BESSIE HEAD

Bessie Emery Head,  (born July 6, 1937, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.—died April 17, 1986, Serowe, Botswana), African writer who described the contradictions and shortcomings of pre- and postcolonial African society in morally didactic novels and stories.

Head was born of an illegal union between her white mother (who was placed in a mental asylum during her pregnancy) and black father (who then mysteriously disappeared). 

She suffered rejection and alienation at an early age. After moving from foster parents to an orphanage school to an early marriage, she abandoned her homeland, her teaching job, and her husband and took her small son to Botswana, seeking personal asylum and tranquility in simple village life.

Head’s novels evolved from an objective, affirmative narrative of an exile finding new meaning in his adopted village in When rain Clouds Gather (1969) to a more introspective account of the acceptance won by a light-coloured San (Bushman) woman in a black-dominated African society in Maru (1971).

A Question of Power (1973) is a frankly autobiographical account of disorientation and paranoia in which the heroine survives by sheer force of will. The Collector of Treasures (1977), a volume of short fiction, includes brief vignettes of traditional Botswanan village life, macabre tales of witchcraft, and passionate attacks on African male chauvinism.

Head said that literature must be a reflection of daily encounters with undistinguished people. Her works reveal empathy with children, with women treated as “dead things” in South Africa, and with idealistic planners who meet indifference and greed at the marketplace.

Books by Bessie Head

When Rain Clouds Gather

Maru  

A Question of Power.

The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales – London: Heinemann, 1977. Cape Town: David Philip, 1977.

Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind – London: Heinemann, 1981. Cape Town: David Philip, 1981.

A Bewitched Crossroad: An African Saga

Tales of Tenderness and Power, ed. Gillian Stead Eilersen – Johannesburg: Ad Donker, 1989. Oxford: Heinemann, 1990.

A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings, ed. Craig MacKenzie – Oxford: Heinemann, 1990.

A Gesture of Belonging: Letters from Bessie Head, 1965-1979, ed. Randolph Vigne – London: South Africa Writers. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1990. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 1991.

The Cardinals. With Meditations and Short Stories, ed. Margaret J. Daymond – Cape Town: David Philip, 1993. Heinemann, 1996.

Studies:

Bessie Head by Craig MacKenzie

Bessie Head : thunder behind her ears : her life and writing by
Gillian Stead Eilersen

Critical essays on Bessie Head 

Bessie Head : subversive identities in exile by Huma Ibrahim 

The creative vision of Bessie Head by Coreen Brown 

Bessie Head : the road of peace of mind : a critical appreciation by
Joyce Johnson 

Emerging perspectives on Bessie Head 

The life and works of Bessie Head by Virginia Uzoma Ola 

Writing Bessie Head in Botswana : an anthology of remembrance and
criticism 

Bessie Head : an exile writing on home by Sophia Ogwude