Life on Other Planets
A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A stunning and inspiring memoir charting a life as an astronomer, classically-trained actor, mother, and Black woman in STEM, searching for life in the universe while building a meaningful life here on Earth
As a kid, Aomawa Shields was always bumping into things, her neck craned up at the sky, dreaming of becoming an astronaut. A year into an astrophysics PhD program, plagued by self-doubt and discouraged by a white male professor who suggested that she—a young Black woman who also loved fashion, makeup, and the arts—didn’t belong, she left astronomy and pursued acting professionally for a decade, before a day job working for NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope drew her back to the stars. She was the oldest and the only Black student in her PhD cohort. This time, no professor, and no voice in her own head, would stop her. Now an astronomer and astrobiologist at the top of her field, Dr. Shields studies the universe outside our Solar System, researching and uncovering the planets circling distant stars with just the right conditions that could support life—while also using her theater education to communicate the wonder and magic of the universe with those of us here on Earth. But it’s been a journey as winding and complex as the physics she has mastered.
Life on Other Planets is a journey of discovery on this world and on others, a story of creating a life that makes space for joy, love, and wonder while being driven by one of our biggest questions: Is anybody else out there? It is about the possibility of living between multiple worlds and not choosing—but instead charting a new path entirely.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Astronomer Shields chronicles her trials and triumphs as a scientist, actor, and Black woman in her luminous debut. Obsessed with the stars as a child in New Hampshire ("I was always looking up. So much so that I often bumped into things"), Shields applied to Phillips Exeter Academy after learning that the school operated its own observatory. Once there, she also fell in love with performing and began the lifelong process of balancing her two passions. "I believed in the beauty of the universe, and in the power of a story well told through its characters. That was the common thread: story," Shields writes. As she pursued an MFA in acting from UCLA and a PhD in astronomy and astrobiology from the University of Washington, she faced down (mostly white, mostly male) professors who took her love of the arts as a sign that she couldn't hack it as a serious scientist. Her account of proving them wrong and thriving as the sole Black woman in her PhD cohort before becoming an astronomy professor at UC, Irvine is stirring and inspirational. This will resonate with dreamers of all stripes.