Taiye Selasi
Taiye Selasi
Taiye Selasiis a writer and photographer. Of Nigerian and Ghanaian origin, she describes herself as a "local" of Accra, Berlin, New York and Rome...
NationalityGhanaian
ProfessionWriter
CountryGhana
class sight subjective
Sight is subjective. We learned that in class.
thinking literature problem
I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn't that they are inaccurate, but that they're incomplete. And this captures perfectly what I think about contemporary African literature. The problem isn't that it's inaccurate, it's that it's incomplete.
who-i-am defining twins
Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.
mother father boston
I'm not sure where I'm from! I was born in London. My father's from Ghana but lives in Saudi Arabia. My mother's Nigerian but lives in Ghana. I grew up in Boston.
writing pages matter
When writing screenplays, it's a matter of remembering to leave off the page anything and everything that doesn't appear on the screen.
play long fiction
I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of play.
pain yoga retreat
The thing that comes most frequently to me on yoga retreats is excruciating pain in my hips.
ambition writing eight
I was four when I announced my ambition to write, eight when I began publishing such claims.
party ghana human-life
Every Christmas, all around Ghana, there are tons of these parties and they are full of everything that exists in human life in Ghana and worldwide.
writing heart mind
I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.
creative identity west
I consider myself West African, among other cultural identities, and a writer, among other creative ones.
summer ghana west
The summer I finished my first novel 'Ghana Must Go,' I drove across west Africa: from Accra to Lome to Cotonou to the deliciously named Ouagadougou.
beautiful home dark
I live in Rome and five minutes from my flat is a church where you can walk in and see this beautiful Caravaggio. Just the way this man uses dark paint: dark to create dark to create dark, the layering of the darkness in his work. I just race home: I want to create!
artist order stuff
As a young woman, I had been seeking experience, knowledge, truth, the stuff writers need in their work, but when the artist actually kicked in, I came to understand that in this romantic relationship I was not free to be myself, or to find myself, in order to begin the true work I needed to do.