Yara Shahidi continues to flex her power behind the Hollywood scenes and will help bring author Cole Brown’s debut book Greyboy: Finding Blackness in a White World to television.
ABC Signature acquired the rights to the book through a competitive bid. Yara and her mother Keri Shahidi will develop the series for TV and executive produce via their 7th Sun Productions, as part of their overall deal with the studio, a part of Disney Television Studios.
Released in 2020, the book is Brown’s personal memoir of the life of a Philadelphia kid who matured in the city’s predominantly white private schools and neighborhoods. He began writing his first book while an undergraduate at Georgetown University.
“Every time we picked up Greyboy, Cole’s words have only become more resonant,” said the Shahidis in a statement to Deadline. “His essays beautifully – and at times – painfully illuminate the much larger conversations around being ‘tokenized’ while navigating ever-changing white spaces. We are excited to partner with Cole and share the brilliance of Greyboy with a larger audience.”
The book details how Black kids like the author dealt with being called “token, bougie and oreo” as they grew up in white spaces and still maintained their racial identity. It takes a hard look at how he navigates between the two worlds. The book has been called a must-read by such stars as Queen Latifah and Anthony Anderson, and Diddy even wrote a review of the book as it hit home for him.
“Cole Brown’s Greyboy: Finding Blackness in a White World is a lens into a world that few have written about — a world at the intersection of race and class that my children wake up in every day. Brown presents an honest and sometimes uncomfortable view into the reality of growing up Black in white spaces. The Black experience in America is complex and Greyboy shines a light on the unique challenges that come with us achieving success,” wrote the Bad Boy business mogul.
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