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| a question of power bessie head: A Question of Power Bessie Head, 2017-03-06 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. |
| a question of power bessie head: Maru Bessie Head, 2013-09-16 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. |
| a question of power bessie head: When Rain Clouds Gather Bessie Head, 2013-09-23 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. |
| a question of power bessie head: A Question of Power Bessie Head, 1974 When Elizabeth learns the devastating truth about her mother, locked away for defying Apartheid, she flees South Africa and begins a new life in Botswana, at Motabeng, the village of the rain-wind. But Elizabeth is tormented by two men, Dan and Sello, who represent for her a private vision of hell into which she sinks deeper and deeper. This novel interweaves one woman's terrifying experience of insanity with the madness and cruelty of life in a divided society. A Question of Power is the unforgettable study of an individual - and a race - whose identity has been annihilated, and their resulting struggle to endure--Publisher's description. |
| a question of power bessie head: A Woman Alone Bessie Head, 2007 A collection of autobiographical writings, sketches, and essays that covers the entire span of Bessie Head's creative life. |
| a question of power bessie head: The Collector of Treasures Bessie Head, 1992 Botswana village tales about subjects such as the breakdown of family life and the position of women in this society. |
| a question of power bessie head: Bessie Head and the Trauma of Exile Joshua Agbo, 2021-06-17 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. |
| a question of power bessie head: The Cardinals Bessie Head, 1995 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. |
| a question of power bessie head: Tales of Tenderness and Power Bessie Head, 1990 This is an anthology of stories, personal observations and historic legends. It reflects the author's fascination with Africa's people and their history as well as her identification with individuals and their conflicting emotions. |
| a question of power bessie head: Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories Alifa Rifaat, 2014-01-16 “More convincingly than any other woman writing in Arabic today, Alifa Rifaat lifts the veil on what it means to be a woman living within a traditional Muslim society.” So states the translator’s foreword to this collection of the Egyptian author’s best short stories. Rifaat (1930–1996) did not go to university, spoke only Arabic, and seldom traveled abroad. This virtual immunity from Western influence lends a special authenticity to her direct yet sincere accounts of death, sexual fulfillment, the lives of women in purdah, and the frustrations of everyday life in a male-dominated Islamic environment. Translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies, the collection admits the reader into a hidden private world, regulated by the call of the mosque, but often full of profound anguish and personal isolation. Badriyya’s despairing anger at her deceitful husband, for example, or the haunting melancholy of “At the Time of the Jasmine,” are treated with a sensitivity to the discipline and order of Islam. |
| a question of power bessie head: The Collector of Treasures Bessie Head, 1995 |
| a question of power bessie head: Juletane Myriam Warner-Vieyra, 2014-05-01 In this powerful and moving novel, Myriam Warner-Vieyra sensitively portrays the complexities of cross-cultural relationships and, in particular, the female predicament. When Helene, a self-reliant career woman, is packing her belongings for a move and imminent marriage for which she is reluctant, she unearths a faded old book. It is the diary of young Juletane, a confused, sheltered West Indian woman struggling to find herself. Written over three weeks, it records her short life: childhood in France, marriage to an African student, and an eager return with him to Africa, the land of her ancestors. It is Juletane’s diary that brings her and Helene together. Juletane does not fit into her husband’s traditional African family, especially the Muslim cultural demands of polygamy. Full of gentle ironies, Juletane is a story about alienation, madness, shattered dreams: the disillusioned West Indian outsider’s disenchantment with Africa. Myriam Warner-Vieyra looks at women’s lives, at the paths they have taken, at the possibilities open to women in the Caribbean, in Africa, in life. She forces readers, through the double narrative of Juletane and Helene, to reexamine easy assumptions, to look again at safe generalizations. Includes valuable Introduction 2014 by the translator. |
| a question of power bessie head: The Shadow of Imana Véronique Tadjo, 2015-03-04 As evidence emerged of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the outside world reeled in shock. What could have motivated these individual and collective acts of evil? In 1998, Véronique Tadjo traveled to Rwanda to try to find out. She started with the premise that what happened in Rwanda concerns us all: “We need to understand. Our humanity is in peril.” The Shadow of Imana is a reminder that humankind the world over is capable of genocide. Records of what the author saw—sites of massacres, corpses, weapons dumps—are combined with personal stories of traumatized returnees, bereaved survivors, rape victims, orphans, lawyers faced with the impossible task of doing justice, prisoners. But Tadjo’s story goes beyond mere reportage of death and cruelty. Her poetically wrought account incorporates traditional tales, explores the spiritual legacy of the genocide, and uncovers a healing vitality as well as a commitment to forgiveness. Véronique Tadjo was born in Paris and grew up in Côte d’Ivoire. The Shadow of Imana has been translated from the French by Véronique Wakerley. |
