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Bessie Head

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Bessie Head


Born
in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
July 06, 1937

Died
April 17, 1986

Genre


Bessie Emery Head (6 July 1937 – 17 April 1986), though born in South Africa, is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer.

Bessie Emery Head was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. It was claimed that her mother was mentally ill so that she could be sent to a quiet location to give birth to Bessie without the neighbours knowing. However, the exact circumstances are disputed, and some of Bessie Head's comments, though often quoted as straight autobiography, are in fact from fictionalized settings.
In the 1950s and '60s she was a teacher, then a journalist for the South African magazine Drum. In 1964
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A Question of Power

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The Collector of Treasures ...

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When Rain Clouds Gather & Maru

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Tales of Tenderness and Power

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A Woman Alone: Autobiograph...

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To Stir the Heart: Four Afr...

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More books by Bessie Head…
Quotes by Bessie Head  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“I once sat down on a bench at Cape Town railway station where the notice "Whites Only" was obscured. A few moments later a white man approached and shouted: 'Get off!' It never occurred to him that he was achieving the opposite of his dreams of superiority and had become a living object of contempt, that human beings, when they are human, dare not conduct themselves in such ways.”
Bessie Head, A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings

“The contradictions were apparent to Makhaya, and perhaps there was no greater crime as yet than all the lies Western civilization had told in the name of Jesus Christ. It seemed to Makhaya far preferable for Africa if it did without Christianity and Christian double-talk, fat priests, golden images, and looked around at all the thin naked old men who sat under trees weaving baskets with shaking hands. People could do without religions and Gods who died for the sins of the world and thereby left men without any feeling of self-responsibility for the crimes they committed. This seemed to Makhaya the greatest irony of Christianity. It meant that a white man could forever go on slaughtering black men simply because Jesus Christ would save him from his sins. Africa could do without a religion like that. 135”
Bessie Head, When Rain Clouds Gather

“Life is such a gentle, treasured thing. I learn about it every minute. I think about it so deeply.”
Bessie Head, A Question of Power

Polls

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Which book(s) would you like to read for Southern Africa (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland) in May/June 2018?

 
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