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Gradually Bessie Head is becoming my most read author. It all started after the Writers Project of Ghana held its twitter discussion on her book A Question of Power .  I had earlier read the book (and two others: A Woman Alone and Maru ), even before it was chosen and had had it reviewed on this blog. However, the discussion got me thinking about that woman, her beautiful spirit, her audacious writings, and her sense of humour even in the midst of dire adversity. Thus, I picked three of her books, including Tales of Tenderness and Power  and When Rain Clouds Gather . The Cardinals with Meditations and Short Stories  (1993; 141) contains a novella and seven short stories and meditations. It is a story about the effects of racial discrimination and how it breaks down families and flings their members about to the ways of the storms of life. In The Cardinals , set in South Africa, not only are the lives of the natives battered by poverty and destroyed by lack, politi...

When Rain Clouds Gather  (AWS Classics, 1968; 199) is Bessie Head's first novel published five years after she moved from South Africa to Serowe, Botswana, where most of her stories, including this, are set. The story is largely about the lives of the people as they work to earn a living on the deserts and droughts of that part of Botswana. It is about their fears, their hopelessness, their struggle to improve their lots and their impotence. The men in Golema Mmidi are cattle rearers; the women, crop-growers. They are faced with a unique problem, drought. Makhaya, a political ex-convict, running from the oppression in neighbouring South Africa finds his way into Golema Mmidi. Gilbert, a British had returned to the village with his head full of ideas, on how to turn the lives of the people in the village around and make them practice their agriculture in a way that would be more profitable and sustainable. Paulina had moved from the northern part of Botswana to Golema Mmidi a...

Tales of Tenderness and Power  (144) is a collection of twenty-one short stories by the South African-born Botswana writer Bessie Head published posthumously by Heinemann African Writers Series (1989). All the stories, with the exception of three were published in various magazines prior to her demise. In this collection, the beauty and tenderness of Bessie's writings, her keen observation, and her ability to relate her environment to occurrences in lives of the people come to the fore. She does not set out to tell a totally fictitious tale as fiction is sometimes interpreted to be; she writes about the lives of real people who lived those lives - their hardships, their aspirations, their fears, their hopes - in as direct a manner as possible. In addition, some of the stories are are not stories at all but historical, but not necessarily ancient, narratives. The story has been arranged to begin with why and how she wants to tell her stories. It then moves on gradually to...

Title: Maru Author: Bessie Head Genre: Fiction Publisher: AWS Classics Pages: 103 Year of First Publication: 1971 Country: Botswana/South Africa In this book Bessie Head tackled an incipient but dangerous problem that Africans are not eager to confront but which had been the bane of the continent, stalling every development and fomenting and precipitating civil wars. Almost every crisis in Africa is either caused by this or act as a catalyst. It led to the electoral crisis in Kenya, the genocide in Rwanda, the Liberian war, the Ivorian crisis and more. Racism has been amongst us and has retarded our progress so much so that had it being eliminated a larger portion of our problems would have been solved concomitantly. For instance, if there were no internal racism (mostly referred to as tribalism or ethnicism) most forms of corruptions would be no more. Today in every country, there are those who think the country belongs to them and look upon all others (tribes) a...

In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata first published as part of the The Bed Book of Short Stories  by Modjaji Books SA in 2010 was shortlisted for the 12th Caine Prize for African Short Stories in 2011 . It is also part of the Caine Prize anthology for 2011, To See the Mountain and other stories. When alive McPhineas Lata was a lover of married women. He was an expert in making women happy, sexually. In fact, he died having sex with another woman. This makes the husbands in the village of Nokanyana an angry and bitter lot. They were therefore glad that he was dead. Consequently, whereas the women were full of dramatic fainting and howls of grief echoing as far as the Ditlhako Hills the men were so much so happy that some carried their own shovels to the cemetery and when the time came to cover up the body, it was carried out in record time. But another problem remained a dead and buried McPhineas Lata didn't mean dead and buried McPhineas Lata memories . [emphasi...

Author: Bessie Head Genre: Fiction Publishers: Heinemann African Writers Series Pages: 206 Year of Publication: 1974 Country: South Africa/Botswana For the Top 100 Challenge  and the Africa Reading Challenge It seemed almost incidental that he was an African. So vast had his inner perceptions grown over the years that he preferred an identification with mankind to an identification with a particular environment. And yet, as an African, he seemed to have made one of the most perfect statements: 'I am just anyone.' (Page 11) This is the statement that introduces us to the bizarre world of Bessie Head 's A Question of Power. This novel runs parallel with the author's life and perhaps documents the tragic and traumatic life of one of Africa's unrequited and most ill-treated author: leaving South African on an exit visa with the clause of never to return, it took about fifteen of years of being stateless in Botswana before Bessie was granted citizenshi...

Title: A Woman Alone Author: Bessie Head Genre: Non-Fiction/Autobiography Publishers: Heinemann African Writers Series Year of Publication: 1990 Country: South Africa/Botswana For the Africa Reading Challenge A Woman Alone is a quasi autobiography of the South African cum Batswana writer Bessie Head. Filled with essays, letters, and short stories written as analogies to issues she wants to talk about, A Woman Alone tells the struggles of a writer at different phases of her life and career as she struggles to maintain her sensibilities in an otherwise oppressed apartheid regime. The writings in the book, posthumously published, was arranged to coincide with the major incidents in her life. The first section of the book deals with stories concerning her birth and letters and essays on her early life in South Africa. According to Head, she was born in a mental home where her mother was consigned to until she died, because her family could accept the disgrace of ...