Bessie Head

Bessie Head 1937-86, South African writer. Born in South Africa to a white mother and black father, she was placed in foster homes and orphanages as a child. After 1964, she lived in exile in Botswana. Her candid writing voiced her strong concerns about racism, economic stagnation, and the status of women in her adopted country. Her novels include A Question of Power (1973), Maru (1971), and A Bewitched Crossroad: An African Saga (1984); a collection of stories, The Collector of Treasures (1977), and the acclaimed oral histories Serowe: The Village of the Rain Wind (1981).

Head, Bessie (Amelia) (1937–86), writer, born in South Africa out of wedlock to a ‘white’ mother and ‘black’ father under apartheid classification; from the age of 26 she lived as a refugee in Botswana, where her major work was written and set. When Rain Clouds Gather (1968) addresses the rural community's ability to survive economic hardship and the autocracy of their chief, while Maru (1971) and A Question of Power (1973) present a young woman's struggle against the racism and sexism in the Botswana community. In her later, less introspective phase, Head's stories in The Collector of Treasures (1977) develop the themes gleaned from interviews with villagers: these interviews were published later as Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (1981). Her social history, A Bewitched Crossroad (1984), augments fact with fiction in order to counter the European version of Botswana's past. Additional stories and essays appeared in Tales of Tenderness and Power (1989) and A Woman Alone (1990). Head's major interest is in envisioning an Africa free of inherited and imported oppressions, hospitable to European thinking yet firmly rooted in communal rural traditions. A Gesture of Belonging (1991) is a selection of letters. Today, her pioneering, deeply engaged narratives have earned her an international reputation.