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Volume XVIII, Number 2 April 1999 that my father worked in their stables and took care of Bessie Head* their racehorses. Interviewed by Lee Nichols INTERVIEWER: Bessie was taken from her mother at INTERVIEWER: The writer I'll be talking with on this birth, she told me, and raised by foster parents until she program1 is an extraordinary woman and an extraordinary was thirteen years old. Then she was placed in a mission writer. Bessie Head is a South African refugee who has orphanage. Her mother had asked that some of her own made her home in Botswana. She's one of the first non­ money be set aside for Bessie's education and when the white South African women to become known on the mother died, a sum of money was made available and world literary stage. She's written three major novels­ Bessie got a high school education in the orphanage where When Rain Clouds Gather, Marn and A Question of Power-­ she remf1illed until the age of eighteen. It was while she as well as a number of short stories. Her novels range was growing up in South Africa that the seeds of her from the pastoral life of rural Botswana to one so violent, writing career were planted. so puzzling, that it caused widespread controversy. I visited Bessie Head in her adopted village of Serowe, a two HEAD: I feel that a love of books is a kind of inborn hundred sixty-mile drive from the Botswana capitol of thing, you know, when you've sort of got a fascination Gaborone. She lives in a small house with her son and for having stories told to you and read to you. It's tends a vegetable garden from which she sells produce to something that comes from within. So that even if I supplement her earnings from her writing. I began our didn't havf specific parents to do anything for me I did a interview by asking Mrs. Head to tell me something about lot of reading on my own because I loved that particular her background and how she got started as a writer. world. You open up a book and you learn about something that's much more exciting than your everyday grind, a HEAD: I was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, on world of magic beyond your own. And I feel that the the sixth of July, nineteen thirty-seven. I did not have beginnings of writing really start whereby you know that any parents. In fact there is a sort of tragedy attached to when you open a book there's a magical world there. my birth. My mother was a white woman of a very upper class family. Her family were very wealthy and she acquired INTERVIEWER: After leaving the orphanage, Bessie me out of wedlock from a black man. This caused such a Head served as an elementary school teacher in South disturbance in the family they succeeded in getting my Africa for two years. And she worked for Drum, a magazine mother classified insane and by the time I was born she primarily for Africans, and later wrote weekly "true had been committed to the Pietermaritzburg mental romances" for a South African newspaper. But she said hospital where I was born: So really I have been given her first creative writing didn't begin until she'd left South much more detail about my mother, but I was only told Africa.

IThis interview was recorded on September 27, 1976 in Serowe, HEAD: You could really say that my writing experience Botswana, for broadcast by the Voice of America. began in Botswana. Everything about the society was Head, Bessie. INTERVIEWER: Tell me how it got published. Born Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, July 6, 1937. Died April HEAD: I was forced to write it, if you can say so. I had 17, 1986. Education: high written an article which was published in the New Statesman school, South Africa; Interna­ and this article was read by an editor who worked for tional Writing Program, Uni­ Simon and Schuster in New York. At that time I had just versity of Iowa. Journalist, teacher. Major works: When got an agent. She [the Simon and Schuster editor] wrote Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, A a letter to my agency and asked if I would write a novel Question of Power, novels; for them. I had indicated in the article that people in The Collector of Treasures, southern Africa were very fascinating and the editor asked short stories; Serowe: The Vil- if I would tell her more in a novel about people in southern lage of the Rain-Wind, non-fiction; and short stories Africa. I'd had various difficulties at that time. I hadn't in a number of magazines in the U. S. and elsewhere. got a teaching job any more. I then indicated to my agent magical to me and the reason I began writing is that I that I neither had writing materials, paper or anything. So wanted to communicate that fascination I felt for the ways the editor at Simon and Schuster sent me eighty dollars of life of the people of this country. It is almost to get on with the basics, at least to acquire paper and impossible for a writer to evoke a similar feeling of magic things like that. So since I had eighty dollars I had to do and wonder about South Africa. It's too despairing. something. And I looked back on my two-year stay in Botswana and there were all these vivid communications INTERVIEWER: Well then, will you tell me how you I'd had with people about the country. So I then got into happened to come to Botswana? typing up that novel which was eventually published by Simon and Schuster in New York. HEAD: I'd been married and after about a year and a half the marriage fell through. So I was sort of stuck. I INTERVIEWER: Mrs. Head said that her first novel When had nothing to do and I had a small baby. There was an Rain Clouds Gather was considered to give such a clear advertisement in a newspaper in South Africa for teachers picture of life in Botswana that it was used in the training in Botswana. So I applied and I got a job. The only of foreign volunteers who carne to that country after its complication that arose out of that was that I was refused independence. She said her second novel, Maru, was a a passport and I came