‘What is an Afropolitan?’ by Taiye Selasi

Spaces will be reading Taiye Selasi’s influential essay ‘What is an Afropolitan?’ alongside Teju Cole’s novel Open City. Selasi’s acclaimed novel Ghana Must Go was recently published and addresses many of the issues raised in her essay around the African diaspora and the second and third generations. Spaces chose Cole’s novel because of its explicit reference to and extensive exploration of urban space and the immigrant experience. We might have also read Chimananda Ngozi Adiche’s well-received Americanah, also hot off the press, whose protagonist lives in an Ivy League world often at odds with their sense of origins.