Download And Enjoy Broken Places Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity In The Unexpected Assembled By Nnedi Okorafor Available In Interactive EBook

I believe I have mentioned once or twice before, Okorofor is one of the "recent" SFF writers I find most interesting.


This "TED talk book" no, not a transcription of a TED talk, but a book related to a TED talk Okorafor gave is two things at once: a very focused memoir, and a discussion about the value of brokenness in creativity.


After a brief scene of her moreorless current self at an ocean beach, Okorofor describes herself up through high school: both a brilliant student and a star athlete, child of two doctors who were also athletes Okorafor's mother was chosen for Nigeria's Olympic team but missed the Games due to illness coming at the last minute a Black girl with two sisters and a brother whose family was one of the first Black families in a White neighborhood of Chicagoland, and who had to run or fight because of that but with a worsening scoliosis that, unoperated, would almost certainly kill her by the time she was thirty.
In the summer after her freshman year of college, she chose to have spinal surgery, figuring achance of paralysis beat achance of early death.


She woke up unable to feel or to move her legs,

From this point, two things entwine: Okorafor's slow recovery of the ability to walk, and her discovery of her desire to write.
She began writing in the margins of a copy of Asimov's I, Robot in her first days in hospital, not so much stories as fantasies related to her condition though some of this material, transformed, made its way though the book itself was lost into an early novel.


The core idea is that being "broken" was what enabled her to find her true calling.
Which is not to say I think that she is grateful for the surgical mess she found herself in but that hardships and limitations can bring forth creative ways of living.


I also want to say that another constant thing in the book is the love and support of Okorofor's parents, her siblings, her friends, and her extended family in Nigeria.
It doesn't really fit anywhere else in this review, so I've stuck it here,

For a very short book an hour or two to read it's quite moving.
This book feels too personal for me to rate it,

I love the narrative and watching the world through the authors lens, The only thing I would change is make this book longer as I really enjoy seeing her growth at different stages of her life :” Nnedi Okorafor was scheduled for an almostroutine back surgery to correct her scoliosis, but she awake after the surgery to find she was paralyzed.


This is what Okorafor came to call the Breaking, She did not realize at the time that it would be this experience that would lead her to become more than she ever would have become without it.


Beautiful quote from the book:

'In Japan there is an art form called kintsugi, which means “golden joinery,” to repair something with gold.
It treats breaks and repairs as a part of the objects history, In kintsugi, you dont merely fix whats broken, you repair the total object, In doing so, you transform what you have fixed into something more beautiful than it previously was.
This is the philosophy that I came to understand was central to my life, Because in order to really live life, you must live life, And that is rarely achieved without cracks along the way, There is often a sentiment that we must remain new, unscathed, unscarred, but in order to do this, you must never leave home, never experience, never risk or be harmed, and thus never grow.
'



Okorafors characters have captivated me over the last year, and I love getting lost in the worlds she weaves.
It was fascinating to learn more about her own journey into writing, and her inspiration for her characters.
I would love to read a longer memoir someday this one stops just as her writing career is beginning.
Some interesting thoughts on creativity but the book was way to shortpages to develop any of them in depth.

.I listened to the audiobook version read by the author and I was actually shocked by how short it was: even shorter than novellas like sitelinkBinti.


If you are familiar with sitelinkNnedi Okorafor's fiction, there are lots of Easter eggs in here, including the concept of treeing.
For everyone else, in

addition to a personal memoir about finding one's new calling and college major! against the backdrop of botched surgery, there are also references to pop culture like Kill Bill.


I passed this one along to my dad since two of his goto subjects lately have been scoliosis devices and Kill Bill and he really needs to branch out more.


I am also left wondering why giant insects haven't shown up more in her books I've read.
I have kind of mixed feelings about this one, and I'm honestly struggling to sort through them.
I'm going to sort it into what I liked and what I didn't like, for the sake of simplicity and exploring my own thoughts a bit here.


Liked:
The explorations of literature and artists from the past was really interesting and enjoyable for me.

Her own experiences were explored in a way that was relatable and emotional but also straightforward and practical.

I am inherently interested in more stories about disability from actually disabled people I am disabled.

Despite some of my issues below, I didn't feel like she was peddling in inspiration porn or that she had "overcome" her disability or done anything "despite" it.


