I really like Michaela Coel as a performer, and love the things that she's been in and written and overall just find her a really intelligent, funny, interesting person. This is very much in her voice, and a great story for anyone who feels "other" or "different" in life. This is also quite a short read, which I think adds to the punchiness of it.

Kept wondering throughout, "What the heck is this??? And what is it supposed to be???"
Unfortunately, this read like a no-holds-barred cerebral dump with no rhyme nor reason and almost trippy in its intensity. Cannot say I enjoyed it, much less made sense of anything in there, to be honest. Shame, really, because I loved Chewing Gum and was looking forward to what the author had to say outside of the fiction realm

This is a quick read with many emotions, written with an undertone of humour. Wouldn't necessarily recommend it but was an easy read

I loved this book.

Short, punchy and perfect. It wasn’t always an easy read, but the authors characteristic wit that makes her television shows such a delight was present in the pages spurring me on to the end.

I don’t often read non-fiction, but I enjoyed this.

I have really enjoyed reading 'Misfits' by Michaela Coel which is a short and important piece of writing by such a talent.

In 2018, Michaela Coel was asked to speak in front of a crowd of 4,000 people at a TV Festival in Edinburgh.

Her speech for The MacTaggart Lecture is presented here, with some minor changes to suit the print edition.

What I did was play the video of her speaking on YouTube and read along at the same time, and it was a most enjoyable way to enjoy it. I know it's on Audiobook too, but it was lovely to be able to see her as well as hear her speak (I have to confess, I did speed her up a bit, I'm sorry Michaela).

The speech itself is inspiring, raw, honest, very emotional to listen to in parts (CW for sexual assault and mention of suicide), with Michaela speaking about her life, her progression from young drama student to actress/creator/producer, but also racism, abuse, misogyny, and the concept of Misfits in general.

The book is so short, and there's very little in it apart from the lecture, but it's still always nice to spend some time with Michaela. Recommended for fans and newbies alike!

Read in one sitting. Coel holds up a mirror both to the television industry and to British society and its countless prejudices, and it is powerful, confronting and beautifully written. I can only imagine what it was like to watch her deliver this lecture in person. Simply magnificent!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance reading copy.

Utterly brilliant, as with everything that comes out of Michaela Coel's mind! I will likely recommend this book to everyone I know.

Like may people, I became a fan of Michaela Coel after watching the incredible I May Destroy You last year. This slender volume gives an insight into the world of television writing and production and the barriers Michaela has encountered along the way. Short but powerful, it expands on her MacTaggart Lecture and her thoughts in the aftermath of giving the lecture and reflecting on it. It is full of brilliant metaphors – moths, the shaking ladder, and the house that you don’t want to welcome people into unless all the doors within it are open for them – and encourages all ‘misfits’ to embrace their differences and individuality.

Misfits: A Personal Manifesto is the Sunday Times Bestseller written by the creator of Chewing Gum and I May Destroy You, Michaela Coel. Misfits is a published expansion of her 2018 MacTaggart Lecture which touched so many people, uniting what Coel calls ‘misfits’ with her striking revelations and thoughts on race, class, and gender, particularly within the TV industry.

Misfits is a published version of the speech (much like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists was published in book form). As well as printing the actual speech Coel delivered, this book offers an expansion of further thoughts from the writer including; an introduction that delves into how Coel wrote the speech and how she felt at the time, plus an Epilogue: The Aftermoth which explores the speech’s reception, and what the experience did for Michaela Coel herself.

At just over 100 pages, Michaela Coel’s Misfits is a quick and easy read that packs in a lot of important observations. Immersing the reader in her vision for a more transparent, inclusive, and radically honest future, Coel shares personal tales, anecdotes, and a powerful moth-based allegory. In telling her story, Coel invites us as readers, other misfits, to reflect on our own life journey, embrace our differences and transform our lives.

A truly rousing and powerful manifesto, Michaela Coel’s Misfits is dedicated to anyone who feels they don’t fit into this house or this world.

I’m a fan of Coel’s acting and writing, she’s an incredible talent. I so wanted to like this. It’s a recounting of her MacTaggart lecture, with the first third been given over to a poem and a dream. The lecture itself begins at her beginning, growing up in London. On to attending drama school, writing a play and then a sitcom. She talks about her lived experiences as a black, female writer. A short but powerful read.

A provocative, important, quick read. A glimpse into Michaela Cole’s mind and soul (if you haven’t heard the McTaggart Edinburgh talk). I loved Chewing Gum and This May Destroy you and will always read or watch anything Michaela Cole writes/talks about/produces/stars in. She is brilliant and captivating and important.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for the ARC in return for a fair and honest review.