| a question of power bessie head: Song of Lawino & Song of Ocol Okot p'Bitek, 2013-01-31 During his lifetime, Okot pBitek was concerned that African nations, including his native Uganda, be built on African and not European foundations. Traditional African songs became a regular feature in his work, including this pair of poems, originally written in Acholi and translated into English. Lawinos wordsin the first poemare not fancy, but their creative patterns convey compelling images that reveal her dismay over encroaching Western traditions and her Westernized husbands behavior. Ocols poem underlines Lawinos points and confirms her view of him as a demeaning and arrogant person whose political energies and obsession with wasting time are destructive to his family and his community. The gripping poems of Lawino and Ocol capture two opposing approaches to the cultural future of Africa at the time and paint a picture that belongs in every modern readers cognitive gallery. |
| a question of power bessie head: Bessie Head Gillian Stead Eilersen, 1995 Bessie Head's novels include Where Rain Clouds Gather and A Question of Power . |
| a question of power bessie head: The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void Jackie Wang, 2021-01-26 Jackie Wang's magnetic and spellbinding debut collection of poetry that attempts to speak in the language of dreams.In The Sunflower, Wang follows the sunflower's many dream guises-its evolving symbolism in literature, society, and the author's own dream life using a mathopoetic technique to generate poems using the Fibonacci sequence (a pattern found in the seed spirals of sunflower). The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void embodies what Wang calls oneiric poetry: a poetry that attempts to speak in the language of dreams. Although dreams, in psychoanalytic discourse, have been conceptualized as a window into the unconscious, Wang's poetry emphasizes the social dimension of dreams, particularly the use of dreams to index historical trauma and social processes. |
| a question of power bessie head: Surfacing Desiree Lewis, Gabeba Baderoon, 2021-04-01 An anthology dedicated to contemporary Black South African feminist writing influential to today's scholars and radical thinkers Surfacing: On Being Black and Feminist in South Africa is the first collection dedicated to contemporary Black South African feminist perspectives. Leading feminist theorist, Desiree Lewis, and poet and feminist scholar, Gabeba Baderoon, have curated contributions by some of the finest writers and thought leaders into an essential resource. Radical polemic sits side by side with personal essays, and critical theory coexists with rich and stirring life histories. The collection demonstrates a dazzling range of feminist voices from established scholars and authors to emerging thinkers, activists and creative practitioners. The writers within these pages use creative expression, photography and poetry in eclectic, interdisciplinary ways to unearth and interrogate representations of blackness, sexuality, girlhood, history, divinity, and other themes. Surfacing asks: what do the African feminist traditions that exist outside the canon look and feel like? What complex cultural logics are at work outside the centers of power? How do spirituality and feminism influence each other? What are the histories and experiences of queer Africans? What imaginative forms can feminist activism take? Surfacing is indispensable to anyone interested in feminism from Africa, which its contributors show in vivid and challenging conversation with the rest of the world. It will appeal to a diverse audience of students, activists, critical thinkers, academics and artists. |
| a question of power bessie head: The Terrorist Album Jacob Dlamini, 2020-05-05 An award-winning historian and journalist tells the very human story of apartheid’s afterlife, tracing the fates of South African insurgents, collaborators, and the security police through the tale of the clandestine photo album used to target apartheid’s enemies. From the 1960s until the early 1990s, the South African security police and counterinsurgency units collected over 7,000 photographs of apartheid’s enemies. The political rogue’s gallery was known as the “terrorist album,” copies of which were distributed covertly to police stations throughout the country. Many who appeared in the album were targeted for surveillance. Sometimes the security police tried to turn them; sometimes the goal was elimination. All of the albums were ordered destroyed when apartheid’s violent collapse began. But three copies survived the memory purge. With full access to one of these surviving albums, award-winning South African historian and journalist Jacob Dlamini investigates the story behind these images: their origins, how they were used, and the lives they changed. Extensive interviews with former targets and their family members testify to the brutal and often careless work of the police. Although the police certainly hunted down resisters, the terrorist album also contains mug shots of bystanders and even regime supporters. Their inclusion is a stark reminder that apartheid’s guardians were not the efficient, if morally compromised, law enforcers of legend but rather blundering agents of racial panic. With particular attentiveness to the afterlife of apartheid, Dlamini uncovers the stories of former insurgents disenchanted with today’s South Africa, former collaborators seeking forgiveness, and former security police reinventing themselves as South Africa’s newest export: “security consultants” serving as mercenaries for Western nations and multinational corporations. The Terrorist Album is a brilliant evocation of apartheid’s tragic caprice, ultimate failure, and grim legacy. |
| a question of power bessie head: The Twelve Best Books by African Women Chikwene Okonjo Ogunyemi, Tuzyline Jita Allan, 2009-07-14 The Twelve Best Books by African Women is a collection of critical essays on eleven works of fiction and one play, an important but belated affirmation of women writers on the continent and a first step toward establishing a recognized canon of African women's literature. |
| a question of power bessie head: Bessie Head Huma Ibrahim, 1996 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. |
| a question of power bessie head: A Bewitched Crossroad Bessie Head, 1986 |
| a question of power bessie head: Life Bessie Head, Ivan Vladislavić, 1993 |
