i wrote a blog about taiye selasi some years ago. her debut novel, ghana must go, is out now. i am inordinately excited and pleased about it. sometimes i have felt jealousy towards writers who have inked their book deals, still waiting for the time to finish mine, but i feel none of that in this case. i'm not sure why, maybe partly because i'm finishing up film school in a couple months and have the rest of my life ahead of me and am feeling deliciously infinite in my possibilities. 

i feel such a kindred spirit in selasi's work about afropolitans--the ever roaming, ever searching for identity cadre of individuals in which i find myself. finding home at once here and there and everywhere, yet somehow only beneath one's skin. perhaps it is possible to anchor ourselves in our creations?

book release party in manhattan on 3/28 at 7pm at 58 W15th Street. rsvp to ghanamustcelebrate@gmail.com. -- AL.

"For 15 years I'd gone to Ghana desperately seeking home writ large, ignoring my role in the relationship, the "I" in "I had to go home". For half my life I'd travelled home and left myself, my truth, behind: arriving in Ghana and assuming the role of (illegitimate) Prodigal Daughter. I was disappointed, naturally, in the ways that home-seeking prodigals are, dismayed to find my otherness in tact among my own. But I had never been myself in Ghana. 

The self I'd become in 30 years: the author, photographer, screenwriter, traveller, designer, thinker. I'd spent months at a time in Oxford, Paris, New York, New Delhi, and always felt at home: for I experienced those cities, experienced myself, as a creator, not a creation...I'd never created an experience in Africa. My father had, my mother had; they'd dreamed and learned and loved, and left. I'd walked in their shadows, but not in my shoes." -- Taiye Selasi