This book fits much more within the Penguin small ideas books than anything bigger and Michaela Coel knows that with her intro and afterword basically admitting it. Equally what is being said here is timely and important, delivered in the kind of amusingly raw fashion that she happily deconstructs constantly. The central text is the McTaggart Lecture that Coel delivered at the 2018 Edinburgh Television Festival, though in here you also see the roots of I May Destroy You. As a lecture its well-structured and as Coel says she’s a storyteller. The story she tells starts off inspirational and then spirals as the low level reality of racism but also just penny pinching resistance in the TV industry hits and then she drops the well publicised hit of her own rape. This is actual a very small part of the lecture, she is very careful about the framing and has since revisited the story but even in this context its powerful.

Misfits (a word she chooses to define to make her point), is vital reading, not just for the text but also the continuing promise of her writing. The bookends here, which digress into quite poetic flights on moths and anosmia, don’t quite bulk it out but are worth reading in themselves. As in I May Destroy You, she isn’t content with platitudes or simple narratives, and she never wants to let herself off the hook. Here she has found some ways not to, whilst making a vital text about the responsibility you have when trying to bring in new voices to also support and nurture those voices.

How am I able to be so transparent on paper about rape, malpractice and poverty, yet still compartmentalise? It's as though I were telling the truth whilst simultaneously running away from it.

Before you start reading Misfits you need to be in a certain frame of mind. You're not going to read a book of essays or a self-help book. You're going to read writing which was inspired by Michaela Coel's 2018 MacTaggart Lecture to professionals within the television industry at the Edinburgh TV Festival. You might be reading the book but you need to listen to the words as though you're in the lecture theatre. The disjointedness will fade away and you'll be carried on a cloud of exquisite writing.

It is a short read: the audiobook lasts for just one hour thirty-seven minutes as you might expect from a lecture. In many ways, this is merciful: Coel has lived with pain, with darkness and she wonders how long it has been her habit to recount horror with a smile. People who are misfits will recognise this - it is their defence.

And Coel gives the lecture in the way that does best: she tells us a story. It's the story of her child- and young adulthood in an area of special housing so close to the City of London that few people realised it was there.

Coming from the tiny Square Mile, and a tiny family, what carried me through those five years, was the abundance of Black girls, White girls, mixed girls, misfits; my friends were all misfits, who found the mainstream world unattractive.

Coel simply wanted to be herself (is that so unreasonable?) in an industry that demands the opposite. Some of the stories are horrifying and deeply shaming, but they should be read if there is to be transparency about what is happening and what has happened. It is superb.

I'd like to thank the producers for making a copy available to the Bookbag.

I love Michaela Coel and this book definitely gives you things to think about; However I’m not so sure that it should have been a book. Maybe some more stories and life events should have been added because I got through this in just over an hour. Otherwise it was a nice and thought provoking read but just far too short in my opinion.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is the book version of the speech that Coel made to an audience of creatives and media people at the Edinburgh TV festival. It looks at her experiences in the industry and what that tells you about how marginalised people are treated by the tv machine. I think Coel is amazing and I love what she’s doing in her writing and I could hear her voice reading this throughout. Whether it will work as well if you’re not as familiar with her, I don’t know. An uncomfortable read for the creative industry and for people from more dominant cultural backgrounds.

Michaela Coel is brilliant. I have been a fan for many years and she continues to impress us with all that she creates, this manifesto is no different. Made up largely from her MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International TV festival and her own notes around it, this is a beautiful manifesto for the industry.
It's a quick and inspiring read.
5 stars.

From the writer of ​​hit TV shows Chewing Gum and I May Destroy You, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto reads like an extension of Michaela Coel’s dramatic work. Stories, thoughts and ideas expressed through her dark comedy onscreen unfurl on the written page.

We follow her progress from the streets of Tower Hamlets onto the world stage. We watch her fear of moths turn into a tool for self-development, a love of everyone who doesn’t fit, who can challenge the strictures society puts on those who, for whatever reason, don’t sit neatly in the hegemony. These are the people who will bring new ideas and creativity, who will shake up the staid and unthinking herd, who will give voice to the silenced.

It’s a fun, provocative and quick read. If you love her television work, you’ll love her manifesto.

Thanks to Penguin for letting me read Misfits by Michaela Coel. I find her reflections on creativity inspiring and enlivening, so I was looking forward to picking this one up. I wasn't quite sure that the format of the book worked: although the contents were certainly thought-provoking, interesting and important (especially the calls-to-arms to include so-called misfits in the creative industries), I feel like editing the lecture speech - which makes up the bulk of the book - to make it more general and inclusive would have made it more impactful. For me, anyway. But I really enjoyed reading the content, and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Michaela Cole's output.

I haven’t watched Micaela´s MacTaggart Lecture but I have listened to many interviews and have watched Chewing Gum and I may destroy you (which I am still processing) so I was familiar with a lot of what she covers. Like most people I find everything she has to say super interesting and I am thrilled to listen to her stories many times. She covers her experiences growing up in central London, in drama school and in the TV industry. A lot of it is infuriating though not at all surprising. I am glad that she has made it, that she is getting more and more attention as I think she has done one of the best (if not the best) TV show ever. I highly recommend this book and I only wish it had been longer.