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    Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected
    Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected
    Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected
    Audiobook2 hours

    Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected

    Written by Nnedi Okorafor

    Narrated by Nnedi Okorafor

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    A powerful journey from star athlete to sudden paralysis to creative awakening, award-winning science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor shows that what we think are our limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths.

    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 operation would easily correct. But when Nnedi wakes from the surgery to find she can’t move her legs, her entire sense of self 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. 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 author: In science fiction, when something breaks, something greater often emerges from the cracks.

    In Broken Places & Outer Spaces, 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. 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.

    A guidebook for anyone eager to understand how their limitations might actually be used as a creative springboard, Broken Places & Outer Spaces is an inspiring look at how to open up new windows in your mind.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio / TED
    Release dateJun 18, 2019
    ISBN9781508278603
    Author

    Nnedi Okorafor

    NNEDI OKORAFOR, born to Igbo Nigerian parents in Cincinnati, Ohio on April 8, 1974, is an author of fantasy and science fiction for both adults and younger readers. Her Tor.com novella Binti won the 2015 Hugo and Nebula Awards; her children's book Long Juju Man won the 2007-08 Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa; and her adult novel Who Fears Death was a Tiptree Honor Book. She is an associate professor of creative writing and literature at the University at Buffalo.

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    Reviews for Broken Places & Outer Spaces

    4.5/5

    49 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Already one of my favorite authors, and a remarkable voice for a broader horizon of fiction, Nnedi's "origin story" is brave, fierce, and beautiful.
    • 5/5
      I admire Nnedi greatly and appreciated hearing directly about the life lived that inspired the stories we all love