Broken Places & Outer Spaces

Finding Creativity in the Unexpected

By: Nnedi Okorafor

Narrated by: Nnedi Okorafor

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.

Inspiring Story

Love Nnedi Okorafor’s stories so it was great to learn about her as a person and all that has shaped how she sees the world. Her battles with mobility and how she uses them to expand her vision and apply it to her craft were inspiring. A quick easy listen.

So glad she finally wrote this

This a a wonderful reveal of inner and outer bits of a talented and inspiring author!

Nnedi Okorafor - Khepera

Nnedi Okorafor is reborn like Khepera with help from the Ancestors (past and future), love, imagination and determination.
It is great to hear the voice and mind of the author. Thanks Nnedi Okorafor.

Outstanding!

Nnedi’s ability to create worlds is evident in her body of work as a science fiction writer and this most personal of her non-fiction writings is no exception, it is extraordinary. She brings readers into the spaces and places at a critical point in her life as a very young woman where she found power to persist and find a path forward. I felt transported to her hospital room, her dorm room, a roadside restaurant in Nigeria, a even dead end alley way. I especially appreciated how despite the changes and challenges encountered Nnedi’s determination, daring, ingenuity, and creativity empowered her to overcome. In sum, I believe she’s lived a life from which we can draw lessons. The ancestors are smiling.