Bessie Head and the Trauma of Exile


Book Description

This book investigates themes of exile and oppression in Southern Africa across Bessie Head’s novels and short fiction. An exile herself, arriving in Botswana as a South African refugee, Bessie Head’s fiction serves as an important example of African exile literature. This book argues that Head’s characters are driven to exile as a result of their socio- political ambivalence while still in South Africa, and that this sense of discomfort follows them to their new lives. Investigating themes of trauma and identity politics across colonial and post- colonial contexts, this book also addresses the important theme of black- on- black prejudice and hostility which is often overlooked in studies of Head’s work. Covering Head’s shorter fiction as well as her major novels When Rain Clouds Gather (1969), Maru (1971), A Question of Power (1973), Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (1981), and A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga (1984), this book will be of interest to researchers of African literature and postcolonial history.




A Question of Power


Book Description

In this fast-paced, semi-autobiographical novel, Head exposes the complicated life of Elizabeth, whose reality is intermingled with nightmarish dreams and hallucinations. Like the author, Elizabeth was conceived out-of-wedlock; her mother was white and her father black—a union outlawed in apartheid South Africa. Elizabeth eventually leaves with her young son to live in Botswana, a country less oppressed by colonial domination, where she finds stability for herself and her son by working on an experimental farm. As readers grow to know Elizabeth, they experience the inner chaos that threatens her stability, and her constant struggle to emerge from the torment of her dreams. There she is plagued by two men, Sello and Dan, who represent complex notions of politics, sex, religion, individuality, and the blurred line between good and evil. Elizabeth’s troubling but amazing roller-coaster ride ends in an unfettered discovery.




When Rain Clouds Gather


Book Description

Rural Botswana is the backdrop for When Rain Clouds Gather, the first novel published by one of Africa’s leading woman writers in English, Bessie Head (1937–1986). Inspired by her own traumatic life experiences as an outcast in Apartheid South African society and as a refugee living at the Bamangwato Development Association Farm in Botswana, Head’s tough and telling classic work is set in the poverty-stricken village of Golema Mmidi, a haven to exiles. A South African political refugee and an Englishman join forces to revolutionize the villagers’ traditional farming methods, but their task is fraught with hazards as the pressures of tradition, opposition from the local chief, and the unrelenting climate threaten to divide and devastate the fragile community. Head’s layered, compelling story confronts the complexities of such topics as social and political change, conflict between science and traditional ways, tribalism, the role of traditional African chiefs, religion, race relations, and male–female relations.




Bessie Head and the Trauma of Exile


Book Description

This book investigates themes of exile and oppression in Southern Africa across Bessie Head's novels and short fiction. An exile herself, arriving in Botswana as a South African refugee, Bessie Head's fiction serves as an important example of African exile literature. This book argues that Head's characters are driven to exile as a result of their socio-political ambivalence while still in South Africa, and that this sense of discomfort follows them to their new lives. Investigating themes of trauma and identity politics across colonial and post-colonial contexts, this book also addresses the important theme of black-on-black prejudice and hostility which is often overlooked in studies of Head's work. Covering Head's shorter fiction as well as her major novels When Rain Clouds Gather, (1969) Maru, (1971) and A Question of Power, (1973), this book will be of interest to researchers of African literature and post-colonial history.




The Collector of Treasures


Book Description

Botswana village tales about subjects such as the breakdown of family life and the position of women in this society.




A Woman Alone


Book Description

A collection of autobiographical writings, sketches, and essays that covers the entire span of Bessie Head's creative life.




Maru


Book Description

Read worldwide for her wisdom, authenticity, and skillful prose, South African–born Bessie Head (1937–1986) offers a moving and magical tale of an orphaned girl, Margaret Cadmore, who goes to teach in a remote village in Botswana where her own people are kept as slaves. Her presence polarizes a community that does not see her people as human, and condemns her to the lonely life of an outcast. In the love story and intrigue that follows, Head brilliantly combines a portrait of loneliness with a rich affirmation of the mystery and spirituality of life. The core of this otherworldly, rhapsodic work is a plot about racial injustice and prejudice with a lesson in how traditional intolerance may render whole sections of a society untouchable.




Exploitation and Misrule in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa


Book Description

This book offers new perspectives on the history of exploitation in Africa by examining postcolonial misrule as a product of colonial exploitation. Political independence has not produced inclusive institutions, economic growth, or social stability for most Africans—it has merely transferred the benefits of exploitation from colonial Europe to a tiny African elite. Contributors investigate representations of colonial and postcolonial exploitation in literature and rhetoric, covering works from African writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Kwame Nkrumah, and Bessie Head. It then moves to case studies, drawing lines between colonial subjugation and present-day challenges through essays on Mobutu’s Zaire, Nigerian politics, the Italian colonial fascist system, and more. Together, these essays look towards how African states may transform their institutions and rupture lingering colonial legacies.




The Camp


Book Description

The camp is nothing if not diverse: in kind, scope, and particularity; in sociological and juridical configuration; in texture, iconography, and political import. Adjectives of camp specificity embrace a spectrum from extermination and concentration, to detention, migration, deportation, and refugee camps. And while the geographic range covered by contributors is hardly global, it is broad: Chile, Rwanda, Canada, the US, Central Europe, Morocco, Algeria, South Africa, France and Spain. And yet—is to so characterize the camp to run the risk of diffusing what in origin is a concentration into a paratactical series of “identity particularisms”? While The Camp does not seek to antithetically promulgate a universalist vision, it does aim to explore the imbrication of the particular and the universal, to analyze the structure of a camp or camps, and to call attention the role of the listener in the construction of the testimony. For, by naming what cannot be said, is not every narrative of internment and exclusion a potential site of agency, articulating the inner splitting of language that Giorgio Agamben defines as the locus of testimony: “to bear witness is to place oneself in one’s own language in the position of those who have lost it, to establish oneself in a living language as if it were dead, or in a dead language as if it were living.”




Encyclopedia of Life Writing


Book Description

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.