Brittney Griner’s resolution to cut her hair while in a Russian prison used to be a life or demise subject.
“At IK-2, they iced over in combination. My iced locs began molding underneath that wrap. They took three days to dry when I showered. During workout on frigid mornings, I may literally really feel a head chilly approaching,” Griner, 33, writes in her new e book, Coming Home, in step with an excerpt acquired by way of TIME. Griner has long been candid in regards to the detention middle’s unsafe and unsanitary prerequisites. (In a 20/20 interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, she recalled sleeping on a bloody bed.)
Ahead of her sentence, which came after she used to be detained in a Russia airport for possessing 0.7 grams of hash oil, which is felony in her home state of Arizona but unlawful in Russia, Griner wore her hair in dreadlocks, which fell past her shoulders. (Following her arrest, she used to be sentenced to 9 years at a hard work camp.)
Griner began growing out her locs while attending Baylor University in Texas — and like most Black girls, her hair become a supply of pride and offered convenience.
“I liked how easy they made my life,” Griner writes. “I didn’t have to suppose a lot about my hair. I could simply hoop. … Me and my dreads had history: coming out to Pops, the WNBA draft, my upward push at Baylor my love tale with [my wife] Relle. Together, we’d been through the excellent, the dangerous and the devastating.”
Unfortunately, due to her Russian confinement, her tresses “had to move.” Griner writes, then again, that regardless of the harrowing cases at the jail, she wasn’t ready to freely cut her hair. She needed permission.
“Ann [an inmate] helped me write an software to give to [deputy warden] Mother of Dragon, telling her I’d stay getting ill if I stored them. She agreed. There was once a salon at the colony. The stylist was once [development leather] Val’s girlfriend, an older woman named Jenya. She had a pleasant little setup: barber chair, hair gear, footage of hairstyles on the partitions. And she did it all, from perms and buzz cuts to colour and curls,” Griner writes.
Griner’s locs proved to be a challenge for Jenya. “When I sat down in her chair, she checked out my dreads like, ‘What do I do with this?” the excerpt reads.
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Griner continues, “I confirmed her an image of my nephew E.J., who had the short fade I wanted. I gestured for her to snip off the locs. A dread at a time, the previous me fell to the ground. She then put a guard on her clippers and—bzzzz—raked the vibrating steel over my scalp. I couldn’t see whilst she cut. I simply had to agree with her. Later, when she became me round to the mirror, I thought, ‘Not bad.’”
Fans of Griner have been stunned to see her transformation when she was released on December 8, 2022 in a prisoner trade with the United States for palms dealer Viktor Bout. She returned to the basketball courtroom in time for the 2023 WNBA season. She’s a center for the Phoenix Mercury.
Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, will debut on May 7.
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