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...
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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...
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When 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 of nineteenth-...
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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...
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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...
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In the following essay, Eilersen provides a biographical account of Head's life at the time of The Collector of Treasures.
Bessie could have relaxed and celebrated her success, with her controv...
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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...
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In the following essay, Ingersoll explores Head's treatment of sexuality in her short fiction, particularly her perceptions of female sexuality.
Bessie Head's tragically early death in 1...
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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...
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In the following essay, Feurle discusses parallels between Head's “The Wind and a Boy” and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.
1 Introduction
I shall be dealing with my topic f...
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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...
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In the following essay, Chetin considers Head's concept of exile, feminist perspective, and use of myth in The Collector of Treasures.
Although a little attention has been paid to Bessie Head&#...
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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...
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In the following essay, Thomas discusses Head's narrative technique in her short fiction.
Today one almost feels the need to apologize for analyzing the works of writers like Bessie Head, Chinu...
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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...
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In the following essay, Sample discusses Head's fictional representation of space in The Collector of Treasures.
In exploring how people experience the world, social scientists studying the env...
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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 ...
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In the following positive review of The Cardinals, with Meditations and Short Stories, Newson asserts that “Head provides something of a poetic rendering of what it means to be a woman and a wr...
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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...
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Critical Essay by Paddy Kitchen
In Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind, [Bessie Head] has written a chronicle that makes her adopted home … accessible to the imagination of outsiders…. Her ...
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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...
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Critical Essay by The Times Literary Supplement
Maru is set in similar territory [as When Rain Clouds Gather], and this time Mrs. Head concentrates on the relationships of a handful of educated Africa...
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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...
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Critical Essay by Robert L. Berner
Bessie Head's third novel [A Question of Power] is a remarkable attempt to escape from the limitations of mere "protest" literature in which Bla...
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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...
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Critical Essay by Charles R. Larson
Bessie Head's A Question of Power is important not solely because it is an introspective novel by an African woman but because the topics of her concern are ...
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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 ...
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Critical Essay by John Mellors
In a footnote to the first of her 'Botswana village tales' in The Collector of Treasures, Bessie Head says that she has 'romanticised and fictionali...
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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...
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Head, Bessie
Bessie Head
Bessie Head
