committed alleged crime. And one of the questions was, so how long have you had sick thoughts? You know, when did you decide to be gay?

And I told him I didn't decide, you know, and I don't. I've never had sick thoughts. And they would look at me after it was translated. They would look at me like, really? I'm like, yeah, I don't know what you think I could tell.

Their perception on the LGBTQ community is that we're just sick. What was the law? So, I mean, there's no marriages of same sex. And they were putting in laws, you know, banning it, that's for sure. You know, you can definitely go to jail for, as they would call it, showing, you know, homosexual acts in front of kids, like, holding hands, kissing, promoting protests.

Cause there have been protests there in Russia before. And they definitely will take you off. To jail because they thought since you were a lesbian, that therefore you had sick thoughts. Were you afraid they were gonna put you in the psychiatric ward while I. Was threatened that I was going to be thrown into the psychiatric ward if I didn't answer a question?

And the question was, am I guilty or am I innocent? Of what? Of my crime? And did they mention, was it the crime of being gay or the crime of the cartridges of cannibalism, the crime. Of smuggling cartridges, cannabis cartridges in.

And they wanted me to basically say what I'm going to plea. And I told them, I'm not answering that. I was like, you're not a judge. I was like, that has nothing to do if I'm sane or not sane, and I refuse to answer the question. And they told the translator to tell me if I don't answer it, that they would throw me into the psychiatric wardrobe.

I was lucky to have my lawyers there with me during that interrogation. And they stepped in at that moment. Were lawyers always helpful? Because it's always struck me that in Russia, they do what they want to do, no matter how good your lawyers are. They were definitely helpful.

And the fact that I had two, I guess, was shocking because they were always trying to figure out why I had two lawyers and not just one. Normally, your lawyers aren't even in those interrogations where, you know, they're questioning your sanity, but I was lucky to have them with me. However, they brought me back without my lawyers knowing to re ask me basically all the same questions again without the lawyers, and that was pretty common. Were you afraid that if you were defiant and refused to answer some of the questions that you'd either be put in the psych ward or be punished in some other way? 100%.

I had a talk with one of my lawyers about that scenario, and he, you know, he instructed me, you know, try as hard as you can not to answer it, get around it, but, you know, at the end of the day, just know if they want to put you in a psychiatric ward or, you know, do something to you, they can. So just go ahead and answer it. You know, he wasn't telling me to do it, but he was like, you know, it's at your discretion, you know, how far you want to take it. So what'd you do? I never answered the if I was guilty question or not.

I kind of called their bluff on that one. But some of the other questions, you know, I went ahead and answered. We need to take another break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Brittany Greiner. She's written a new memoir called coming Home.

Teri Gross

We'll be right back. This is fresh air on it's been a minute. We're keeping you in the know. When it comes to culture, I break down the latest trends and the forces behind them and introduce you to the creatives who think deeply about how we live today. Come for some good old cultural analysis and have a few laughs with me.

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This week on NPR's book of the Day podcast. We are discussing books centering mothers. So call your mom, then tune into the book of the day podcast from NPR. One of the things you had to deal with in prison, and this will sound obvious, was depression. But you dealt with depression before.

Teri Gross

You had suicidal thoughts and panic attacks when you were in your twenties. And you're right that you were overwhelmed with the thought that this life was all there was. What do you mean by that? What did you mean by that?

Brittney Griner

I was in a really bad place. In your twenties. You're talking about probably a little bit earlier than my twenties, too. A little bit growing up as well, just being so isolated and so different. You know, I always wondered why I was so different.

Why do everybody want to point out the fact that I'm different? Literally, I had girls that would come up to me in school and touch my chest and laugh and giggle and say that, oh, look, she's really not a girl, she's a man. Like, listen to her voice. Look how big she is. So just dealing with that in the isolation.

And this is all before sports, before I became the cool athlete, I was the weirdo, and the one that was just so different. It was a different feeling when I was in prison a little bit. You know, there was definitely times where I felt like I was that zoo animal that everyone was coming to look at because the guards would literally come open up my. The little peephole, look in, and then I would hear them laughing, going, you know, walking down the hallway. So I was like, that spectacle again.

