{"id":360,"date":"2026-06-04T11:36:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T11:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=360"},"modified":"2026-06-04T11:36:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T11:36:32","slug":"taiye-selasi-on-how-to-survive-perfectionism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=360","title":{"rendered":"Taiye Selasi on How to Survive Perfectionism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This interview was featured in the Books & Fiction newsletter, which delivers the stories behind the stories, along with our latest fiction.<\/em> Sign up to receive it in your inbox.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Your story in this year\u2019s Fiction Issue, \u201cFirstborn Immigrant Daughter,\u201d is written in the form of a letter to the firstborn daughter of immigrants. When did you first start thinking of this as the premise for a piece of fiction?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read more The Rise of the Meta-Gay Show<\/a><\/p>\n

For me, with fiction, the \u201cfirst thought\u201d is invariably a first line\u2014appearing out of nowhere, clarion clear. I\u2019ve likened the sensation to hearing a lyric from a song that I know but can\u2019t recall. With my novel, \u201cGhana Must Go,\u201d that first line arrived at a retreat in Sweden; with this story, at a retreat in Brazil. I recently launched Sechat, an international writing workshop (named after the Egyptian goddess of writing), for precisely this reason\u2014to offer women writers the quiet to hear their lyrics, the inspiration to write them down. So often, for women creatives, \u201cpeace and quiet\u201d alone won\u2019t do. We need permission<\/em> and quiet, a container and quiet, community and quiet, too.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

In the story, a \u201cwe\u201d of firstborn immigrant daughters is addressing the letter\u2019s recipient\u2014the story\u2019s \u201cyou\u201d\u2014whose situation they are assessing, analyzing, and almost embodying from a vantage point of knowledge and empathy. Why did you make this choice? Did you ever think of employing the first-person singular?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Speaking of retreats, I love to teach, and narrative voice is my favorite subject. In more than a decade of teaching second-person and first-person plural, I\u2019ve learned the power of these voices: inherently experimental, they turn writers (back) into experimenters. I give my students Joshua Ferris\u2019s novel \u201cThen We Came to the End\u201d (\u201cwe\u201d) and Tope Folarin\u2019s story \u201cMiracle\u201d (\u201cwe\u201d and \u201cyou\u201d), then ask them to try either voice\u2014and the same thing happens every time. They have fun! They don\u2019t know the rules, so they\u2019re not afraid of breaking them. They play. Me, too. I suffer from Stage IV Perfectionism, so I edit myself mercilessly in first and third person. Second person returns me, mercifully, to Beginner\u2019s Mind.<\/p>\n

The mother-daughter relationship being explored here is a complex one. How did you figure out how to structure the story and tease out the various strands of the bond between any such pair of mothers and daughters?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So many mothers and daughters appear in this story: friends, cousins, fictional characters. That \u201cyou\u201d is a compression of a massive amount of data collected over decades. In the other languages I speak (Italian and Portuguese), there exists a second-person plural: voi<\/em> and voc\u00eas<\/em>, distinct from tu<\/em>. But there\u2019s something lovely about the limits of the singular \u201cyou\u201d in English. No matter how many \u201ctu<\/em>\u201d are contained in the \u201cvoi<\/em>\u201d of a narrator, a reader is always singular. One reader may see themselves in certain sections of this story, but not in others. Another one may feel seen. But it\u2019s always a one-to-one conversation\u2014or exploration, just as you say. As an artist (not a sociologist), I offer observations and questions\u2014not answers. Brown women artists are often confused with anthropologists. My work (and my joy) is to explore, not explain.<\/p>\n

Read more Peru\u2019s Politics Are a Disaster, but Does It Matter?<\/a><\/p>\n

At one point, you write, \u201cWhen the mothers of your friends from the New Country coo, \u2018All I want is for my daughter to be happy,\u2019 you laugh. Your mother doesn\u2019t want her daughter to be happy. Your mother wants her daughter to be impressive.\u201d For a girl, how challenging is it to grow up with those kinds of expectations when her peers might be having a completely different experience of childhood and adolescence?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s an invisible challenge, no? We know that girls outperform boys at school. We know that immigrant girls\u2014here I include class migrants, permanently emigrating from the underclass to the upper\u2014are pushed to outperform their peers. But we rarely stop to ask: Who is working harder, in any country, than an immigrant daughter? Founders, lawyers, novelists, pharmacists, actresses, a former Secretary of State\u2014is there any single demographic more consistently high-performing? Because we often occupy (or ascend to) the same social rank as nonimmigrant men, these men are called our \u201cpeers.\u201d But I know few nonimmigrant men who can match the hustle of an immigrant daughter. If we ran twice as far, twice as fast, to reach the same point as these men\u2014then, by definition, we are faster runners (not equals). Our hustle is peerless.<\/p>\n

Sex makes its way into the story, first, from the mother\u2019s perspective, as something to be avoided, and then as something that has to lead to procreation\u2014and soon. You write, \u201cYour mother insists that she gives great advice. You insist that she gives only warnings.\u201d Was it fun to think about what advice would be useful to have?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, I love this question! And, funny enough, this is what I was saying about writing in unconventional voices. Learning to create art is like learning to sustain love: you must feel safe enough to fail. If you\u2019re afraid to get it wrong, to be exposed, to be disappointed? If you self-flagellate when you fall short? You deny yourself the room, the right, and the grace to learn. To grow. First drafts and healthy relationships are fed by the same nutrients: patience, play, curiosity, humility. And joy. The most useful advice I know is the same for both: Begin again<\/em>.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more The Men Who Lie About Their Height<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cressida Leyshon interviews the writer Taiye Selasi about \u201cFirstborn Immigrant Daughter,\u201d her story from the June 8, 2026, issue of The New Yorker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-this-week-in-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\nTaiye Selasi on How to Survive Perfectionism - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=360\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Taiye Selasi on How to Survive Perfectionism - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Cressida Leyshon interviews the writer Taiye Selasi about \u201cFirstborn Immigrant Daughter,\u201d her story from the June 8, 2026, issue of The New Yorker.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=360\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-04T11:36:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=360#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=360\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"headline\":\"Taiye Selasi on How to Survive Perfectionism\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-04T11:36:32+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=360\"},\"wordCount\":958,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=360#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/b46d67b8a81a10ebfe6896a096ad736f.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"This Week in Fiction\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=360#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=360\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=360\",\"name\":\"Taiye Selasi on How to Survive Perfectionism - 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