Bessie Head was born on the 6th of July 1937 in Pietermaritzburg. She was born in a mental hospital as Bessie Amelia Emery, the daughter of a white woman named Bessie Amelia Birch and an unnamed father who was black. She was then adopted and brought up by a foster mother called Nellie Heathcote from 1937-1950.
In 1950, Bessie Head was transferred to a mission orphanage called St. Monica's Home in Durban. This was an Anglican home renowned for its quality education. She was by then thirteen.
In 1955, Bessie Head sat her physical training exams but failed as she was poor in History, Geography and Biology. At the end of 1956, Bessie Head took her supplementary examinations at the M. L. Sultan Technical College, and her Natal Teacher's Senior certificate came on the first of January 1957.
From 1956 to 1958 she taught at Clairwood Coloured School in Durban. She was faced with difficulties because she was unable to cope with children for she could not command them as they were used to and because they were poverty stricken. From 1958 to 1960 Bessie got involved in the world of journalism. She worked as a journalist for the Golden City Post and for Drum magazine. In the beginning of 1960, she joined a political movement (Pan Africanist Congress) and left her job at the Golden City Post. She didn't dwell much into politics however.
On the first of September 1961 she married Harold Head. She began writing and wrote her first manuscript which was then published thirty years later as The Cardinals.
On the fifteenth of May 1962, Bessie Head's son Howard Head was born.
In March 1964 Bessie Head left South Africa on an exit permit to Botswana. She held various jobs, and in 1968 her first novel entitled When Rain Clouds Gather was published. The novel reflects her involvement in agriculture at the Bamangwato Development Farm and her life in the refugee camp in Francistown. Bessie Head built her house called "Rain Clouds" from proceedings of sales from her novel When Rain Clouds Gather.
(See also the page on translations of the abridged version of When Rain Clouds Gather.
In 1971 her novel Maru was published and it deals with racial prejudices. In 1973 her other novel A Question of Power was published, and it reflects the psychological effects of her mental breakdown and other issues such as race.
From 1975 to 1985 Bessie Head's life took a turn for the better. In 1975 she received several invitations to give talks at meetings, schools and seminars. She was invited to join the Writers' Workshop at the University of Botswana in 1976. In 1977 The Collector of Treasures was published consisting of different issues reflected in short stories. Between 1977 and 1978 Bessie Head participated in an international writing program at the University of Iowa in America. In 1979 she was invited to participate in "Berlin International Literature Days." She also obtained Botswana citizenship in 1979. In 1981 Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind was published. In 1982 she was invited by the University of Calabar, Nigeria, in the Department of English and Literary Studies, to participate in the Macmillan Writers' Workshop. In 1984 she was invited to the Adelaide Festival of Arts in Australia. The novel A Bewitched Crossroad was also published in 1984. The novel is about the history of Botswana, demonstrating Bessie Head's interest in history.
(Bessie Head in Iowa with a group of other writers.)
In February 1986 Bessie Head became ill and her skin had turned yellow. A doctor diagnosed her with hepatitis and she died on the 17th of April the same year. She was buried on the 26th of April at Botalaote graveyard in Serowe because she had become a part of the Serowe community due to her love and cooperation with the people.
See also the page on Bessie Head's funeral.Source: Eilersen, Gillian Stead. Bessie Head: Thunder Behind her Ears. Her Life and Writing. Portsmouth, NH, London, and Cape Town & Johannesburg: Heinemann, James Currey, and David Philip, 1995.
Photographs by permission of the Khama III Memorial Museum, Serowe.
Text copyright © 2003 the authors.
Last updated 16 January 2004