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Starstruck
A Memoir of Astrophysics and Finding Light in the Dark
1 of 1 copy available
As a child, Sarafina El-Badry Nance spent nearly every evening with her father gazing up at the flickering stars and pondering what secrets the night sky held. The daughter of an American father and Egyptian mother who both pushed her toward academic excellence, Sarafina dreamed of becoming an astronomer and untangling the mysteries of the stars overhead. But it wasn’t long before she was told, both explicitly and implicitly, that girls just weren’t cut out for math and science.
In Starstruck, Sarafina invites us to consider the cosmos through fascinating science lessons to open each chapter. But she also traces more earthbound obstacles—of misogyny and racism, abuse and intergenerational trauma, anxiety and self-doubt, cancer diagnoses and recovery—she faced along the way. As her career and passion for space brought her from UT Austin to UC Berkeley, and even to a Mars astronaut simulation in Hawai’i, Sarafina learned how to survive—and ultimately thrive—in a space that was seldom welcoming to women, and especially not to women of color.
Honest and empowering, Starstruck sits at the intersection of the study of our cosmos—itself constantly changing—and the transformative experience of embracing resilience to pursue one’s passion.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
June 6, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593742532
- File size: 309995 KB
- Duration: 10:45:49
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Astrophysicist Sarafina El-Badry Nance's honest and unadorned performance invites listeners to share experiences both universal and deeply personal. Her youthful voice frays as she opens up about the mix of uplifting and negative experiences she had as a biracial Egyptian American girl in Austin, Texas, and the misogyny that pervaded her collegiate career. Her memoir is strongly centered on touchstone relationships as she describes connections between the events of her life and cosmological topics such as dark matter, space-time, and our expanding universe, as well as formative, relationships with her parents, professors, and therapists. The author's partnership with an abusive boyfriend in college is a particularly visceral listening experience, performed with intense feeling. El-Badry Nance shares hard-earned lessons of healing and pursuing dreams that will surely resonate with many. J.R.T. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
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