| a question of power bessie head: The Purple Violet of Oshaantu Neshani Andreas, 2017-03-27 Through the voice of Mee Ali, readers experience the rhythms and rituals of life in rural Namibia in interconnected stories. In Oshaantu, a place where women are the backbone of the home but are expected to submit to patriarchal dominance, Mee Ali is happily married. Her friend, Kauna, however, suffers at the hands of an abusive husband. When he is found dead at home, many of the villagers suspect her of poisoning him. Backtracking from that time, the novel, with its universal appeal, reveals the value of friendships, some of which are based on tradition while others grow out of strength of character, respect, and love. |
| a question of power bessie head: Race, Nation, Translation Zoë Wicomb, 2018-11-20 The first collection of nonfiction critical writings by one of the leading literary figures of post-apartheid South Africa The most significant nonfiction writings of Zoë Wicomb, one of South Africa’s leading authors and intellectuals, are collected here for the first time in a single volume. This compilation features critical essays on the works of such prominent South African writers as Bessie Head, Nadine Gordimer, Njabulo Ndebele, and J. M. Coetzee, as well as writings on gender politics, race, identity, visual art, sexuality, and a wide range of other cultural and political topics. Also included are a reflection on Nelson Mandela and a revealing interview with Wicomb. In these essays, written between 1990 and 2013, Wicomb offers insight on her nation’s history, policies, and people. In a world in which nationalist rhetoric is on the rise and diversity and pluralism are the declared enemies of right-wing populist movements, her essays speak powerfully to a wide range of international issues. |
| a question of power bessie head: To Stir the Heart Bessie Head, 2007 Love and hope are the powerful provocateurs in four stories by two great African writers. |
| a question of power bessie head: Kehinde Buchi Emecheta, 2005 The problems of African expatriates in England. Albert and Kehinde Okolo have lived in London for 18 years. When Albert announces they are returning to Nigeria, Kehinde opposes him because Nigeria is a foreign country to their children. It is the start of a marriage crisis. |
| a question of power bessie head: The Poetics of Difference Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, 2021-10-19 Winner of the Modern Language Association (MLA)’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize From Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange, and Bessie Head, to Zanele Muholi, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Missy Elliott, Black women writers and artists across the African Diaspora have developed nuanced and complex creative forms. Mecca Jamilah Sullivan ventures into the unexplored spaces of black women’s queer creative theorizing to learn its languages and read the textures of its forms. Moving beyond fixed notions, Sullivan points to a space of queer imagination where black women invent new languages, spaces, and genres to speak the many names of difference. Black women’s literary cultures have long theorized the complexities surrounding nation and class, the indeterminacy of gender and race, and the multiple meanings of sexuality. Yet their ideas and work remain obscure in the face of indifference from Western scholarship. Innovative and timely, The Poetics of Difference illuminates understudied queer contours of black women’s writing. |
| a question of power bessie head: The Burning Girl: A Novel Claire Messud, 2017-08-29 A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist [A] masterwork of psychological fiction.… Messud teases readers with a psychological mystery, withholding information and then cannily parceling it out. —Chicago Tribune Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship. The Burning Girl is a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about youth and friendship, and straddles, expertly, childhood’s imaginary worlds and painful adult reality—crafting a true, immediate portrait of female adolescence. Claire Messud, one of our finest novelists, is as accomplished at weaving a compelling fictional world as she is at asking the big questions: To what extent can we know ourselves and others? What are the stories we create to comprehend our lives and relationships? Brilliantly mixing fable and coming-of-age tale, The Burning Girl gets to the heart of these matters in an absolutely irresistible way. The Burning Girl was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue, NPR, Financial Times, Town & Country, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Refinery29, and Literary Hub. |
| a question of power bessie head: Nothing to See Here Kevin Wilson, 2019-10-29 A New York Times Bestseller • A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, People, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, TIME, The A.V. Club, Buzzfeed, and PopSugar “I can’t believe how good this book is.... It’s wholly original. It’s also perfect.... Wilson writes with such a light touch.... The brilliance of the novel [is] that it distracts you with these weirdo characters and mesmerizing and funny sentences and then hits you in a way you didn’t see coming. You’re laughing so hard you don’t even realize that you’ve suddenly caught fire.” —Taffy Brodesser-Akner, author of Fleishman is in Trouble, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of The Family Fang, a moving and uproarious novel about a woman who finds meaning in her life when she begins caring for two children with a remarkable ability. Lillian and Madison were unlikely roommates and yet inseparable friends at their elite boarding school. But then Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly in the wake of a scandal and they’ve barely spoken since. Until now, when Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help. Madison’s twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there’s a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it’s the truth. Thinking of her dead-end life at home, the life that has consistently disappointed her, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one humid, demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other—and stay cool—while also staying out of the way of Madison’s buttoned-up politician husband. Surprised by her own ingenuity yet unused to the intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her—urgently and fiercely. Couldn’t this be the start of the amazing life she’d always hoped for? With white-hot wit and a big, tender heart, Kevin Wilson has written his best book yet—a most unusual story of parental love. |
