A Question of Power

Place on List:

IV. Special Area: Literary Social Criticism

1. Primary Texts: Narrative Prose

Bessie Head. A Question of Power.

Supporting References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessie_Head
2. http://freduagyeman.blogspot.com/2011/03/question-of-power-by-bessie-head.html

3. “Head, Bessie A Question of Power” The Literature, Arts & Medicine Database New York University School of Medicine

http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=1433

Genre	Novel (206 pp.)
Keywords	Abandonment, Acculturation, Colonialism, Communication, Cross-Cultural Issues, Developing Countries, Freedom, Hospitalization, Human Worth, Individuality, Loneliness, Mental Illness, Narrative as Method, Obsession, Parenthood, Power Relations, Racism, Rebellion, Scapegoating, Sexuality, Suffering, Survival, Women's Health
Summary	In this autobiographical novel, written while the author was under severe mental strain and as she recovered from psychotic breakdown, Head tracks the protagonist Elizabeth’s struggle to emerge from the oppressive social situation in which she finds herself, and from the nightmares and hallucinations that torment her. Elizabeth, like Bessie Head, was conceived in an out-of-wedlock union between a white woman of social standing, and a black man--a union outlawed by her country of birth, South Africa. Like the author, Elizabeth leaves South Africa with her young son--but without her husband, from whom she is fleeing--to live in neighboring Botswana, a country that has escaped some of the worst evils of colonial domination. But in rural Botswana she is once again faced with a constricting social system as the African villagers are suspicious of her urban ways and frown upon her individualistic behavior. Further, they bear her ill will on racial grounds because she is light skinned like the "bushmen" who are a despised tribe there. Elizabeth suffers not only social isolation but intellectual deprivation as well. One of the few people with whom she can converse as an intellectual equal is the American peace corps volunteer, Tom, who acknowledges that "men don’t really discuss the deep metaphysical profundities with women" (24). During the four years in which Elizabeth is plagued by tribal suspiciousness, terrifying dreams, economic hardships, and two hospitalizations for mental breakdown, it is Tom, and her own love for and obligation to her young son that help her to survive this ordeal.
Commentary	This remarkable book, written by an important and interesting African woman writer who left her native South Africa in 1964 on an "exit visa" (no return possible) and who was stateless for most of the rest of her life (it was 15 years before Botswana granted her citizenship) can be read on at least two levels. On the one hand, it is an insider description of the mind of a suffering, delusional person. On the other hand, it is an exploration of power relations and political-social evil. By conflating these two levels, Head demonstrates that social evil inflicted on individuals can lead quite literally to madness. Elizabeth’s mental journey is harrowing (for the reader as well), as she slips in and out between dream, hallucination, and reality. Dan, one of the major hallucinated figures--to whom she is initially much attracted-- torments her with sexual perversions. Elizabeth feels like she is "living inside a stinking toilet; she was so broken, so shattered, she hadn’t even the energy to raise one hand" (14). Dan is a clever manipulator who understands "the mechanics of power" (13). By casting Dan as a native African, Head draws attention to the complex legacy of European colonial domination of Africa. Bessie Head’s own letters from the period described by the book are useful in elucidating the parallels between A Question of Power and Head’s own experiences and thoughts (A Gesture of Belonging, ed. Randolph Vigne, Portsmouth: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1991). Joyce Johnson’s article, "Metaphor, Myth and Meaning in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power," (World literature written in English, vol. 25, No. 2, Autumn, 1985, pp. 198-211) is helpful in delineating the historic and political significance of Head’s hallucinatory representations.  A more recent paper argues that Head's writing was a "survival strategy" against personal and political threat ("A Living Life, A Living Death: Bessie Head's Writing as a Survival Strategy." Sue Atkinson. Journal of Medical Humanities. Vol.32, No. 4, pp. 269-278, 2011.)
Publisher	Heinemann Educational Publishers
Edition	1974
Place Published	Portsmouth, N.H.
Annotated by	Aull, Felice
Date of Entry	02/01/99
Last Revised	11/18/11

4. Birch, Dinah. "Head, Bessie." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. : Oxford University Press, 2009. Oxford Reference. 2009. Date Accessed 19 Aug. 2013 .

The article offers an overview of Head and less a discussion on the above-cited text.

“Head, Bessie (1937–86). Born in South Africa to a ‘white’ mother and ‘black’ father under apartheid classification; brought up in a foster family and educated in a mission school, she lived as a refugee in Botswana from the age of 26. Her major work was written and set in Botswana, though The Cardinals, published posthumously (1993), was written in South Africa. When Rain Clouds Gather (1968) addresses the rural community's ability to survive economic hardship and the autocracy of their chief, while Maru (1971) and A Question of Power (1973) present a young woman's struggle against racism and sexism in the Botswana community. The latter novel, with its autobiographical rendering of psychological breakdown, also turns back to the remembered effects of apartheid. In her later, less introspective phase, Head's stories The Collector of Treasures (1977) develop the themes gleaned from social history and interviews with villagers, which were published later as Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (1981). A Bewitched Crossroad (1984) augments fact with fiction in order to counter the European version of Botswana's past. Additional stories and essays, early and late, have been collected in Tales of Tenderness and Power (1989) and A Woman Alone (1990). Overall, Head's major interest is in envisioning an Africa free of inherited and imported oppressions, hospitable to European thinking yet strongly enough informed with communal rural traditions to resist the social breakdown and materialism of postcolonial life. The small selection of her letters hitherto published in A Gesture of Belonging (1991) reflects a life that was often lonely, funded by meagre royalties and refugee subsidies. Today, her pioneering, deeply engaged narratives have earned her an international reputation. See Gillian Stead Eilersen, Bessie Head: Thunder behind her Ears (1995).”

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