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Taiye Selasi: How Do The Places We Call Home Inform Our Identities?

Taiye Selasi on the TED stage.
James Duncan Davidson/TED
Taiye Selasi on the TED stage.

Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode The Person You Become.

About Taiye Selasi's TED Talk

Rather than identify with a country, writer Taiye Selasi chooses to identify with localities — local places and cities where her diverse range of experiences have helped shape her many identities.

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About Taiye Selasi

Taiye Selasi is a writer of Nigerian and Ghanaian descent, born in London, and raised in Boston. She has lived in New York, Berlin, Rome, and Lisbon, as well as regularly visiting Accra. She is herself a study in the modern meaning of identity.

In 2005, she published the much-discussed and controversial essay "Bye-Bye, Babar (Or: What Is An Afropolitan?)." She followed that by publishing the short story, "The Sex Lives Of African Girls."

In 2013, she released her first novel, Ghana Must Go, a tale of family drama and reconciliation spanning generations, continents, genders and classes.

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