Published in 2021
105 pages
1 hour and 37 minutes
Michaela Coel is the creator of the hit TV shows I May Destroy You and Chewing Gum. She has won awards from BAFTA, the Royal Television Society, the Broadcasting Press Guild, and the NAACP for her acting, screenwriting and directing. In 2020, she was included in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and British Vogue’s 2020 Most Influential Women lists. Misfits is her first book.
What is this book about?
From the brilliant mind of the creator and star of I May Destroy You and Chewing Gum comes a passionate declaration against fitting in.
Michaela Coel’s MacTaggart Lecture touched a lot of people with her striking revelations about race, class and gender. But in the end, the person most impacted was Coel herself. Building on this speech, Misfits immerses listeners in her deeply personal vision through powerful allegory and anecdotes – from her East London upbringing to her discovery of theatre and love for storytelling.
With inspiring insight and wit, she tells of her reckoning with trauma and metamorphosis into a champion for herself, inclusivity and radical honesty, and in telling her journey invites us to reflect on our own. By embracing our differences, she says, we can transform our lives. An artist to her core, Coel holds up the path of the creative as an emblem of our need to regard one another with care and respect – and transparency.
Misfits is a triumphant call for honesty, empathy and inclusion. This timely, necessary book is a rousing coming-to-power manifesto dedicated to anyone who has ever worried about fitting in.
