Bessie Head

About this book

"When the depredations of apartheid forced most of her contemporaries into exile in Britain, Europe, and the United States, the South African writer Bessie Head (1937-1986) chose to move to neighboring Botswana, by South African standards then a dry, dusty, and undeveloped backwater. And where her fellow writers chose apartheid's depredations as the subject for their searing social indictments, Head turned for inspiration to local sources, recording in stories of parable-like intensity the daily lives of people in a remote African village. She is perhaps the only black African writer who has successfully dealt with the tensions and torments of her own life - madness, guilt, vexed personal relationships, loneliness, exile - and the often haunting results have won her a growing following in critical circles, most notably among feminists, who see her as having been victimized not only by South Africa's brutal racial politics but also by patriarchal attitudes among African men." "In this overview of Head's work, Craig MacKenzie argues that the physical journey Head took from South Africa to Botswana has a special resonance in her writing, in which she moves from disintegration to wholeness, from alienation to commitment."--Jacket.