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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...

You have a beautiful soul that was nurtured on a dung heap. [22] I was thinking a while ago, Johnny, that half the trouble in the world is caused by the difficulty we have in communicating with each other. It's practically impossible to say what you really mean and to be sure that the other person is understanding you. Word communication is dependent on reason and logic but there are many things in life that are not reasonable or logical. A jazz musician can say something to me in his music but it would be quite beyond me to translate into words what he is communicating through music. What he has to say touches the most vital part of my life but I can only acknowledge his message silently. [24] Do you think life will care about you if you do not show that you care about it? [37] They pursued their love with a wild abandon, unprotected against the treachery of the insecure foundation on which it was based and too young to bridge the gap that would suddenly and unexpecte...

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...

It's only education that turns a man away from his tribe. [3] It was the mentality of the old hag that ruined a whole continent - some sort of clinging, ancestral, tribal belief that a man was nothing more than a grovelling sex organ, that there was no such thing as privacy of soul and body, and that no ordinary man would hesitate t jump on a mere child. [10] Well-educated men often come to the crossroad of life .. One road might lead to fame and importance, and another might lead to peace of mind. It's the road of peace of mind that I'm seeking. [15] In this country there is a great tolerance of evil. It is because of death that we tolerate evil. All meet death in the end, and because of death we make allowance for evil though we do not like it. [23] It was his belief that a witty answer turneth away wrath and that the oil of reason should always be poured on troubled waters. [48] Tie a man's hands behind his back and then ask him if he's going...

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...

* Bessie Head  would have been 76 years on this day. This is the first in the series of posts to celebrate Bessie Head's birthday (b. July 6, 1937). You can join us  with posts on the author from to day to July 12, 2013. ___________________ In a broad sense then I would say a person's character type makes him gravitate to a certain type of work. The fussy-fussy, jumpy sort of woman becomes a typist where she can mess around all day minding other people's businesses. The rather heartless, dominating you-actually-deserve-all-you-get type becomes a social worker. The tough guy with sadistic tendencies becomes a jail warder or a policeman. The dull, drab and toiling type a waitress, shop-girl or nurse. And so on. [ Let me tell a story now... 16] If I had to write one day I would just like to say people is people  and not damn White, damn Black. Perhaps if I was a good enough writer I could still write damn White, damn Black and still make people live.  Make...

July 6, 2013 will be the 76th birthday of one of Africa's great authors, Bessie Head. To commemorate the day, some African book bloggers - Mary Okeke of Mary Okeke Reviews , Kinna of KinnaReads & this writer of ImageNations - have decided to celebrate this day by posting items about the author from July 6 to 12, 2013. Posts could be anything except that it should be about the author: review of her books, quotes from her books, her life, pictures and others. This blogging event is open to all readers. About Bessie Head:  Bessie Amelia Head (1937-1986) never knew her real parents — an unstable white woman and an unknown black man. She was born and raised in apartheid South Africa. There she suffered from poverty, racial segregation, and gender discrimination. She also had to worry about her own "delicate nervous balance". As a young woman she left South Africa to come to Botswana. She lived the rest of her life in this country, mostly in Serowe. Bit by bit...

The rains were so late that year. But throughout that hot, dry summer those black storm clouds clung in thick folds of brooding darkness along the low horizon. There seemed to be a secret in their activity, because each evening they broke the long, sullen silence of the day, and sent soft rumbles of thunder and flickering slicks of lightning across the empty sky. [1] And if the white man thought that Asians were a low, filthy nation, Asians could still smile with relief - at least, they were not Africans. And if the white man thought Africans were a low, filthy nation, Africans in Southern Africa could still smile - at least, they were not Bushmen. [6] It is preferable to change the world on the basis of love of mankind. But if that quality be too rare, then common sense seems the next best thing. [7] Those who spat at what they thought was inferior were the 'low filthy people' of the earth, because decent people cannot behave that way. [12] Something they like...

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...

Last Friday when I brought you quotes from this novel , I promised that if the latter part of the book has as many deep aphorisms as I presented I would do a part two of this and this would have been the first time I am sampling from one book on two different Fridays. The promise was affirmed when I reviewed the book yesterday. In fact, I could quote the who novel if possible. Today, I sample from the part of the book which had not been read as of last week's post. When someone says 'my people' with a specific stress on the blackness of those people, they are after kingdoms and permanently child-like slaves. 'The people' are never going to rise above the status of 'the people'. They are going to be told what is good for them by the 'mother' and the 'father'. Page 63 When people stumble upon magic they study it very closely, because all living people are, at heart, amateur scientists and inventors. Why must racialists make an exemption of t...

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...

I have been reading this book for a week now but have still not reached half way through it. And it's just over 200 pages. I have been busy with work, reports, and organising a trip for some visitors that my reading has slumped to a rate of a page per day. How sad! Fortunately, the few pages I have read of Bessie Head 's most popular novel, A Question of Power , has a lot of quotable passages and sentences to fill a Friday void. Consequently, if the remaining pages is a similitude of the pages read, I would have a part two of this. A man might laugh at intense suffering only if the evil which tortured him became irrelevant and if obsessive love, which was also one of his evils, became irrelevant too. Page 11 Love is two people mutually feeding each other, not one living on the soul of the other, like a ghoul. Sello, Page 13 What did they gain, the power people, while they lived off other people's souls like Vultures? Did they seem to themselves to be most supreme, most G...