| a question of power bessie head: Murder at Small Koppie Greg Marinovich, 2018 An award-winning investigation that has been called the most important piece of journalism in post-apartheid South Africa, Murder at Small Koppie delves into the truth behind the massacre that killed thirty-four platinum miners and wounded seventy-eight more in August of 2012 at the Marikana platinum mine in South Africa's North West province. News footage of the event caused global outra≥ however, it captured only a dozen or so of the dead. Here, Pulitzer Prize-winner Greg Marinovich focuses on the violence that took place at Small Koppie, a collection of boulders where a second massacre took place off-camera and in cold blood. Combining his own meticulous research, eyewitness accounts, and the findings of the Marikana Commission of Inquiry, Marinovich has crafted a vivid account of the tragedy and the events leading up to it. By taking readers into the mines, the shacks where the miners live, and the boardroom, Marinovich puts names, faces, and stories to Marikana's victims and perpetrators. He addresses the big questions that any nation must ask when justice and equality are subverted by conflicts around class, race, money, and power, as well as the subsequent denial and finger-pointing that characterized the response of the mine owner, police, and government. This is a story that is both stirring and accurate. |
| a question of power bessie head: The Stone Virgins Yvonne Vera, 2004-02-14 An uncompromising novel by one of Africa’s premiere writers, detailing the horrors of civil war in luminous, haunting prose. Winner of the Macmillan Prize for African Adult Fiction In 1980, after decades of guerilla war against colonial rule, Rhodesia earned its hard-fought-for independence from Britain. Less than two years thereafter when Mugabe rose to power in the new Zimbabwe, it signaled the beginning of brutal civil unrest that would last nearly a half decade more. With The Stone Virgins, Yvonne Vera examines the dissident movement from the perspective of two sisters living in a small township outside of Bulawayo. In a portrait painted in successive impressions of life before and after the liberation, Vera explores the quest for dignity and a centered existence against a backdrop of unimaginable violence; the twin instincts of survival and love; the rival pulls of township and city life; and mankind’s capacity for terror, beauty, and sacrifice. One sister will find a reason for hope. One will not make it through alive. Weaving historical fact within a story of grand passions and striking endurance, Vera has gifted us with a powerful and provocative testament to the resilience of the Zimbabwean people. “Yvonne Vera writes with magnificent luminosity. The Stone Virgins is a song about the author’s people, and the tragedy of their lives and their loves, contrasted against the sheer beauty of their land. It may yet prove to be one of the notable novels of the twenty-first century.” —Ama Ata Aidoo, award-winning author of Changes: A Love Story “Without sensationalism or heroics, this searing novel speaks of dislocation, terror, betrayal, and strength.” —Booklist |
| a question of power bessie head: The Rise of the African Novel Mukoma Wa Ngugi, 2018-03-27 Engaging questions of language, identity, and reception to restore South African and diaspora writing to the African literary tradition |
| a question of power bessie head: Nervous Conditions Tsitsi Dangarembga, 2020-10-19 FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF THIS MOURNABLE BODY, ONE OF THE BBC'S 100 WOMEN FOR 2020 ' UNFORGETTABLE' Alice Walker 'THIS IS THE BOOK WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR' Doris Lessing 'A UNIQUE AND VALUABLE BOOK.' Booklist 'AN ABSORBING PAGE-TURNER' Bloomsbury Review 'A MASTERPIECE' Madeleine Thien 'ARRESTING' Kwame Anthony Appiah Two decades before Zimbabwe would win independence and ended white minority rule, thirteen-year-old Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her education. On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings, and extended family, and within her burns the desire for independence. A timeless coming-of-age tale, and a powerful exploration of cultural imperialism, Nervous Conditions charts Tambu's journey to personhood in a fledgling nation. 'With its searing observations, devastating exploration of the state of not being, wicked humour and astonishing immersion into the mind of a young woman growing up and growing old before her time, the novel is a masterpiece.' Madelein Thien |
| a question of power bessie head: Serowe, Village of the Rainwind Bessie Head, 1981 Autobiographies of individual villagers arranged in thematic chapters. |
| a question of power bessie head: This is the Canon Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne, Kadija Sesay, 2021-10-28 'A vital and timely introduction to some of the best books I've ever read. Perfectly curated and filled with brilliant literature' Nikesh Shukla 'The ultimate introduction to post-colonial literature for those who want to understand the classics and the pioneers in this exciting area of books' Symeon Brown These are the books you should read. This is the canon. Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay have curated a decolonized reading list that celebrates the wide and diverse experiences of people from around the world, of all backgrounds and all races. It disrupts the all-too-often white-dominated 'required reading' collections that have become the accepted norm and highlights powerful voices and cultural perspectives that demand a place on our shelves. From literary giants such as Toni Morrison and Chinua Achebe to less well known (but equally vital) writers such as Caribbean novelist Earl Lovelace or Indigenous Australian author Tony Birch, the novels recommended here are in turn haunting and lyrical; innovative and inspiring; edgy and poignant. The power of great fiction is that readers have the opportunity to discover new worlds and encounter other beliefs and opinions. This is the Canon offers a rich and multifaceted perspective on our past, present and future which deserves to be read by all bibliophiles - whether they are book club members or solitary readers, self-educators or teachers. |
