Bessie Head

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Bessie Amelia Emery Head (born July 6, 1937 in Pietermaritzburg , † April 17, 1986 in Serowe ; born as Bessie Amelia Emery ) is the best-known writer in Botswana .

Life

Bessie Head was born in 1937 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa as Bessie Amelia Emery. Her mother, who had the same name, was a native of Scotland and her father was a black domestic worker. The then South African Immorality Act prohibited sexual relationships between whites and blacks. Bessie's mother was a patient in a mental hospital at the time of birth. She was not allowed to raise her daughter and died in 1943. Bessie grew up with a Coloreds family. From 1950 she lived in St. Monica's Home, an Anglican boarding school for colored girls near Durban . There she read numerous books and began to write. A short story was published in an anthology in 1951. She completed a two-year teacher training course and teaches at a primary school in Durban. Politically she was close to Pan-Africanism . At the age of 21, she moved to Cape Town and met Harold Head there. In August 1958, she began working as a journalist for the Golden City Post magazine . In April 1959 she moved to Johannesburg to work for Drum magazine for a few months . In 1960 she joined the Pan African Congress . In March 1960 she met its party leader Robert Sobukwe . The same month the Sharpeville massacre took place, which led to the PAC being banned. Shortly afterwards, she made herself available to the state as a witness against the PAC and attempted suicide . In May of the same year she moved back to Cape Town with Harold Head, where they lived in District Six and founded The Citizen newspaper . In 1961 she married Harold Head. On May 15, 1962, their son Howard Head was born. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to Port Elizabeth and back to Cape Town. In November 1963 Bessie Head separated from her husband, moved to Pretoria and, in 1964, with her son to Serowe in Bechuanaland , later Botswana. From then on she was not allowed to return to South Africa. At first she taught at a primary school. She became friends with the South African director of the Swaneng Hill School in Serowe, Patrick van Rensburg , who helped her in numerous emergencies. In the meantime, she lived in Francistown and Gaborone for a short time , but kept returning to Serowe. At times she lived with Harold Head again.

Born in South Africa, Bessie Head remained an outsider in Botswana because of her multiracial origins. Occasionally she had mental problems, from 1969 also attacks of schizophrenia . She publicly indicted the then President Seretse Khama and was treated for some time in Lobatse Mental Hospital . Your novel A Question of Power is about these experiences. From 1977 she was invited abroad several times and traveled to the United States, the University of Iowa , Denmark, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Nigeria and Australia. Bessie Head was granted Botswana citizenship 15 years after her entry. For a long time she was poor; only towards the end of her life did she gain recognition. In 1985 Harold Head filed for the end of the marriage, and in February 1986 the marriage was divorced. Bessie Head died of hepatitis two months later at the age of 48 at the Sekgoma Memorial Hospital in Serowe . Her son Howard Head died at the age of 48 and was buried on June 7, 2010.

plant

Most of Head's works are set in Serowe, such as the three novels When Rain Clouds Gather , Maru and A Question of Power . In When Rain Clouds Gather (German language edition: When the rain falls) she describes the life of a young South African refugee in the Botswana village of Golema Midi, who is not accepted by the chief and has to leave the village. A Question of Power is about religious issues, among other things. She also wrote numerous short stories, such as the collection of short stories The Collector of Treasures (Die Schatzsammlerin). She also wrote a book about the history of Serowe, Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind . Her last novel, A Bewitched Crossroad , is set in 19th century Bechuanaland. The leitmotif of her works is the role of the poor, exploited black woman who has to struggle with racist and sexual discrimination. Several of her books are clearly autobiographical. Except for the novel The Cardinals (Star Turn), which she had written before moving, she wrote her books in Botswana.

Six of her books were posthumously translated into German. The first editions were published by Orlanda-Verlag and Lamuv-Verlag . It is mainly marketed as women's literature . Currently (January 2016) the German-language editions of Head's books are available from Lamuv-Verlag.

Honors

  • Since 1986 some objects from her life have been exhibited in the Khama III Museum in Serowe, such as her typewriter.
  • In 2003 she was posthumously awarded the South African Ikhamanga Order in gold for her "exceptional contribution to literature and the struggle for social change, freedom and peace".
  • In 2007 the Bessie Head Heritage Trust was established together with Botswan's only literary prize, the Bessie Head Literature Awards . In July of the same year a library in Pietermaritzburg was renamed the Bessie Head Library .

bibliography

  • 1968: When Rain Clouds Gather , German RegenWolkenZeit . Lamuv, Göttingen 2000
  • 1971: Maru , German as Maru . Lamuv, Göttingen 1998
  • 1974: A Question of Power , German The color of power . Orlanda, Berlin 1987
  • 1977: Looking for a Rain God
  • 1977: The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales , German Die Schatzsammlerin . Orlanda, Berlin 1988
  • 1981: Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind
  • 1984: A Bewitched Crossroad
  • 1989: Tales of Tenderness and Power , German oranges and lemons . Lamuv, Göttingen 1999
  • 1990: A Woman Alone: ​​Autobiographical Writings
  • 1991: A Gesture of Belonging: Letters from Bessie Head, 1965-1979
  • 1993: The Cardinals , German star turn . Lamuv, Göttingen 1997

literature

  • Gillian Stead Eilersen: Bessie Head: Thunder Behind Her Ears - Her Life and Writings (Studies in African Literature) . David Philips Publishers, Cape Town 1995, ISBN 0-86486-279-2 ; James Currey, London 1995, ISBN 0-85255-535-0 .
  • Huma Ibrahim: Bessie Head: Subversive Identities in Exile . University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville 1996, ISBN 0-8139-1685-2
  • Maria Olaussen: Forceful Creation in a Harsh Terrain: Place and Identity in Three Novels by Bessie Head. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3631314213
  • Coreen Brown: The Creative Vision of Bessie Head . Fairleigh Dickinson Press, Madison 2003, ISBN 978-0838639825
  • Cecil Abrahams: The Tragic Life: Bessie Head and Literature in Southern Africa . Africa Research & Publications, London 1990, ISBN 978-0865431775
  • Huma Ibrahim: Emerging Perspectives on Bessie Head . Africa Research & Publications, London 2003, ISBN 978-1592210749
  • Desiree Lewis: Living on a Horizon: Bessie Head and the Politics of Imagining . Africa Research & Publications, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-59221-459-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Detailed biography of the Bessie Head Heritage Trust , accessed January 23, 2016
  2. ↑ a b Website of the Bessie Head Heritage (English), accessed January 23, 2016
  3. ^ Photo by van Rensburg , accessed on January 23, 2016
  4. ↑ Report from the funeral service for Howard Head , accessed November 19, 2010
  5. ↑ Information on Bessie Head by Kate Bissell (1996) ( memento of July 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on November 19, 2010
  6. ↑ see www.ebook.de/Searching for books by Bessie Head
  7. ↑ Acknowledgment of Heads ( Memento of November 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 23, 2016
  8. ↑ Report from the award ceremony 2010 (English), accessed on November 18, 2010
  9. ↑ Msunduzi Library website , accessed on January 23, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Head, Bessie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Emery, Bessie Amelia (maiden name); Head, Bessie Amelia Emery
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Botswana writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Pietermaritzburg
DATE OF DEATH April 17, 1986
Place of death Serowe