And then when I first got took in to the county cell and I was in isolation, just the bad thoughts just started creeping in. You know, my life is over. You never know. You know, when you go to jail for a senate amount of time, who will be alive when I come out? Will my parents still be there?

Will me and my wife make it nine years while I'm locked up? You know, all these bad thoughts started coming in, and it just felt like it would be better if I wasn't here, maybe. Did you think seriously about suicide? Yeah, I came up with a plan, but then I thought on it more, and I was like, you know, they might not even release my body. And then now I didn't put my family through, not even being able to get my body back.

And I was like, I can't put. I can't put them through that. I gotta survive. And then my deeper instincts started kicking in. All those talks my dad used to tell me about how he made it through, you know, Vietnam and everything.

And I was like, if my dad can make it through that, I can make it through this. Let's talk a little bit about faith. Your wife, Sherelle, who you call rel, she's a person of faith. Her father was a preacher. Your parents are people of faith, but you'd pretty much abandoned it, but you returned to faith in prison.

Teri Gross

What, was there a turning point for you?

Brittney Griner

I would say my wife was my turning point, honestly, right before I went back over and got incarcerated in Russia. She's always been gracefully patient with me on the religion front. And she knew that I had so many people judging me, calling themselves christians, but judging me to the fullest, as if they're, you know, our maker. And those people really turned me away from religion. You know, going to a church and you hear the whispers and you hear the, oh, you're going to hell, or, why are you in here?

You know, that turned me away from religion. It made me think, like, oh, this. Like, I don't want to be a part of those people that are so judgmental. And she showed me a different way when we were in college. She took me to her church in Arkansas, and it was such a warming experience.

It opened my mind to, you know, seek it out a little bit more. And then being locked up, you know, some people call it jailhouse Jesus, call it what you want, but you have to believe in something or you'll go mad. And I just deep dived into my bible and read more, and it just started to click for me more. I started to get that blind faith even more. What was it like to get on the plane back to the US?

Teri Gross

Like, when you stepped on the plane, it sounds like everybody was at your service. There were, like, medical people there and people giving you food and candy of all sorts, like whatever you wanted or needed. Yeah. My wife had shared that I liked lemonheads, and I like Sudoku, so they had a lot of lemonheads and a book of Sudoko for me. There was definitely medical there to check me out, to do a quick check, make sure I was okay, and see if I needed anything.

Brittney Griner

There were counselor. There was a counselor there on the plane as well, and then our security detail in the back as well with us. And, you know, they thought I was just going to sit down and go to sleep, but there was no way I was about to go to sleep on that plane. I was just too anxious to get home. And I think I was even more anxious to just talk to somebody.

You know, I had Alana, I had Ann at the penal colony and Kate, who I could talk to, but at the same time, you know, English isn't their first language. So I was just excited to have a normal conversation and not have to think about how to make it childlike because a lot of the talk was childlike because, you know, you want to try to use shorter sentences, less words. When I was in Russia, and now I don't have to do that anymore, I could actually have full length, long conversations, and I just kind of wanted to talk to everybody. Did you learn much Russian? I learned a little bit of Jellhaus Russian, but it's a hard language to pick up on.

Teri Gross

It must have been remarkable to have people surrounding you, like officials and medical people surrounding you who wished you well as opposed to wishing you ill. Mm hmm. It was nice just knowing that I could. If I do want to close my eyes, I don't have to be on guard right now. You know, I felt I had a complete sense of safety for the most part.

Well, let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Brittany Greiner. She has a new memoir called coming Home. We'll be right back. This is fresh air.

Brittney Griner

There are a lot of issues on voters minds right now. Six big ones could help decide the guns, reproductive rights, immigration, the economy, healthcare. And the wars overseas. On the consider this podcast from NPR. We will unpack the debates on these issues and what's at stake.

You can listen to NPR's consider this wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Thorne. Why did Cole Escola write a bonkers, extremely fictionalized play about Mary Todd Lincoln? Well, you know, it was 2020, and we were all so isolated. I just started doing research.