| a question of power bessie head: Perceiving Pain in African Literature Z. Norridge, 2012-11-29 An analysis of literary accounts of suffering from sub-Saharan Africa, this book examines fiction and life-writing in English and French over the last forty years. Drawing on writers from the canonical to the less well-known, it uses close readings to examine the personal, social and political consequences of representing pain in literature. |
| a question of power bessie head: Efuru Flora Nwapa, 2013-10-21 Appearing in 1966, Efuru was the first internationally published book, in English, by a Nigerian woman. Flora Nwapa (1931–1993) sets her story in a small village in colonial West Africa as she describes the youth, marriage, motherhood, and eventual personal epiphany of a young woman in rural Nigeria. The respected and beautiful protagonist, an independent-minded Ibo woman named Efuru, wishes to be a mother. Her eventual tragedy is that she is not able to marry or raise children successfully. Alone and childless, Efuru realizes she surely must have a higher calling and goes to the lake goddess of her tribe, Uhamiri, to discover the path she must follow. The work, a rich exploration of Nigerian village life and values, offers a realistic picture of gender issues in a patriarchal society as well as the struggles of a nation exploited by colonialism. |
| a question of power bessie head: The Lovers Bessie Head, 2011-01-01 The Lovers collects Head's short fiction of the 1960s and 70s, written mainly in Serowe, Botswana, and depicting the lives and loves of African village people pre- and post-independence. An earlier selection called Tales of Tenderness and Power was published in the Heinemann African Writers Series in 1990, but this expanded and updated volume adds many previously unavailable stories collected here for the first time. Anthology favourites like her breakthrough 'The Woman from America' and 'The Prisoner who Wore Glasses' are included, leading up to the first complete text of her much translated title story. Stephen Gray is a noted South African scholar and novelist. |
| a question of power bessie head: Dreaming in the Fault Zone Eleni Stecopoulos, 2022-03-22 A collection of essays that explores healing on multiple levels, from the subtle body to the body politic. Anchored by community performances, ceremonies, and conversation with both artists and health practitioners, Dreaming in the Fault Zone is a collection of critical lyric prose and poem-essays that examines healing, in all its translations and violence, to learn how we turn our syndromes into method and how inquiry itself can shift the body. From the ancient dream clinic and therapeutic landscapes to disability culture, trauma modalities, and the entwined plagues we live through now. |
| a question of power bessie head: In the Fog of the Seasons' End Alex La Guma, 2012-09-21 La Gumas powerful, firsthand account depicts the dedicated South African people who risked their lives in the underground movement against apartheid. The main characters, Beukes and Elias, are among others determined to undermine apartheids blatant oppression and demeaning tactics. The authors knack for rich descriptions and weaving the past with the present transports readers to the grind of working in an underground political organization and the challenges of confronting hardships, change, and injustice on a daily basis. |
A Question of Power: Bessie Head and her Publishers
Abstract. This article examines Bessie Head’s turbulent relationships with her publishers and literary agents in London and New York, focusing on the publication of A Question of Power in …
Apartheid and madness: Bessie Heads - A question of power
Question of Power. Elizabeth's associations and choices in adulthood reveal that she has to some extent accepted, and internalized, the sense of inferiority and evil
A 'Nice-Time Girl' Strikes Back: An Essay on Bessie Head's 'A Question ...
It is Bessie Head's Elizabeth, heroine of A Question of Power, a "Masarwa," a half-breed exiled from South Africa into Botswana, a stranger in her homeland, and still a stranger in the
Garden-Variety Holiness: Bessie Head’s “reverence for ordinary …
in A Question of Power Denae Dyck and Tim Heath Abstract: To unfold the “reverence for ordinary people” that Bessie Head says animates her writings and to move beyond the …
BESSIE HEAD'S A QUESTION OF POWER READ AS A MARINER'S
The primary persona and the stage of the paranoic conflict in A Question of Power, is, as I have indicated, Elizabeth, an immigrant to Botswana from South Africa. Her life history and that of …
Method and Madness in A Question of Power - JSTOR
Bessie Head's A Question of Power and Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea are narratives that represent an intersection between race, gender and familial con- structs of such intensity as to …
Bessie Head A Question Of Power (book) - archive.ncarb.org
Bessie Head: A Question of Power – Exile, Identity, and the Fierce Pursuit of Voice offers a compelling exploration of Head's extraordinary life and work. Through insightful analysis and …
‘The Rediscovery of the Extraordinary’: A Question of Power by Bessie Head
Through a re-reading of Bessie Head’s A Question of Power, this article aims at criticising the way trauma has been conceptualised in the West and recently appropriated by postcolonial literary …
A Question Of Power Bessie Head - Bessie Head Copy …
A Question of Power Bessie Head,1974 When Elizabeth learns the devastating truth about her mother, locked away for defying Apartheid, she flees South Africa and begins a new life in …
CONFRONTING THE ABSURD: AN ANALYSIS OF BESSIE HEAD’S A QUESTION POWER
In A Question of Power, Bessie Head uses the psychoanalysts’ delimitation of the human mind into the conscious, the sub-conscious, and the un-conscious articulated by Freud to portray...
