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Book review: Broken Places and Outer Spaces by Nnedi Okorafor
_Broken Places and Outer Spaces_
by Nnedi Okorafor
Full disclosure: this is the book I have been waiting for for months, and I will be talking about it a lot at Readercon. I am still flabbergasted that something I had to keep explaining to people back in 2006, namely,
using science fiction for writing memoir
https://kestrell.livejournal.com/162420.html
has become a recognized genre called speculative memoir
https://electricliterature.com/why-adding-monsters-and-fairies-to-a-memoir-can-make-it-even-more-real/
and that a writer as talented as Nnedi Okorafor has written the quintessential example of the form, all in under one hundred pages.
Okorafor is, at this cultural moment, a critical darling, and lots of people have written lots of prose about the genius of her stories, which might lead a reader to assume that her writing is full of literary flourishes and postmodern pyrotechnics, but this is far from the case. Quite the opposite: Nnedi Okorafor's literary voice is as sleek and precise as the prosthetics she loves describing. If her literal legs fail to take her places as swiftly as they used to, her liteary wings take her--and us along with her--as high and fast as she wishes to fly. And with these transformed and transformative wings, she goes places she probably would never have thought to go when she was able-bodied, a fact she illustrates in describing her admiration for another science fiction trickster, Hugh Herr, which delighted me to no end, because I fangirl for Hugh Herr also. If you don't know who Hugh Herr is, he is a MIT scientist and self-identified cyborg who designs and wears prosthetic legs, and you can find him on Ted Talks, also.
_Broken Places and Outer Spaces_ grew out of a Ted talk, and you can find more about Okorafor and her new book at the Ted Talks Web site:
Learning to Fly: How a hospital stay helped Nnedi Okorafor find herself as a writer
https://ideas.ted.com/learning-to-fly-how-a-hospital-stay-helped-nnedi-okorafor-find-herself-as-a-writer/
"Write your story, and don't be afraid to write
it" -- A sci-fi writer talks about finding her voice and being a superhero
https://ideas.ted.com/write-your-story-and-dont-be-afraid-to-write-it-a-sci-fi-writer-talks-about-finding-her-voice-and-being-a-superhero/
by Nnedi Okorafor
Full disclosure: this is the book I have been waiting for for months, and I will be talking about it a lot at Readercon. I am still flabbergasted that something I had to keep explaining to people back in 2006, namely,
using science fiction for writing memoir
https://kestrell.livejournal.com/162420.html
has become a recognized genre called speculative memoir
https://electricliterature.com/why-adding-monsters-and-fairies-to-a-memoir-can-make-it-even-more-real/
and that a writer as talented as Nnedi Okorafor has written the quintessential example of the form, all in under one hundred pages.
Okorafor is, at this cultural moment, a critical darling, and lots of people have written lots of prose about the genius of her stories, which might lead a reader to assume that her writing is full of literary flourishes and postmodern pyrotechnics, but this is far from the case. Quite the opposite: Nnedi Okorafor's literary voice is as sleek and precise as the prosthetics she loves describing. If her literal legs fail to take her places as swiftly as they used to, her liteary wings take her--and us along with her--as high and fast as she wishes to fly. And with these transformed and transformative wings, she goes places she probably would never have thought to go when she was able-bodied, a fact she illustrates in describing her admiration for another science fiction trickster, Hugh Herr, which delighted me to no end, because I fangirl for Hugh Herr also. If you don't know who Hugh Herr is, he is a MIT scientist and self-identified cyborg who designs and wears prosthetic legs, and you can find him on Ted Talks, also.
_Broken Places and Outer Spaces_ grew out of a Ted talk, and you can find more about Okorafor and her new book at the Ted Talks Web site:
Learning to Fly: How a hospital stay helped Nnedi Okorafor find herself as a writer
https://ideas.ted.com/learning-to-fly-how-a-hospital-stay-helped-nnedi-okorafor-find-herself-as-a-writer/
"Write your story, and don't be afraid to write
it" -- A sci-fi writer talks about finding her voice and being a superhero
https://ideas.ted.com/write-your-story-and-dont-be-afraid-to-write-it-a-sci-fi-writer-talks-about-finding-her-voice-and-being-a-superhero/