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 hatred and the source of corrupting power and authority, reflect in an important and deep way the bitter world of inhumanity and racism which exists throughout South Africa. The physical landscape of Botswana is colored with her own history of exile, race confusion and her search for what she labels in her first novel, When Rain Clouds Gather, an "illusion of freedom."… Head is concerned particularly with the racial question as it pertains to her mixed-blood status. In her novels, When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power, Bessie head seeks to examine the causes of the evil of race prejudice and, concomitantly, to explore potential sources of generosity and goodness.
In trying to unearth the root of racial prejudice, Bessie Head differs from other South African writers in her approach to and understanding of the problem. Being exiled and long suffering products of a white supremacist society, black South African writers characteristically confront their cruel tormentors in a direct manner. They see the root of evil as being firmly and solely embedded in the obdurate heart of the white person and dismiss the corruption of blacks as being the natural consequence of an evil which has been manufactured by whites. When Rain Clouds Gather, seems at first to repeat this pattern of blame and confrontation…. But ultimately the transplanted Makhaya, and therefore the reader, cannot escape the realities of either the often cruel desert environment where the rain clouds gather hopefully but fail to burst into fruitful rain, or the social milieu where many white men and women of a generous nature assist the eager peasants to develop the land.
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