to Botswana on an exit permit, thesis against racialism. which sort of classified me as a stateless person. HEAD: But I didn't use a black-white theme like black INTERVIEWER: Mrs. Head began teaching in Serowe man versus white man. I used my own theme to work and it was there that she wrote her first novel. out what I'd say was a kind of universal thesis on racialism. That's mosdy the base of Maru. It is an examination ·of HEAD: My first book, When Rain Clouds Gather, was a collection of first impressions of the country. I had come here in sixty-four and over a period of sixty-four to sixty­ Resound five there was a terrible drought in which the cattle died. A Quarterly of the And when there is a tragedy, detail and a picture of the Archives of Traditional Music country emerges because people discuss it so much. And Jonathan Cargill, Editor everybody at that time tended to give me a little picture We are pleased to accept conunents, letters, and submissions. of Botswana because there was such an intensity of feeling Please address your correspondence to RESOUND at: at the time about the cattle dying. My book is written with the particular feeling of a black person, who has Archives of Traditional Music Morrison Hall 117 grown up in South Africa, that when you come into a Indiana U ni versity coUntry where black people are free you can do so much Bloomington, IN 47405 more to help yoursel£ But when you come from a country Gloria J. Gibson, Director where black people are not free-if there were a similar Marilyn B. Graf, Archivist Suzanne Mudge, Librarian calamity in: South Africa black people would die. That was the theme I had in my mind. It was an appreciation ISSN 0749-2472 of a country that was experiencing freedom. 2 racial prejudices but I used black against black instead at her with fascination and attention. A cold of white against black. sweat broke out, down her back. ''Yes?'' she asked, unsmiling. INTERVIEWER: Maru is a book, as you said, which The boy shook his head and laughed to depicts racialism but it involves particularly the problems himself. of the Bushmen facing discrimination by their black "I am thinking about a certain matter," he said. compatriots. Where did you get the material for this book? Then he looked direcdy into her face with an I t seems very real and vivid. insolent stare: "Tell me," he said. "Since when is a Bushy a HEAD: A whole portion of it was myself, my African teacher?" background. It's easy for me to put myself in the shoes The room heaved a little and the whole of Basarwa (Bushmen) people, you see. classroom of children blanked out before her. Yet she still stood upright with wide-open eyes. From INTERVIEWER: We'll read a passage from Maru which a distance their voices sounded like a confused shows the attitude of the local people in Bessie Head's roar: novel towards the Bushmen or Basarwa. [Basarwa is the ''You are a Bushman," they chanted. ''You plural, Masarwa the singular.], are a Bushman." It froze the whole school. There was not a Pete is the principal of the elementary school where teacher who did not know of the buzzing between Margaret Cadmore, a Bushman girl, is a teacher. When the principal and the Totems [social leaders] over Peter finds out that Margaret is a Masarwa he plots to get the weekend. They even knew what was to happen rid of her. His plan is to stir up her pupils to insult her. next. They waited for his [the principal's] drawl: Then, in the expected uproar, he would claim she couldn't "But, Miss Cadmore, why can't you control your control her c1ass and have her removed. However there class? You are disturbing the whole school." are three people in the novel-two sons of chiefs and the In fact, he was on cue, except that halfway wife of one of them-who don't go along with the local across the quadrangle he saw Dikeledi streak ahead disdain for the Bushmen. And the wife, Dikeledi, also a of him into the classroom of the Masarwa. He teacher at the school, interferes with Pete's plans. The jerked himself back on one leg, looked to the left passage we'll read is the scene in Margaret Cadmore's and right and started running back to his office. classroom on a Monday morning. From Part One of He still heard her voice. It was like murder, shrill Bessie Head's novel, Maru. and high like the shattering of thin glass against a wall: "Stop it! Stop it! I'll smash you all to pieces! [Interviewer reads] She is your teacher! She is your teacher! (Bessie Head,Maru) At the time the beginners' grade consisted of children of a varied age range. Most of the girls INTERVIEWER: In the end Maru, one of the chief's were six or seven, but the boys who worked as sons, marries Margaret the Bushman girl. And Mrs. head cowherds started school from about the age of writes: "When people of the Masarwa tribe heard about ten to fourteen. Pete coached a fourteen-year old Maru's marriage to one of their own, a door silendy boy, and by early Monday moming the whole class opened on the small, dark airless room in which their of the Masarwa teacher was prepared for what souls had been shut for a long time. The wind of freedom, was to take place. The only sign they gave of the which was blowing throughout the world for all people, preparedness was nervous glggles as they filed into turned and flowed into the room." the classroom. But as she closed the door and walked to the table to call the roll, a deathly silence Bessie Head's third novel and by far her most controversial fell upon the children. She looked up. A boy at work is called A Question of Power. The jacket on the the far end of the room had his hand raised. She HeinemannAfiican Writers Series edition says that the novel knew there was something wrong. For the first takes the reader "in and out of sanity." Its explosive week they had been resdess, absent-minded They language and scorching, almost hallucinatory scenes are, had hardly noticed her, being involved in their in Mrs. Head's own words, like entering into a nightmare­ adjustment to their new situation. Now they stared her nightmare.

