peoplepill id: taiye-selasi
TS
United Kingdom
1 views today
1 views this week
Taiye Selasi
American writer

Taiye Selasi

The basics

Quick Facts

Intro
American writer
Work field
Gender
Female
Place of birth
London, UK
Age
45 years
Education
Yale University
Nuffield College
Awards
OkayAfrica 100 Women
(2018)
The details (from wikipedia)

Biography

Taiye Selasi (born 2 November 1979) is a British-American writer and photographer. Of Nigerian and Ghanaian origin, she describes herself as a "local" of Accra, Berlin, New York and Rome.

Early life and education

Taiye Selasi was born in London, and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts, the elder of twin daughters in a family of physicians.

Her given name means first twin in her mother's native Yoruba.

Selasi graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in American Studies from Yale, and earned her MPhil in International Relations from Nuffield College, Oxford.

Family

Selasi's twin sister, Yetsa Kehinde Tuakli, is a physiatrist in the US. The first African member of the International Paralympic Committee, she competes in the long jump for Ghana's national team. Selasi's mother, Dr. Juliette Tuakli, is a paediatrician in Ghana. Renowned for her advocacy of children's rights, she sits on the board of United Way. Selasi's father, Dr. Lade Wosornu, is a surgeon in Saudi Arabia. Considered one of Ghana's foremost public intellectuals, he has published numerous volumes of poetry.

Selasi's parents separated when she was an infant. She met her biological father at the age of 12.

Career

In 2005 The LIP Magazine published "Bye-Bye, Babar (Or: What is an Afropolitan?)", Selasi's seminal text on Afropolitans. In "Bye Bye Babar", Selasi describes a new African diaspora; a broader mix that accepts its diversity: "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 honor what is wonderful, unique." Selasi does not seek recognition as the originator of Afropolitanism, "She makes a point not to claim to have coined it, and she downplays her own role in the whole phenomenon that followed from it." The conversation of Afropolitanism did increase, following the essay, and this paved way for scholars like Simon Gikandi and Achille Mbembe to "further develop" the term, Afropolitan, into a widely known a used ideology. The same year she wrote the essay, she penned a play which was produced at a small theatre by Avery Willis, Toni Morrison's niece.

In 2006 Morrison gave Selasi a one-year deadline; she wrote "The Sex Lives of African Girls" to meet it. The story, published by UK literary magazine Granta in 2011, appears in Best American Short Stories 2012.

In 2010 Ann Godoff at Penguin Press bought Selasi's unfinished novel. Ghana Must Go was published in 2013. It was acclaimed by Diana Evans in The Guardian, Margaret Busby in The Independent, by The Economist, and by The Wall Street Journal. Selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by The Wall Street Journal and The Economist, it has been sold in 22 countries as of 2014.

In 2013 Selasi was selected as one of Granta′s 20 Best Young British Writers and in 2014 named to the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers under the age of 40 "with the potential and talent to define trends in African literature."

Selasi collaborates frequently with fellow artists. In 2012 she partnered with architect David Adjaye to create the Gwangju River Reading Room, an open-air library erected in 2013 as part of the Gwangju Biennale's Folly II. With director Teddy Goitom, founder of Stocktown, Selasi is Executive Producer of Afripedia, a documentary series about urban African creatives. With producers Fernando Meirelles and Hank Levine (City of God), Selasi is developing Exodus, a feature documentary about global migration.

In 2015, Selasi appeared as a Featured Author, leading a writing seminar, at the annual Iceland Writers Retreat in Reykjavik, Iceland. She is also a contributor to the anthology New Daughters of Africa (edited by Margaret Busby, 2019).

Works

Novels

  • Ghana Must Go (2013)

Short stories

  • "The Sex Lives of African Girls" (2011)
  • "Driver" (2013)
  • "Aliens of Extraordinary Ability" (2014)
  • "Brunhilda in Love" (2016)
The contents of this page are sourced from Wikipedia article. The contents are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
Lists
Taiye Selasi is in following lists
comments so far.
Comments
From our partners
Sponsored
Credits
References and sources
Taiye Selasi
arrow-left arrow-right instagram whatsapp myspace quora soundcloud spotify tumblr vk website youtube pandora tunein iheart itunes