Movie Deal for Professor’s Book on Recovered Skinhead

Professor of Communication Jody Roy has signed a movie option agreement with East Gate Entertainment for her book Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead: The Frank Meeink Story as told to Jody M. Roy, Ph.D. Roy’s publisher Hawthorne Books made the announcement on its website on Tuesday.

Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead is Frank Meeink’s raw telling of his descent into America’s Nazi underground and his ultimate triumph over drugs and hatred. Frank’s violent childhood in South Philadelphia primed him to hate, while addiction made him easy prey for a small group of skinhead gang recruiters. By 16 he had become one of the most notorious skinhead gang leaders on the East Coast and by 18 he was doing hard time. Teamed up with African-American players in a prison football league, Frank learned to question his hatred, and after being paroled he defected from the white supremacy movement and began speaking on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League. Meeink founded a program called Harmony Through Hockey that has been sponsored by both NHL and AHL teams. He is now a major speaker on the national lecture circuit and also hosts his own radio show.

Roy publishes in a wide variety of genres, from traditional scholarly texts to mass-market creative non-fiction. Her areas of interest include the communication of pro-/anti-violence messages in media and popular culture and communication strategies of American social movements. Her collaborators on research and writing projects extend beyond traditional academics. She is currently collaborating with a group of more than two dozen inmates. Yet, while Roy’s publishing outlets and collaborators are diverse, all her work is unified by her driving purpose: to give voice to—and tap the expertise of–the people we too often don’t hear and, in doing so, to help prevent violence among today’s youth.

She was named “Professor of the Year” in Wisconsin by the Carnegie Foundation in 2005.