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Book Summary and Reviews of Misfits by Michaela Coel

Misfits by Michaela Coel

Misfits

A Personal Manifesto

by Michaela Coel

  • Published:
  • Sep 2021, 128 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

From the brilliant mind of Michaela Coel, creator and star of I May Destroy You and Chewing Gum and a Royal Society of Literature fellow, comes a passionate and inspired declaration against fitting in.

When invited to deliver the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Michaela Coel touched a lot of people with her striking revelations about race, class and gender, but the person most significantly impacted was Coel herself. Building on her celebrated speech, Misfits immerses readers in her vision through powerful allegory and deeply personal anecdotes―from her coming of age in London public housing to her discovery of theater and her love for storytelling. And she tells of her reckoning with trauma and metamorphosis into a champion for herself, inclusivity, and radical honesty.

With inspiring insight and wit, Coel lays bare her journey so far and 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. Championing "misfits" everywhere, this timely, necessary book is a rousing coming-to-power manifesto dedicated to anyone who has ever worried about fitting in.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"By turns wryly comic and devastating ... [Misfits] codifies her efforts to achieve transparency in her work and in her life." ―New York Times

"Leaps off the page ... [Coel] hits hard: funny, but also direct ... Coel is all about letting go of fear or, at least, of using it to find your way to something better." ―The Observer

This information about Misfits was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Michaela Coel

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.

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