Cole Escola

But the truth is, no, I just thought of it. We'll talk about that and more on Bullseye from maximumfund.org and npr. These days, news comes at you fast, but the truth getting there takes time. There's something that hasn't been disclosed yet. Embedded is a podcast that takes the time to look beyond the headlines.

Annemarie Baldonado

How did this happen? How did we get here? With original documentary storytelling. Listen to NPR's embedded wherever you get your podcasts.

Teri Gross

Your memoir is called coming Home. And you came home to the US. You came home to your wife and to your family, you know, your parents, your siblings, but you couldn't literally go to your house home because it was considered too risky. What were the kinds of threats that you needed to avoid? Well, I address, our old house address had got leaked.

Brittney Griner

My wife had went home one day while I was still, you know, abroad. And as soon as she got out the car, a reporter had hopped out and was running up, trying to get her to answer questions. We were getting a lot of hate mail as well. For what? Like, what were people hating you for?

Just evil things. Saying, I was non american. I shouldn't have came home. If I was any kind of american, I would go back and go back to jail and let them send Paul home. It was called the n word a lot.

My wife was as well, for fighting for me to come home. Were you considered not american by these people because you're black? Like, why were you not american? A lot of different reasons. Black, gay.

I've protested against police brutality. I've not stood for the national anthem in protests, which I think is just crazy because it's my right as an American to be able to protest as well. So, I mean, if anything, I'm more american. Cause I'm using my right to protest. They think I just hate America, and that's far from the truth.

I wanted to go into the military and be a law officer as well. I wanted to follow my dad's footsteps. He was. That's what he did. Yeah.

Teri Gross

One of the counselors or therapists who you spoke to told you to expect that your wife, Rel, will have changed, that she was without you for over a year. So she's learned to do things that maybe she wouldn't have done before. She's learned to become more independent. I mean, she became like a media spokesperson. She also, while working on behalf of eurylease, finished law school, passed the bar.

So, I mean, she had quite a tumultuous life. And you changed, too, as anybody would who was in prison for, you know, nearly 300 days. And I'm wondering if you each had to adjust to new versions of each other after you got back home. Definitely. We had to learn how to be together, but then also have time to heal away from each other, too, a little bit.

Brittney Griner

And, you know, some of the things that we loved doing before changed. Like, I used to love being in the house all day in the room, like an off day. We'll just stay in the room all day watching tv, watching shows. And that was triggering for me, because in the detention center, all I could do was sit on my bed for the whole entire day -1 hour outside. So I couldn't do it anymore like that.

My mood had changed at one point because. And I didn't know at the time it was, we keep the house cold. I hate being cold now, and my mood was just kind of getting. I was agitated. I was just off, and she was just like, you know, like, what is it?

Like, you know, we had a talk one day, and she was like, what do you think it is? I'm just like, I don't know. I'm cold, though. And we realized that me being cold put me back in that cell. So, you know, it was just, like, little things that we didn't even think would affect, but was affecting us, and, you know, we made the right corrections.

Teri Gross

You'd become withdrawn, and you found it too painful to talk about what you'd experienced.

Was that a disconnect, too, in the relationship until you were ready to connect again? Yeah, we would have talk. We would have talks, and I would tell her. I would be telling her about my conditions or something that I had to do, and I could see it was hurting her. You know, she never said it.

Brittney Griner

You know, like, oh, don't tell me she never said that. She wanted me to tell her more, but it's hard when, you know, you're hurting someone that you love. And, you know, I would pull back a little bit. I would still tell her, but I just. We would do it in smaller bursts.

But having my counselor was. Was. Was huge for me because I was. Able to just get it all out in very soon. You start your second season in the WNBA since getting out of prison, and, you know, it's your second season since you return with the Phoenix mercury.

Teri Gross

So you played last season. Did you feel ready last season? Because that was just a few months after getting out.

Brittney Griner

I thought I was ready, and then I realized, you know, even after the season, I realized I was like, that was a lot. It was just hard. But if I would have waited longer to get back into it, I think it would have been even that much harder, honestly, like, I knew I needed to start getting in shape if I was going to have a return back to the game. I knew I couldn't wait anymore, and, you know, I credit my team in believing in me, and they did everything that they could to help me get back on that court, and I was glad I did do it. But, you know, this season, I definitely feel 100% like my old self now.

