39 Facts About Bessie Head

Bessie Amelia Emery Head was a South African writer who, though born in South Africa, is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer.

Bessie Head wrote novels, short fiction and autobiographical works that are infused with spiritual questioning and reflection.

Bessie Head was in the huge mental hospital in Pietermaritzburg when she gave birth to Bessie.

Infant Bessie Head was first placed with white foster parents on the assumption that she was white.

Bessie Head was then placed with a mixed-race or "coloured" family, the Heathcotes, in a poor non-white area of Pietermaritzburg.

Bessie Head enjoyed a near-normal childhood of her time and place, except that her foster mother resented her love of books.

When Bessie Head was 12, after she had completed four years of primary school education, the authorities moved her to St Monica's Home for Coloured Girls, an Anglican boarding-school in Durban.

Two years later, at the end of 1953, Bessie Head passed her Junior Certificate examination.

Bessie Head went on to do a two-year Teacher Training Certificate at a nearby college, while living at St Monica's.

In mid-1958, tired of her daily routines and dreaming of bigger things, Bessie Head resigned her job.

Bessie Head had a 21st birthday party with old friends, then took a train for Cape Town, where she intended to become a journalist.

Bessie Head sought employment instead with Drum's sister publication, the weekly Golden City Post.

Bessie Head worked there for almost a year, filing courtroom stories and other small tasks given to rookies in the newsroom.

Bessie Head wrote under her real name, Bessie Amelia Emery.

In Pietermaritzburg and Durban, Bessie Head had been a member of a small minority group, English-speaking Coloureds.

Bessie Head was too dark to join the elite, so she preferred to associate with the workers and underclass in District Six, the large Coloured community that lived on the west side of Table Mountain, not far from the centre.

Bessie Head became more acutely aware of South Africa's many internal conflicts.

In 1959, Bessie Head moved to Johannesburg to work on Home Post, another of Drum's sister publications; she was given her own column and a steady salary.

Bessie Head met Sobukwe and found him an overwhelming personal presence.

Bessie Head came into contact with jazz and jazz musicians, developing an instant crush on the young Abdullah Ibrahim, then known as Dollar Brand, who led the country's foremost jazz ensemble.

Bessie Head joined Sobukwe's Pan-Africanist Congress a few weeks before that party led a fateful mass protest in Soweto, Sharpeville, and other black townships.

Bessie Head worked briefly to support PAC prisoners before being arrested herself in an ugly incident of mutual betrayal among PAC sympathisers.

Around 1969, Bessie Head began to suffer symptoms of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Bessie Head wrote a dramatic novella, The Cardinals, that went unpublished for 30 years.

In great frustration Bessie Head left Cape Town at the end of 1963 to live with her mother-in-law near Pretoria, taking Howard with her.

Bessie Head applied for a teaching job in the neighbouring Bechuanaland Protectorate and was accepted.

Many of Bessie Head's works are set in Serowe, including the novels When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power.

Bessie Head published a number of short stories, including the collection The Collector of Treasures.

Bessie Head published a book on the history of Serowe, the village she settled in, called Serowe: Village of the Rainwind.

Bessie Head had written a story of two prophets, one wealthy and one who lived poorly called "Jacob: The Faith-Healing Priest".

Bessie Head's work is included in the 1992 anthology Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.

Bessie Head's work focused on the everyday life of ordinary people and their role in larger African political struggles.

Bessie Head was initially brought up as a Christian; however, she was later influenced by Hinduism.

In some ways, Bessie Head remained an outsider in her adopted country, and some discern she had something of a love-hate relationship with it.

Bessie Head struggled with mental illness and suffered a major psychotic episode in 1969, which led to a period of hospitalisation in Lobatse Mental Hospital.

Much of Bessie Head's work was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi, and she said she had "never read anything that aroused my feelings like Gandhi's political statements".

Bessie Head was strongly inspired by Gandhi and the way he clearly described present political issues.

In 1977, Bessie Head attended the University of Iowa's International Writing Program, to which only a select number of writers from all over the world are invited.

The Bessie Head Papers are stored in the Khama III Memorial Museum in Serowe.