You're listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Audio.

This talk features author Ty Salasi recorded live at TED Global 2014.

We're featuring this talk today as part of a special selection themed around journeys.

Last year, I went on my first book tour.

In 13 months, I flew to 14 countries and gave some 100 talks.

Every talk in every country began with an introduction,

and every introduction began, alas, with a lie.

Tai Salasi comes from Ghana and Nigeria, or Tai Salasi comes from England and the States.

Whenever I heard this opening sentence, no matter the country that concluded it, England, America, Ghana, Nigeria, I thought, but that's not true. Yes, I was born in England and grew up in the United States. My mom, born in England and raised in Nigeria,

currently lives in Ghana. My father was born in Gold Coast, a British colony, raised in Ghana,

and has lived for over 30 years in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

For this reason, my introducers also called me multinational.

But Nike is multinational, I thought.

I'm a human being.

Then, one fine day, mid-tour,

I went to Louisiana,

a museum in Denmark where I shared the stage with the writer, Colin McCann.

We were discussing the role of locality in writing

when suddenly it hit me.

I'm not multinational. I'm not a national at all. How could I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept?

It's a question that had been bothering me for going on two decades. From newspapers, textbooks, conversations,

I'd learned to speak of countries as if they were eternal, singular,

...