Chief Editor Editor Tarun Tapas Mukherjee - Rupkatha
Bessie Head’s A Question of Power (AQP)2 is the story of a lonely South African woman named Elizabeth who leaves her country and goes on a self-exile to Botswana. AQP
Bessie Head A Question Of Power Copy - archive.ncarb.org
A Question of Power Bessie Head,1974 When Elizabeth learns the devastating truth about her mother locked away for defying Apartheid she flees South Africa and begins a new life in …
Therapeutic Insanity: The Transformative Vision of Bessie Head…
Pace university, New York syoung2@pace.edu. aBSTRaCT. Demur—you’re straightway dangerous— And handled with a Chain—Emily DickinsonBessie Head’s largely …
Head’s A Question of Power - IJELS
Mental Illness: The Healing Power in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power Abdul Wahab MA Student, Department of English, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. …
A Question of Power f Gestures of Belonging: Disability and ...
in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power Liam Kruger The essay that follows has two overlapping but distinct aims. The first and more modest is to respond to Elizabeth J. Donaldson’s 2011 …
A Question of Power: Susan Gardner's Biography versus Bessie Head…
A Question of Power: Susan Gardner's Biography versus Bessie Head's Autobiography Teresa Dovey Much recent theoretical debate is concerned with the possibility of writing about those …
Memory, power and Bessie head: A question of power
Despite Head's well-known declaration (in an interview concerning A Question of Power) that "Elizabeth and I are one" (MacKenzie and Clayton 25),4 there are at least two major …
Power and Apartheid in Bessie Head’s Question of Power
This paper tries to show the brief history of racism in South Africa through analyzing Bessie Head’s A Question of Power . In fact, apartheid is rooted in the slavery and racism, happened …
Bessie Head A Question Of Power (PDF) - archive.ncarb.org
Within the captivating pages of Bessie Head A Question Of Power a literary masterpiece penned by a renowned author, readers embark on a transformative journey, unlocking the secrets and …
Bessie Head: The Face of Africa - JSTOR
"questions of power" reduce human beings to units and must be resisted, including the power attributed to an invisible God: "Since man was not holy to man, he could be tortured for his …
UNIT 2 BESSIE HEAD, ‘THE COLLECTOR OF TREASURES’
Bessie Amelia Emery Head (1937-1986) was a significant voice amidst the notable writers of sub-Saharan Africa. She wrote several novels and short stories. Some of her remarkable works are When Rain Clouds Gather (1968), Maru (1971), A Question of Power (1973) and an anthology of short stories; Collector of Treasures (1977).
Bessie Head A Question Of Power (PDF) - archive.ncarb.org
A Question of Power Bessie Head,1974 When Elizabeth learns the devastating truth about her mother locked away for defying Apartheid she flees South Africa and begins a new life in Botswana at Motabeng the village of the rain wind But
Bessie Head's A Question of Power: The Journey Through …
Bessie Head's A Question of Power: The Journey Through Disintegration to Wholeness Linda Susan Beard Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Quarterly by an
CONFRONTING THE ABSURD: AN ANALYSIS OF BESSIE HEAD’S A QUESTION POWER
mind as does Bessie Head's A Question of Power (Adetokunbo Pearse). Bessie Head's thrust into the insane mind and her ability to speak according to Pearse “the highly symbolic language of madness” (81) derives, it seems, from a combination of the painful personal experience of mental aberration and an interest in psychoanalytical theories.
Head’s A Question of Power - media.neliti.com
Bessie Head’s A Question of Power is an African literary narrative that considers the theme of mental illness via the female protagonist, Elizabeth. For readers, it is often challenging to cope with the traumatic situations Elizabeth encounters because she herself battles to cope with her inner anxieties. ...
Traumatic Divisions: the Collective and Interpersonal in Bessie Head…
Head’s world successfully resolves itself in this manner—and consequently accuses Head of being “inwardly simplistic” (119)—I believe that Head is only creating this expectation in order to watch it unravel. We are presented with two popular leaders in the novel who find common cause against the old order, and who share a general vision
Alienation, exile and woman: treatment of concepts in Bessie-Head …
The best of Bessie Head has come out in her A Question of Power, suggesting a much better balance between the relation of man and a woman by exploiting the male characteristics society of Africa. The problem taken by Head is the question of power, involving every right of status to woman and her successive part in procuring it. The novel is
Patriarchy in Buchi Emecheta’s The Slave Girl Head’s A Question of Power
Patriarchy in Buchi Emecheta’s The Slave Girl and Bessie Head’s A Question of Power: A Gynocentric Approach* Ashenafi Aboye† Abstract African literature has been dominated by male African writers. However, there are a number of female African writers who contributed to the literary landscape of the continent significantly.
Bessie Head's A Question of Power: The Journey Through …
Bessie Head's A Question of Power: The Journey Through Disintegration to Wholeness Linda Susan Beard Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Quarterly by an
The Marxist Aspect in Bessie Head's A Question of Power
3.1 A Question of Power as an Indictment of the Apartheid System A Question of Power is the third novel written by Bessie Head. It is an autobiographical novel. It tells the story of a life of neglect, isolation and deprivation. Head presents an individual struggle for identity within a community which is colored bias.
