H-F Great Okorafor Transforms From Promising Athlete to Award-Winning Author

Nnedi Okorafor has a difficult time watching tennis.

Once a nationally ranked player herself with aspirations of a professional career, the 1992 Homewood-Flossmoor graduate is now an award-winning author of fantasy and speculative fiction books.

While flourishing in her current career, the journey to that path remains a fresh and painful memory.

Okorafor was a standout tennis and track and field athlete at H-F, despite dealing with scoliosis. Then, while a freshman tennis player at the University of Illinois, doctors informed her that she needed a spinal fusion and there was just a one percent chance of paralysis stemming from the surgery.

Despite the favorable odds, she came out of the surgery paralyzed from the waist down, crushing her athletic dreams.

“It’s still devastating,” Okorafor said of not being able to excel at sports like she once did. “I was in peak condition at the time. I didn’t have any pain or problems and then I’m told that if I don’t get this handled, I’m going to have serious problems down the line.

"It was jarring. I was definitely going down a certain path at the time. I was identified as an athlete and had a pre-med major, but then everything shifted.

“It left an emotional scar that is always with me. I can still probably beat most people on the tennis court. I still have my powerful forehand. The only thing missing is my quickness, which used to be a key point of my game. I don’t play tennis much because I get angry and frustrated. I started avoiding it because I could feel the ability still there, but I can’t access it. It’s hard.”

Okorafor played a key role in H-F capturing the girls tennis program’s only state championship in 1989 and was also a state qualifier in track during her career with the Vikings.

During her long, grueling rehabilitation when Okorafor was forced to learn how to walk again, she found a way to transfer her frustrations.

“When this happened, it forced me to slow down,” Okorafor said. “I had always been an athlete full of energy leaping over this or that. When my paralysis happened, it forced me to stop and be in the same place for long periods of time during my recovery.

"It allowed my mind to expand, and I started exploring the world within. I always loved reading. When I wasn’t on the tennis court or playing a sport, I was in the library reading books. When I was stuck in the hospital, there was nothing else I could do but write, so that’s what I did. When I returned to (Illinois), I took a creative writing class and stuck with it.”

Starting over is never easy

That writing class was the beginning of a remarkable new journey.

“I’m a natural athlete,” said Okorafor, who holds a PhD in English and is a professor of creative writing at Chicago State University. “I need to compete, that’s always going to be there. When I couldn’t play sports any more, I needed a way to channel my competitiveness. I realized when I sit down and write stories, it gives me the same rush I had when I was an athlete.”

Okorafor used many of the same traits that she parlayed into being a standout athlete in her writing.

“It takes a lot of stamina and discipline to sit down and write, just like playing sports,” Okorafor said. “The lessons I learned of sticking with it even if you have failures and the whole grueling process of writing and editing is directly related to what I learned in athletics.”

Okorafor was born in the United State to Igbo Nigerian parents and has visited Nigeria often in her lifetime. Her novels and stories reflect both her West African heritage and her American life.

Her first novel, Zahrah the Windseeker, was published in 2005 and was the winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature.

“My granddaughter has some of her books,” said Okorafor’s high school tennis coach, Jim Trudeau. “She went through a lot, and I’m happy for her. I have to hand it to her for all she did. She was a very tough competitor, just like her two sisters (Ifeoma and Ngozi), and she always had very good mental qualities.”

Okorafor has earned numerous honors for many of her novels or short stories.

“Winning awards never crossed my mind,” Okorafor said. “When I started writing, it was just something I loved doing. For many years, I just wrote stories and novels. I wrote many, many pages, but I never thought about having them published until someone suggested it to me. I never expected to win awards, and I’m glad I didn’t because it would’ve been nerve-racking. I don’t know if I would’ve written half of what I did if I had that kind of pressure. It’s a great honor.”