A’ja Wilson will make her literary debut next year, the WNBA star announced on Instagram.
Flatiron will publish Wilson’s Dear Black Girls: How to Be True to You, the first book from the Las Vegas Aces power forward. The press describes the book as “an inspirational collection on what it means to grow up as a Black girl in America.”
Wilson was a standout player for the University of South Carolina Gamecocks from 2014 to 2018; the team won the NCAA Women's Basketball Championship in 2017. The Aces selected her as the first overall pick in the 2018 WNBA draft, and she led the team to its first title in 2022.
Her book, she said on Instagram, is an expansion of “Dear Black Girls,” the 2020 essay she wrote for the media platform the Players’ Tribune. “We don’t want to be some meme or whatever,” she wrote in the essay. “We don’t want to be the Angry Black Woman or the Aggressive Black Woman. We just want to be seen as human beings in this world. We just want to be heard when we speak. We just want to be respected.”
Flatiron says of the book, “Dear Black Girls is one remarkable author’s necessary and meaningful exploration of what it means to be a Black woman in America today—and an of-the-moment rally cry to lift up women and girls everywhere.”
It is scheduled for publication on Feb. 6, 2024.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