Ellinetie Chabwera - African Journals OnLine
Womanhood in Bessie Head's fiction Ellinetie Chabwera Bessie Head, a South African woman who lived in Botswana, was a prolific ... ( 1969), Maru ( 1972) and A Question of Power ( 1974 ), Head addresses and deals with the racial tension in both South Africa and Botswana. Yet as is the case in most literature by black women from Africa and the
SOCIETAL UNDERTONE OF TRAUMA IN BESSIE HEAD’S A QUESTION OF POWER
of Bessie Head’s A Question of Power is caught up and is nearly destroyed by complications arising from certain social conditions fueled by patriarchal and postcolonial influences. These stifling conditions in society become instrumental in the social instability, psychological and mental imbalance of the protagonist later in ...
Psychological afflictions as expressed in Bessie Head’s A Question …
Bessie Head’s A Question of Power and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions Nettie Cloete Department of English Studies University of tfie Nortti SOVENGA E-mail; margri1hac@unin.unorth.ac.za Abstract Psychological afflictions as expressed In Bessie Head’s A Quesifon of Power and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions
Díkeledí’s revenge: A reading of Bessie Head’s “The collector of ...
In 1977 the South African writer Bessie Head published her first collection of short stories called The collector of treasures - prior to this she had published three novels: When rain clouds gather (1966), Maru (1971) and A question of power (1973). …
LITERARY COMMITMENT IN BESSIE HEAD’S MARU
LITERARY COMMITMENT IN BESSIE HEAD’S MARU Elizabeth A. Odhiambo 1, Dr. Jack Ogembo 2, Dr. Kitche Magak 3 ARTICLE INFO ... He points out that although A Question Of Power can be said to be an important site for unraveling the strands of her anguished life story with instances of immense suffering, privation and
Bessie Head and the Trauma of Exile - api.pageplace.de
Bessie Head and the Trauma of Exile This book investigates themes of exile and oppression in Southern Africa ... 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 post-
Signed~ - uir.unisa.ac.za
In A Question of Power Bessie Head explores metaphysical forms of knowledge and systems of belief (against a background of what is verifiable and can be called the truth) and finds them necessary but flawed because they are illogical. The experience of madness in Bessie Head's main character, Elizabeth, (which is
Bessie Head Greta D. Little BOOKS Marn (London: Victor …
Bessie Head (6 July 1937 -17 April 1986) Greta D. Little University of South Carolina BOOKS ... A Question of Power (1973), Head's most important work, is a dramatic departure from her earlier writing. It is an autobiographical account of mental disintegration, encompassing a
Disclosing the Hidden: The Narration of Thoughts in Bessie Head…
(A Question of Power 19). Her experience of racism and social rejection is shared by the main igures of her books. Two orientations mark her literary output: irst, we have ... Bessie Head, in Maru, takes this situation as a pretext to denounce all forms of …
Memory and Displacement in A Question of Power and Beloved
Bessie Head’s A Question of Power and Toni Morrison’s Beloved respectively allude to the aftermath of apartheid and slavery on black people, but more accurately, how these people try to overcome their plight and live with their distressing past in a contemporary context.
Language, Power, and Ideology: A Critical Linguistic Study of Bessie ...
modulations and dimensions of power in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather. The paper explores the relationship between power and language in social relationships in the narrative. The focus of the essay is on the shifting dimensions of power in social encounters. The paper adopts a
SOCIETAL UNDERTONE OF TRAUMA IN BESSIE HEAD’S A QUESTION OF POWER
of Bessie Head’s A Question of Power is caught up and is nearly destroyed by complications arising from certain social conditions fueled by patriarchal and postcolonial influences. These stifling conditions in society become instrumental in the social instability, psychological and mental imbalance of the protagonist later in ...
Physical and Psychological Factors in Bessie’s A Question of Power
Bessie Head’s style of writing appeals to psychological issues. In A Question of Power, she delves into the realm of abnormal psychology, thus making the work relevant to an interdisciplinary study.
Díkeledí’s revenge: A reading of Bessie Head’s ... - ResearchGate
three novels: When rain clouds gather (1966), Maru (1971) and A question of power (1973). Arthur Ravenscroft (1976:175) has remarked that the three ... The question of whether Bessie Head is a ...
Instances of Bessie Head’s distinctive feminism, womanism and ...
