Bessie Head Summary

Bessie Head (1937 - 1986) South African novelist, short story writer, and historian. Bessie Head: Introduction Bessie Head: Principal Works Bessie Head: Primary Sources Bessie Head: General Commentary... Read more

Biography EssayWhen Bessie Head died in 1986 at the age of forty-nine, she left a legacy of diverse writings including three novels, a volume of short stories, an oral history, a reconstructed history... Read more

By the time of her death at the age of forty-eight in Serowe, a village in Botswana, Bessie Head had gained recognition as a writer of extraordinary power and insight. In her concern with women and ma... Read more

In the following essay, Thorpe surveys the defining characteristics of Head's The Collector of Treasures, describing the stories as “rooted, folkloristic tales woven from the fabric of v... Read more

In the following essay, Gagiano offers a stylistic and thematic analysis of The Cardinals. Who is the story-teller? Of whom is the story told? What is there in the darkness to imagine into being? What... Read more

In the following essay, Lewis analyzes Head's concept of identity in The Cardinals in light of the author's mixed heritage and the racial laws of 1960s South Africa. The taboo against in... Read more

In the following excerpt, Barnett explores the roles of religion and morality in The Collector of Treasures. Bessie Head, in a volume of short stories entitled The Collector of Treasures,1 is concerne... Read more

In the following excerpt, Jaggi provides a favorable assessment of Tales of Tenderness and Power. The monthly magazine Drum (which began life in Cape Town in 1951 as The African Drum) was one of the f... Read more

In the following review, Larson provides a mixed assessment of Tales of Tenderness and Power. Bessie Head's achievement at the time of her death in 1986 was honorific: black Africa's pre... Read more

In the following essay, Harrow views boundaries—maintaining and overcoming them—as the major thematic concern in Head's short fiction. The subject of Bessie Head's stories ... Read more

Critical Essay by Mary Borg [An] outcast is the central figure in Bessie Head's first novel [When Rain Clouds Gather, a] naked sociological commentary…. There is too much undiluted socio... Read more

Critical Essay by Charles R. Larson Reading any book by Bessie Head is always a pleasure, though this talented South African writer's newest work, Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind,… fall... Read more

Critical Essay by Roberta Rubenstein If one unconsciously thinks of schizophrenia as a unique product of Western culture, it is startling to discover in A Question of Power, by the South African novel... Read more

Critical Essay by Arthur Ravenscroft [Bessie Head's novels] are strange, ambiguous, deeply personal books which initially do not seem to be 'political' in any ordinary sense of th... Read more

Critical Essay by Cecil A. Abrahams Even though in a narrow sense the context of Bessie Head's fiction is Botswana, her novels, preoccupied with themes of political and spiritual exile, racial ... Read more

Critical Essay by Jean Marquard [Bessie Head's three novels] deal in different ways with exile and oppression. The protagonists are outsiders, new arrivals who try to forge a life for themselve... Read more