Weeks 5 and 6: Bessie Head's "When Rain Clouds Gather" (1968)

The life of Bessie Head (1937–1986) was one filled with challenge and hardship, and yet these forces produced groundbreaking works of post-colonial African literature. We'll spend a few classes with her début novel, When Rain Clouds Gather (1968).

Born Bessie Amelia Emery to a white mother and a black father under unclear circumstances, she eventually entered into foster care when her mother took her own life. Rejected by her first family after the agency attempted to pass her off as white, she found a home with Nellie and George Heathcote, who she believed to be her real parents. This relative calm was shattered when her boarding school told her the truth and refused to let her go home to her family. She was devastated and turned to literature for solace.

In time, she'd graduate and after a brief flirtation with teaching settle into a life as a journalist and got involved in anti-Apartheid politics, meeting her husband, Harold Head along the way. As she grew older and started a family, she increasingly felt the pressures of South Africa's oppressive, racist social system. She applied for and got a job in neighboring Botswana, but her homeland refused to grant her a passport, only offering her a one-way exit visa, and so she left her old life behind and applied for asylum. 

In a free and independent country, her literary inspirations flourished, however for most of her life she lived a relatively poor existence: while she built a house of her own (dubbed "Rain Clouds") with the royalties from her first two books, she wrote by candlelight, lived without a phone, and only got electricity late in her life. She also struggled with mental illness that resulted in several commitments and trouble with the authorities, to the extend that when she applied for Botswanan citizenship in 1977 she was denied. Nonetheless, it was freely granted two years later, as a sign of her growing role as a cultural ambassador for her adopted homeland and during the last decade of her life, she'd be celebrated in the US, Europe, Africa, and Australia, delivering lectures and giving readings.

There's a lot of Head's own experience in When Rain Clouds Gather, including the setting of Serowe that's common to her work, and protagonist Makhaya's flight from oppression in South Africa into the challenging life of a political refugee. We'll also find idealized racial harmony as white and black characters work towards a common goal, a deft depiction of the challenges between tradition and new ways of life, and a central romance that helps drive the narrative.

Here's how our four days with the novel will break down:

• Wed. September 20: introduction and chapters 1–3
• Fri. September 22: chapters 4–6
• Mon. September 25: chapters 7–9
• Wed. September 27: chapters 10–12

And here are a few additional resources you might enjoy:

• Kirkus reviews the novel upon its release: [link]
• Alan Ramón Ward's "Traumatic Divisions: the Collective and Interpersonal in Bessie Head's When Rain Clouds Gather" in Postcolonial Text: [link]
• A brief bio from the author's website: [link]