Disliked:
I feel like there was a lot of really questionable language used that isn't generally accepted by the disability community at large, like "wheelchairbound.
"
Literally the entire quote: "But choosing between a one percent chance of paralysis and a one hundred percent chance of an early death after a crippled life was a simple decision.
" Other than being pretty sure that's not how scoliosis works and finding that hyperbole really awkward for folks who have limited knowledge of it, and despite my own reclamation of cripple/crippled, the use of "crippled life" in this sentence just made me cringe really hard.

She's really just gonna talk about how her friend took her cane away from her and then not unpack how fucked up that is
There's so much talk of technological ideas that veer into "cure" territory that I didn't enjoy seeing without any extra discourse.
Obviously, she writes scifi and is also talking about something she would theoretically want for herself, but "cures" are SUCH a divisive issue in the disability community that it seems almost irresponsible to just throw those ideas around without extra depth.


Basically, there was stuff I really liked here but it was just weighed down by what felt like a lot of ableist ideas.
Though I think her experiences and emotions are obviously all completely legitimate, and obviously this is a book about her own internal experiences, I still couldn't help but feel like these internal experiences could be potentially harmful to read without doing any extra unpacking.
It was often emotionally difficult to read, and it was emotionally hard for me to think about other disabled people reading and feeling like I did or worse.
It was also emotionally difficult to think about abled people reading it and forming broader opinions based on these narrow experiences.


I wanted to love this, but ended up only liking certain aspects despite much of the broader tone and content.
I would hesitate to recommend it for these reasons, This is a quick audio book and wellworth the listen, especially because it is narrated by the author herself.
I loved hearing how she was able to regain herself and reign in her creativity, Some of the lines were just shatteringly beautiful,

What a satisfying book to hear, I can't recommend this enough, Very quick read involving a surgery gone bad, science and science fiction, I heard about this book from The Happier Podcast, It always feels weird to evaluate a memoir it can feel like criticizing the person even when you are focusing on the writing.


While very powerful, the brevity means her discussion of creativity mostly focuses on the moments of inspiration, with references to being able to go the long haul because of the lessons learned from living with disability.
Thats fine but I wanted a bit more, Does she have creative moments like the physical moments that led her to screaming damnit over and over Do/does her disability/disabilities interfere with her creativity Mine sure do.


The writing is wonderful good pacing, dynamic word choices,

On a very personal note, I am unable to integrate my disabilities into my life the way she has amp Frida Kahlo did.
Maybe one day I will get there, But I havent seen them as the Breaking that lets something in, and I personally struggled with that theme in the book.
I can certainly see how some folks are going to use this as inspoporn, but thats not her problem.


All this makes it sound like I didnt enjoy this brief read when I very much did.
I didnt find what I hoped to find but I know that I still got a lot out of it and that it will continue to influence my thinking.
.

A brief look into her struggles with learning to walk again after being temporarily paralyzed from surgery and how it spurred her creativity.
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”Ernest Hemingway

A short memoir by Afrofuturist science fiction writer and Chicagoan Nnedi Okorafor Akata Warrior, Binti, The Shadow Speaker, and also writing comics for Marvel out of the Black Panther universe who writes of Africa, science and technology, strange creatures, with magical realism and strong black feminist commitments, with strong young black women main characters who overcome adversity.
And what are the sources for her writing In this short memoir we learn that the promising athlete and wannabe entomologist Okorafor was diagnosed with scoliosis at, was paralyzed for a time from the waist down during corrective surgery.


During the time she was kind of miraculously recovering, she was visited by morphineinduccd hallucinations of bugs, and began to take notes in the margins of science fiction books that would emerge as her early novels.
The theme and trajectory of the sufferingtosuccess story is not a new one, which she admits, liking her sown tory to others such as Frida Kahlo and Mary Shelleys Frankenstein, but she makes the point that she would never have become a writer had she not faced this adversity.


Okorafor connects this time in her life to the stories she has now written of girls who overcome challenges to not only walk but fly, and travel in space, excel in science and magic.
And who love weird bugs and creatures, Also she tells of visiting Nigeria, and being inspired by her ancestors and family who have supported her along the way in various ways.
I know this work is very short, but it is now one of my favorite works from her because of the specific links from her life to her work.


Theminute TED talk that is related to this muchexpanded book but less autobiographical, more AfroFuturist:

sitelink ted. com/talks/nnediokora

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