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
writing heart mind
I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.
book reading mind
I wouldn't mind my book being called an African novel if it didn't invite lazy readings.
class sight subjective
Sight is subjective. We learned that in class.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
heart pages blank
The writer presents himself to the blank page not with an open passport but an open heart.
humans human-beings concepts
How can I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept?
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.