Life (Further Reading)

Further Reading

• Abrahams, Cecil, ed., The Tragic Life, Bessie Head and Literature in Southern Africa, Africa World Press, Inc., 1990.

  This is a collection of essays that explore Head’s life and writing, including an essay on Head and southern African writing.

• Eilersen, Gillian Stead, Bessie Head: Thunder behind Her Ears: Her Life and Writing, Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1995.

  This is a biography of Head that includes some discussion of her works.

• Head, Bessie, A Gesture of Belonging: Letters from Bessie Head, 1965 – 1979, edited by Randolph Vigne, Heinemann, distributed in southern Africa for South African Writers/Heinemann, 1991.

  This collection of unexpurgated letters that Head wrote to her friend, Vigne, depict fourteen years in the life of the struggling writer.

• Ingersoll, Earl G., “Sexuality in the Stories of Bessie Head,” in CLA Journal, Vol. 39, No. 4, June 1996, p. 458.

  The author examines Head’s views on male-female sexuality as depicted in the stories in her Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales.

• Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe, “Visions of Freedom and Democracy in Postcolonial African Literature,” Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol. 25, Nos. 3 – 1, Fall-Winter, 1997, p. 10.

  The author discusses three African writers, Bessie Head, Nurrudin Farah, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o, all of whom have different views of democracy in Africa.