Racial Discrimination, Literary Criticism - General & Miscellaneous, Sexism, South African Politics & Government, South African Literature - Literary Criticism

The Creative Vision of Bessie Head

Name: The Creative Vision of Bessie Head
Author: Brown, Coreen
ISBN: 9781611472578

by Brown, Coreen

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Overview

"The Creative Vision of Bessie Head examines Head's literary works in chronological order and reveals how each reflects Head's claim that "Every story or book starts with what I need." Drawing upon the revelations gleaned from Head's personal letters, this critical appraisal attempts to account for the way in which Bessie Head, born in South Africa in 1937, insists on a romantic resolution in order to compensate for the poverty, feelings of loneliness, and isolation she experiences as she struggles to survive in a racist and sexist society. Head's origins were less than fortunate, for as the child of a white woman committed to a mental institution and of a black father whose identity was never foreclosed, Head was fostered and then placed in an orphanage. As a single mother she sought exile in Botswana and it was here that she died prematurely in 1986." The Bessie Head Papers, as yet unpublished, are housed in the Khama III Memorial Museum in Serowe, Botswana, and contain almost two thousand items, many of them personal letters to friends. These letters, a selection of which are included in the appendix herein, are a revealing commentary on the compulsion that provided for Head's creativity, especially with regards to the most complex of her novels. Speaking at her funeral a friend remarked that it was when she was writing that Head could push her fears and anxieties to one side and it was here that the 'realist and dreamer achieved a brief communion" (Eilerson 1995, 294). Thus, Head's creative vision, invoked at times of crises, shows clearly the nature of the artist's power and its value as a means to restore the equilibrium of society.

Synopsis

This book explores how Head's writing is her idiosyncratic response to her personal life. Her desire to portray and yet subvert oppression that she encountered in South Africa and Botswana led to a romanticism born of her need to create an antithesis to what she perceived to be the reality around her.