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.
Taiye Selasi
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More Taiye Selasi
As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own. TAIYE SELASI I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of pl... TAIYE SELASI I wrote fiction during my entire childhood, from age 4 to 18, and started writing plays when I went ... TAIYE SELASI I was four when I announced my ambition to write, eight when I began publishing such claims. TAIYE SELASI That's what makes writer's block so painful. You think the well has run dry, maybe somewhere... TAIYE SELASI I live in Rome and five minutes from my flat is a church where you can walk in and see this beautifu... TAIYE SELASI The thing that comes most frequently to me on yoga retreats is excruciating pain in my hips. TAIYE SELASI When writing screenplays, it's a matter of remembering to leave off the page anything and everyt... TAIYE SELASI As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully. TAIYE SELASI I consider myself West African, among other cultural identities, and a writer, among other creative ... TAIYE SELASI So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if... TAIYE SELASI The summer I finished my first novel 'Ghana Must Go,' I drove across west Africa: from Accra... TAIYE SELASI As a young woman, I had been seeking experience, knowledge, truth, the stuff writers need in their w... TAIYE SELASI The big ideas always come in flashes. I don't really craft stories that much. I genuinely don... TAIYE SELASI When I'm working, I'm so narrowly focused on sound, language, rhythm, flow, that I rarely fe... TAIYE SELASI I'm not sure where I'm from! I was born in London. My father's from Ghana but lives in S... TAIYE SELASI The writer presents himself to the blank page not with an open passport but an open heart. TAIYE SELASI Every Christmas, all around Ghana, there are tons of these parties and they are full of everything t... TAIYE SELASI Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't... TAIYE SELASI I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart. TAIYE SELASI She sleeps like a cocoyam. A thing without senses. She sleeps like his mother, unplugged from the wo... TAIYE SELASI