Key words: Africanism, Bessie Head, Drum writers, feminism, womanism. Introduction Huma Ibrahim (1996: 14) significantly points to an “increasing recognition of the complexity of Head’s writing” that started only as recently as 1989 with the posthumous publication of her shorter and smaller pieces Tales of Tenderness and Power (1989), A
A Huge View of Life: Human Commitment in Bessie Head’s Maru
Bessie Head. It is quite certain that Bessie Head stands out with the particularity of her origins and the uniqueness of her writing. Indeed, Bessie Head’s status of a “coloured”, a racially mixed person, brought her more complex and challenging difficulties in a South Africa devastated by apartheid. Due to
A Question of Power: Bessie Head and her Publishers
a question of power: bessie head and her publishers . caroline davis . oxford brookes university. abstract . 7klv wlfoh [dplqhv hvvlh h’v xuexohqw hodwlrqvklsv lw u lvkhuv lwhudu\ djhqwv hz
Transglocal Fiction: Diasporic Poetics of Resistance in Bessie Head…
A Question of Power by Bessie Head and The Women of Tijucopapo by Marilene Felinto. Through a comparative analysis, I examine how Elizabeth’s detour into madness in the village of Motabeng and Rísia’s journey to the historical space of Tijucopapo become transformative points of …
IDENTITY AS LIMINALITY IN POST-COLONIAL FICTION: …
bessie head]s a question of power* José L. Venegas Caro de la Barrera ** Abstract: This paper sets out to analyze the interstitial/liminal aspect of postcolonial
Christ as Creole: Hybridity and the Revision of Colonial ... - JSTOR
tainly pervades Bessie Head's work. In A Question of Power, god-like power is attributed to people from the village, and in Maru, the title char-acter's choices are understood to have sweeping spiritual consequences. Bessie Head's belief in the divinity of …
A Power Struggle by Bessie Head - talkingpeople.net
Check out the website of the Bessie Head Heritage Trust in Botswana, who have been taking good care of BH’s world. BESSIE HEAD WAS BORN IN 1937, SOUTH AFRICA AND DIED IN 1986, BOTSWANA resulting outline. ONE OF THE ISSUE WHERE BH PUBLISHED HER STORIES. AUGUST 1980 A Power Struggle(About 2,250 words) §01 The universe had a …
Patriarchy in Buchi Emecheta’s The Slave Girl Head’s A Question of Power
Patriarchy in Buchi Emecheta’s The Slave Girl and Bessie Head’s A Question of Power: A Gynocentric Approach* Ashenafi Aboye† Abstract African literature has been dominated by male African writers. However, there are a number of female African writers who contributed to the literary landscape of the continent significantly.
IDENTITY, DISCRIMINATION AND VIOLENCE IN BESSIE HEAD…
5 and violence as portrayed in Bessie Head’s trilogy of When Rain Clouds Gather (1968), Maru (1971) and A Question of Power (1974). While I will critically explore each text individually as regards the concepts of identity, discrimination and violence, however, given the dissertation’s
CRITICAL ESSAYS ON BESSIE HEAD - GBV
Bessie Head's Maru: Writing after the End of Romance 47 Colette Guldimann 5. "A Peculiar Shuttling Movement": Madness, Passing, and Trespassing in Bessie Head's A Question of Power 71 Helen Kapstein 6. The Cardinals: Reclaiming Language through the "Permanent Revolution of Language": Literature 99 Colette Guldimann.
“People is people”: African personhood in the works of Bessie Head
In Chapter 5, the operation of love extends further in Maru and A Question of Power. In Maru, love is tasked with overturning the foundations of racism and reversing the tyranny of tribal, hereditary supremacy. In A Question of Power, love is set against its biggest foe: evil and Satan.
Bessie Head: A tribute - core.ac.uk
Novels of Bessie Head . Recent discussion osf Bessie Head's work have centre od n A Question of Power and the general tendency has been to view this novel in terms of its reference to Head's experience ass a coloured South African and an exile in Botswana. Whil' Head'e novels dso revea al deep concer witn h th e
A FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF BESSIE HEAD'S OEUVRE WITH …
inA Question o/Power [1974] 3.8 Khama III and the emancipation of women I in A Bewitched Crossroad [1984 CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY 45 57 70 79 ... A Feminist Analysis of Bessie Head's Texts with reference to Migration and Psychoanalysis. Chapter three deals with the analysis of Head's texts through Feminism, Migration and ...
FICTIONS OF POWER: THE NOVELS OF BESSIE HEAD MEl …
Bessie Head's fiction reflects the author's consciousness of power as the definitive force in the South African context. ... When Rain Clouds Gather, ~, and ~Question of Power. Biographical data, lJarticularly Head' s unique, though socially marginal position as a political exile, a Coloured, and a woman are also applied. The thesis covers ...
Racial Science and the Effects of Culture Discrimination in Bessie Head ...
Bessie Head wrote novels, short fiction and autobiographical works that are infused with spiritual questioning and self-reflection. Most of Bessie Head’s important works are set in Serowe. The three novels When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru and A Question of Power all have some autobiographical elements. She has also published a number of short ...
Language, History and Culture in Bessie Head - ajol.info
action) (Bressler:135). Our examination will be limited to Bessie Head’s A Question of Power (A Question), Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Sembene Ousmane’s Tribal Marks. In interrogating a ‘culture in action’, the New Historicists assume that language plays a major role. It shapes and is shaped by these conflicting
LITERARY COMMITMENT IN BESSIE HEAD’S MARU
LITERARY COMMITMENT IN BESSIE HEAD’S MARU Elizabeth A. Odhiambo 1, Dr. Jack Ogembo 2, Dr. Kitche Magak 3 ARTICLE INFO ... He points out that although A Question Of Power can be said to be an important site for unraveling the strands of her anguished life story with instances of immense suffering, privation and
The Marxist Aspect in Bessie Head's A Question of Power
3.1 A Question of Power as an Indictment of the Apartheid System A Question of Power is the third novel written by Bessie Head. It is an autobiographical novel. It tells the story of a life of neglect, isolation and deprivation. Head presents an individual struggle for identity within a community which is colored bias.
