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-century southern Africa, and two volumes of collected writings published after her death. Her first works show the influence of her own experience in South Africa, focusing on themes of refugeeism and racism. Despite the parallels between her personal life and her story lines, Head transcended the specific setting of southern Africa to address patterns of evil that can be found in the minds of people everywhere. In her later works she shifted the focus from an individual's struggle for dignity to helping preserve the cultural and historical heritage that a people needs to achieve dignity.

Bessie Emery Head was born on 6 July 1937 in a mental hospital in Pietermaritzburg, where her white mother, Bessie Amilia Emery...