Teri Gross

That's amazing. How was your game last season? It was okay. The season didn't go as well as we wanted it to go, to say the least. But, you know, it was okay.

Brittney Griner

I put up a little bit. I put up a few numbers. Did playing and also training before the season help break the depression? Because you had something to focus on that you liked, and that was important to you. Oh, 100%.

I was able to channel. If I was having a bad day or a down day, I was able to channel that into, you know, moving weight in the weight room and going on the court and just focusing on that. I could distract myself. You know, basketball's always been my outlet, where I don't think about anything. It's just a win in the game.

Teri Gross

So part of what you're doing now is work on behalf of Americans who are detained in foreign countries, who are imprisoned in foreign countries, working to get them out. I'm also wondering if you're interested in doing prison reform work in the US, because as horrible as conditions were in Russia, I mean, conditions are not good in most american prisons. Yes, 100%. I was just talking with my agent about that the other day, actually, about how I can. What I can do, how I can be of use, you know, what organization I could partner with, because, like you said, conditions are extremely bad overseas, but they're equally bad in certain prisons and even in our country here.

Brittney Griner

And no matter what someone has been convicted of, they still have rights as a human, and they still have rights as a prisoner, you know, incarcerated. And you don't get stripped of those rights just because you're in prison. So I definitely would love to work with a group that's working in reform and re immersion as well, because a lot of times we say, you know, you. You do the time, you're corrected. But then when you come back into society, we make it even harder for them to acclimate back in.

So I definitely want to do something around that. Brittney Greiner, thank you so much for talking with us. Oh, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it so much. And congratulations again on your freedom and your new life.

Teri Gross

And thank you. And your soon to come baby. Oh, thank you so much. Okay, be well. Brittney Greiners new memoir is called Coming Home.

Tomorrow on FResh AIr, we'll talk about black Twitter and how it became a phenomenon. Movements like me, too and Oscar so white grew from this online community. Our guest will be Prentice Penny, director of a new Hulu documentary series about black Twitter. He was also the showrunner for Issa Rae's series Insecure. I hope you'll join us.

I'll end the show with some news we're really excited about. Our film critic Justin Chang won the Pulitzer Prize and criticism yesterday. It was for reviews he wrote for the LA Times. Last year, he left the LA Times earlier this year to become a film critic at the New Yorker. We're really proud that he's Fresh Air's film critic.

Congratulations, Justin. We are so happy for you. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Sallett, Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Boldonado, Sam Bruegert, Lauren Krenzel, Theresa Madden, Thea Challoner, Susan Yakundi and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesbur. Roberta Schorach directs the show. Our co host is Tanya Moseley. I'm Terry Gross.

Annemarie Baldonado

Summer is for going to the movie theater because it's too hot to stay home. It's for driving with the windows down, listening to your favorite music. It's for stretching out while you're on vacation to gobble up a tv show. For a guide to some of the tv, movies and music we are most excited about this summer, listen to the pop culture happy hour podcast from NPR on Wild Card, the new podcast from NPR. You'll hear people like comedian Jenny Slate reflect on their lives.

What is something you think about very differently today than you did ten years ago? Dressing like not salad dressing. I've always loved it, and I'll never stop dressing my body. That's all part of the new game show wild card only from NPR. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Brittany Luce

Pro palestinian protests have popped up on college campuses across the country, but from the eyes of students, what are we missing? From the outset, these protests are painted as really violent when that couldn't be. Further from the truth. I'm Brittany Luce, host of NPR's it's been a minute, and I'm inviting you to hear from student journalists who see what the rest of us cannot on it's been a minute from NPR.

Jesse Thorne

I'm Brittany Luce, host of NPR's it's been a minute, and I'm inviting you to hear from student journalists who see what the rest of us cannot on it's been a minute from NPR.

Brittany Luce

I'm Brittany Luce, host of NPR's it's been a minute, and I'm inviting you to hear from student journalists who see what the rest of us cannot on it's been a minute from NPR.

WNBA Star Brittney Griner Imprisonment & Release

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1: Introduction

2: Imprisonment Details

3: Psychological Impact

4: Return to Normalcy

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