Download or read book Maru written by Bessie Head and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-09-16 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book When Rain Clouds Gather written by Bessie Head and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-09-23 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Bessie Head written by Joyce Johnson and published by Associated University Presse. This book was released on 2008 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces key concepts needed for map reading and map making. This series explores different types of maps, photographs and illustrations, and includes activities and quizzes, making it ideal for learning essential map skills.
Download or read book A Question of Power written by Bessie Head and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2017-03-06 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Woman Alone written by Bessie Head and published by Heinemann International Incorporated. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of autobiographical writings, sketches, and essays that covers the entire span of Bessie Head's creative life.
Download or read book The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales written by Bessie Head and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-10-09 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Bessie Head’s short stories have an extraordinary simplicity and breadth of vision,” heralded a review in The Tribune after publication of Head’s first collection of short stories, The Collector of Treasures. Regarded today as one of Africa’s best-known woman writers in English, Head draws on the rich oral tradition of southern Africa and masterfully applies storytelling’s language and imagery. Carefully sequenced, the anthology gives special focus to village people from independence-era Botswana and the status, position, and plight of African women.
Download or read book The Cardinals written by Bessie Head and published by Heinemann. This book was released on 1995 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cardinals--thought to be the first long piece of fiction Head produced and the only one she ever set in South Africa--is an exciting literary event.
Download or read book Bessie Head written by Gillian Stead Eilersen and published by James Currey. This book was released on 1995 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bessie Head's novels include Where Rain Clouds Gather and A Question of Power .
Download or read book Bessie Head and the Trauma of Exile written by Joshua Agbo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-06-17 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Lovers written by Bessie Head and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-10-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These nineteen short stories from renowned author Bessie Head touch on gender, religion, and authority in Southern Africa before and after independence. Written throughout the 1960s and 70s, this newly expanded collection includes many of Head's previously unavailable stories, collected here for the first time. 'I am building a stairway to the stars. I have the authority to take the whole of mankind up there with me. That is why I write.' In the collection's title story, 'The Lovers', Bessie Head captures the legendary tale of two young villagers caught in a society that values custom and arranged marriages above true love. Tender in their devotion and brave in their questioning of tradition, the couple are forced to rise above the threat of violent retribution in order to make their love last... Through these nineteen remarkable stories, Head demonstrates her prowess as a story-teller, exploring the ways in which change can manifest as an unwanted invasion of culture or a powerful form of protest. From the explosion of colonial expansion to the perceived danger of a woman's menstrual cycle, these stories tackle the emotional and political climate of Southern Africa with vibrant intelligence. With an introduction by Stephen Gray.
Download or read book The Collector of Treasures written by Bessie Head and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Bewitched Crossroad written by Bessie Head and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Serowe Village of the Rainwind written by Bessie Head and published by African Writers Series. This book was released on 1981 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autobiographies of individual villagers arranged in thematic chapters.
Download or read book The Creative Vision of Bessie Head written by Coreen Brown and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exploration of the way in which Head's writing is her idiosyncratic response to her personal life. Her desire to portray and yet subvert oppression- political, racist, and sexist- that she encountered in South Africa and Botswana, led to a Romanticism born of her need to create an antithesis to what she perceived to be the reality around her. Her eagerness to discover a haven in her adopted rural Botswana led to a Utopia of her own making, a literary resolution imagined, not actual. A mental breakdown led to the creation of her greatest novel, A Question of Power, one which examines the depths of evil, but allows also for the dawning of the heights of goodness. The appendix contains many heretofore unpublished letters that help to explain the personal compulsion that provided for Head's creativity.
Download or read book Bessie Head written by Huma Ibrahim and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the foremost African writers of our time, who dispelled the silence between colonial and feminist discourses by "talking back", Bessie Head at last gets her due in this first book-length, comprehensive study of her work. This book locates Head's unquestionable importance in the canon of African literature. Author Huma Ibrahim argues that unless we are able to look at the merging of women's sexual and linguistic identity with their political and gendered identity, the careful configurations created in Head's work will elude us. Ibrahim offers a series of thoughtful readings informed by feminist, diasporan, postcolonial, and poststructuralist insights and concerns. She identifies a theme she calls "exilic consciousness" - the desire to belong - and traces its manifestations through each phase of Head's work, showing how "women's talk" - a marginalized commodity in the construction of southern Africa - is differently embodied and evaluated. Bessie Head's works are frequently featured in courses in African literature, third-world literature, and fiction writing, but there is little critical material on them. Ibrahim offers readings of Head's novels When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power, as well as the collections Tales of Tenderness and Power, A Collector of Treasures, A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings, and The Cardinals, the histories Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind and A Bewitched Crossroad, and her letters to Robert Vigne collected in A Gesture of Belonging. In Head's exploration of oppressed people, especially women and those in exile, Ibrahim finds startling insights into institutional power relations. Head not only subverts Western hegemonic notions ofthe third-world woman but offers a critique of postcoloniality.
Download or read book To Stir the Heart written by Bessie Head and published by Feminist Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love and hope are the powerful provocateurs in four stories by two great African writers.
Download or read book Emerging Perspectives on Bessie Head written by Huma Ibrahim and published by Africa Research and Publications. This book was released on 2004 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
