The former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who lost his playing career after kneeling during pre-game performances of the national anthem to protest against police killings of Black people, plans to put out a memoir aimed at young adult audiences, the athlete and the book’s publisher announced on Wednesday.
The book, Colin Kaepernick: Change the Game, recounts the time in high school when the ex-quarterback chose to focus on football despite pressure from his parents and coaches to play baseball, at which he was also exceedingly talented, the publisher Scholastic said in a news release.
Scholastic described the book as “young adult graphic novel memoir”, promising to explore how “a young change-maker learned to find himself, make his own way, and never compromise”. Its release date is tentatively set for 7 March.
At 26 and in his second season in the NFL out of Nevada, Kaepernick led the San Francisco 49ers to an appearance in the Super Bowl at the end of the 2012 season. The signal caller helped the 49ers return to a conference championship game the following season, before he and the team missed the playoffs during the next three seasons.
In his final season in both San Francisco and in the NFL, Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem to protest against racist injustice in general, including the disproportionate number of killings of Black people by police officers.
He and former teammate Eric Reid later filed grievances against the NFL accusing the league of collusion, with the pair arguing that they were blacklisted because of their protests after drawing condemnation from some quarters, including then president Donald Trump, who called Kaepernick a “son of a bitch”.
Kaepernick received financial settlements from the NFL in 2019, and reportedly the agreement netted the pair less than $10m.
Since his last snap on the NFL gridiron, Kaepernick has launched his Know Your Rights Camp, an organization that describes its mission as advancing “the liberation of Black and Brown people”. The group earlier this year announced that it would offer free, secondary autopsies to family members of anyone whose death is “police-related”.
Kaepernick in 2019 also established a publishing house focused on “amplifying diverse views and voices”. Kaepernick Publishing worked with Scholastic to release I Color Myself Different, a children’s picture biography of the 49ers star which landed on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.
Kaepernick Publishing is again helping Scholastic with Change the Game.
In a statement, Kaepernick, 34, said he was “excited to continue to grow” his publishing house while also retelling his adolescence’s “trials and triumphs”.
“It was during this time that I began to grow unapologetically into my own identity, into my own sense of self,” Kaepernick’s statement said. “I hope this graphic novel encourages readers to nurture their own evolution and to trust their power – in a phrase – to change the game.”
Kaepernick’s story has also inspired a number of other media projects, ranging from a show on Netflix – Colin in Black & White – to the theatrical play Moreno, which dramatizes the effect of Kaepernick’s activism on a football team led by a Chicano running back.
