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
world release obliged
As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own.
novelists telling-the-truth asks
As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.
writing ideas people
The big ideas always come in flashes. I don't really craft stories that much. I genuinely don't know where these people come from, and I've often wondered if writing is just a socially acceptable form of madness.
spiritual mean unique
What distinguishes [Afropolitans] is a willingness to complicate Africa – namely, to engage with, critique, and celebrate the parts of Africa that mean most to them. Perhaps what most typifies the Afropolitan consciousness is the refusal to oversimplify; the effort to understand what is ailing in Africa alongside the desire to honour what is wonderful, unique. Rather than essentialising the geographical entity, we seek to comprehend the cultural complexity; to honour the intellectual and spiritual legacy; and to sustain our parents’ cultures.
emotional long sound
When I'm working, I'm so narrowly focused on sound, language, rhythm, flow, that I rarely feel the emotion of the text. It's only after - long after - I've finished a piece that I can experience in any way its emotional charge.
humans human-beings concepts
How can I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept?
heart pages blank
The writer presents himself to the blank page not with an open passport but an open heart.
writing play oxford
I wrote fiction during my entire childhood, from age 4 to 18, and started writing plays when I went to Yale and Oxford.
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.
creative identity west
I consider myself West African, among other cultural identities, and a writer, among other creative ones.
writing heart mind
I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.
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.
ambition writing eight
I was four when I announced my ambition to write, eight when I began publishing such claims.
pain yoga retreat
The thing that comes most frequently to me on yoga retreats is excruciating pain in my hips.