Nnedi Okorafor was never supposed to be paralyzed. A college track
star and budding entomologist, Nnedi's lifelong battle with
scoliosis was just a bump in her plan - something a simple surgery
would easily correct. But when Nnedi wakes from the surgery to find
she can't move her legs, her entire sense of who she is begins to
waver. Confined to a hospital bed for months, unusual things begin
to happen. Psychedelic bugs crawl her hospital walls; strange
dreams visit her nightly. She begins to feel as if she's turning
into a cyborg. Unsure if she'll ever walk again, Nnedi begins to
put these experiences into writing, conjuring up strange,
fantastical stories. What Nnedi discovers during her confinement
would prove to be the key to her life as a successful science
fiction writer: In science fiction, when something breaks,
something greater often emerges from the cracks. While she may be
bedridden, instead of stopping her journey Nnedi's paralysis opens
up new windows in her mind, kindles her creativity and ultimately
leads her to become more alive than she ever could have imagined.
Nnedi takes the reader on a journey from her hospital bed deep into
her memories, from her painful first experiences with racism as a
child in Chicago to her powerful visits to her parents' hometown in
Nigeria, where she got her first inkling that science fiction has
roots beyond the West. This was not the Africa that Nnedi knew from
Western literature - an Africa that she always read was a place
left behind. The role of technology in Nigeria opened her eyes to
future-looking Africa: cable TV and cell phones in the village, 419
scammers occupying the cybercafes, the small generator connected to
her cousin's desktop computer, everyone quickly adapting to
portable tech devices due to unreliable power sources. Nnedi could
see that Africa was far from broken, as she'd been taught, and her
experience there planted the early seeds of sci-fi - a genre that
speculates about technologies, societies, and social issues - from
an entirely new lens. In Broken Places & Outer Spaces, Nnedi
uses her own experience as a jumping off point to follow the
phenomenon of creativity born from hardship. From Frida Kahlo to
Mary Shelly, she examines great artists and writers who have pushed
through their limitations, using hardship to fuel their work.
Through these compelling stories and her own, Nnedi reveals a
universal truth: What we perceive as limitations have the potential
to become our greatest strengths - far greater than when we were
unbroken.
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