Daily Science Fiction – May 20, 2020

“Warrior” by Ebuka Prince Okoroafor (982 words)

Although her father is positive and supportive, Chinaza struggles to be accepted by her peers and others around her because of stigma about sickle cell anemia, which she has. To cope with her isolation, Chinaza creates characters and worlds in her mind to dissociate into, and even learns how to project herself out of her body. An excellent use of the second person to show the narrator’s relationship with trauma, poignant and sympathetic to an experience (which I read as dissociative identity disorder) that is itself also very stigmatized.