Actress who found true stardom in the SKIES
Life on Other Planets: A memoir of finding my place in the universe Dr Aomawa Shields Constable, July 11, €25 ★★★★★
Dr Aomawa Shields offers a rare and insightful perspective on the forces that shape us humans in this candid memoir ‘of finding my place in the universe’. As an astronomer, astrobiologist and physics professor at the University of California, her current work aims to answer some of humanity’s biggest questions. Could there be life on other planets? Are we alone? But she starts by turning a telescope on her own early life.
Young Aomawa didn’t find a direct or easy route to the tenured professorship she enjoys now. From her school days she felt trapped in a false divide between arts and science; her passion for acting and her love of the stars.
She was often among few women, and the only black woman, on her courses at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and found herself missing the selfexpression of her excursions into acting. ‘I wanted to use my feelings and opinions, rather than push them to the side in favour of facts and evidence.’ Then, one year into a difficult astrophysics PhD, a professor told her to consider other career options. With a heavy heart she left the course and was accepted on an acting programme at UCLA. Theatre roles followed – she played Andromache in Euripides’ The Trojan Women – and then she appeared in a 2005 film called Nine Lives, with Glenn Close, Sissy Spacek and Robin Wright. At the wrap party she looked up and saw a star. ‘Sometimes you can wander around for years, and then in an instant, true north stands above the tree canopy, beckoning,’ she realised. ‘The path is made clear.’
Metaphors like this are a charming feature of Shields’ writing – especially as she plunges back into science at the astronomy department of the University of Washington, via an encounter with a friendly astronomer and a chat with the
TV astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Satisfyingly, her research alights on environments at the intersections between planetary climate systems – between too hot and too cold – where life might find a way. She studies the behaviour of ice, which can either reflect heat or absorb it: it was ‘bipolar… like me’. In 2015 she founded an organisation called Rising Stargirls, which supports girls from under-represented backgrounds to learn about astronomy and astrobiology using theatre, writing and visual art.
This book is a moving perspective on all the possibility that exists in the vast universe, and a sound example of why we should never stop looking up.