Okorafor

Nnedi Okorafor's name is one that I have been seeing a lot lately.  My reading of her has been pretty limited so far, but she is an author whose books I keep wanting to pick up.  Last week at the library I found her newly released Broken Places & Outer Spaces.  This is not a work of fiction but is a book about the author's own life and development as a writer.  While I am in the process of trying to reinvent myself as a writer, I thought that it might be informative to gain some perspective on someone who makes a living this way.
Okorafor's book parallels her emergence as a writer with her recovery from a spinal surgery that left her temporarily paralyzed from the waist down.
What stands out about this book is that it isn't just a story of development and it isn't just a personal recovery story, both of which this is.  I don't think that the book is meant to be blindly inspirational in the sense that any hardship or difficulty will lead to personal growth.  Rather, this is a a focused book about her own personal experiences.  I have read many other personal narratives that give the reader the impression that either one must experience hardship in order to be creative or that hardship will necessarily lead to personal growth.  Okorafor does not attribute her creative development to the difficulties that she faced.  She almost offhandedly mentions that a friend suggested that she take a creative writing course.
Okorafor's descriptions of her struggling to relearn how to walk, coupled with her memories of her young athletic life show how much she has lived in her own experience.  She has spent a lot of time thinking about these times in her life.  This is really what sticks for me.  Her story is personal and hopeful without being didactic.
While this is not normally the type of book that I would read, she brings a lot to the form.