3 HEAD: In my novel, A Question of Power, I was extremely black, roaring sea of obscenity, on the high tide bothered to define evil. I was looking for answers all of which Medusa rose and stared down at her along to questions of exploitation. And I was looking for from an immense height. By day, Elizabeth balances; that is, if we have to live with good and evil we crawled around, painfully. By night she lay back, ought to present them as they really are. That book has a pinned-down victim of approaching death. created more difficulties for me than my other two because Medusa had the air of one performing a skilled it was a complete kind of inward turning to my own life. and practiced murder. She seemed to say to There were certain things I had to sort out. The difficulties herself: it created were the two levels. The internal level was so "I'll let loose another bolt here. I'll let loose disturbing to people. And then, running throughout the another bolt there. Ahah, look how she topples book to balance it, to balance this inward turning, was an over!" everyday world where a litde village gets on with its It wasn't Elizabeth's body she was thrusting everydayaffall:s and is interested.in progress and development into extinction. It was the soul; the bolts were Everything is very sound because people have come back aimed at her soul. It seemed to make death that to me and said, "Yes, yes, it's very off-putting, you knOw. much slower, that much more piecemeal. The It violendy disturbs you on the first reading. Yes, yes." narrow mean eyes of Sello in the brown suit stared But when you go back again, once you've gone through it at her over Medusa's shoulder. In the roar of you see the conclusions reassure people because there are approaching confusion of"" mind, Elizabeth conclusions from this experience. The conclusions are thought: reassuring. But what is violendy disturbing is that you get "I ought to get someone to take care of my a reader in the helpless position of coming along with the son for me. He doesn't have to die with me." writer. It's like as you open the book you're going into a (Bessie Head, A Question of Power} dark tunnel. - And once people sense that they're being pulled into a dark tunnel where horrible things may happen INTERVIEWER: Death in this case is madness and to them they withdraw. In fact most people tell me that Elizabeth·winds up in a mental hospital. Having seen the they stopped reading the book at page fifty. They do not true faces of good and evil, or God and Satan as her want to be in a helpless position of following into a novel suggests, she emerges from the hospital with what nightmare. the writer calls "a still, lofty serenity of soul nothing could shake." In a subsequent letter to me Bessie Head said A INTERVIEWER: We'll read you a short passage fromA Question of Power is autobiographical, that she herself had Question of Power which shows the principal character, a mental breakdown and that the character of Elizabeth Elizabeth, heading toward mental collapse. Three months in the novel is hersel£ I asked Mrs. Head if she had a . after her arrival in the village she begins to imagine particular goal in her writing in general, some message intrusions into her bedroom. And soon a man named she wanted to convey to her readers. Sello, an ordinary man who drives a green truck in the daytime world, appears at night to her wavering mind, HEAD: Oh, yes. I think that my whole life has been dressed sometimes in monk's robes, sometimes in a brown shaped by my South African experience and I would never suit, bringing strange, often obscene visitors into her room. really fall into the category of a writer who produces light One of these is Medusa, the name of a monstrous female entertainment for people. My whole force and direction in Greek mythology, who hurls bolts of mysterious force comes from having something to say. What we are mainly at Elizabeth. From Bessie Head's novelAQuestion of Power very bothered about has been the dehumanizing of black we read from page eighty-seven. people. And if we can resolve these situations-and I [Interviewer reads] work both within the present and the future-if we can resolve our difficulties it is because we want a future which The year ended in a roar of pain. Sudden and is defined for our children. So then you can't sort of say terrible headaches descended on her. She lost that you have ended any specific thing or that you have track of the details of that period. N one of the changed the world. You have merely offered your view images and pictures of Medusa or Sello were of a grander world, of a world that's much grander than retained, nor their activities together. It was like a the one we've had already. 4 INTERVIEWER: Mrs. Head spoke about her audience. details. At the time of our interview Mrs. Head was She said she thought she'd built up a readership among working on another novel-a historical novel dealing, she Botswana people and among white volunteers who had said, with a time in Botswana's history when a great chief come to serve in Botswana. But she also has a wide saved that country from colonialism. audience outside Botswana and she talked particularly about the reaction of American audiences and publishers In addition to her novels she's written a number of short to her books. In speaking of a cool reception from stories, two of which have been published in Ms magazine, publishers, she obviously is referring to her second and America's leading feminist monthly magazine. Another third novels since she said earlier it was an American of her short stories is contained in the collection entided publishing firm that actually induced her to write her first More Modern African Stories, edited by professor Charles book. Larson of American University in Washington. Before bidding her farewell in Serowe I asked Bessie Head why a HEAD: I got opposition from publishers initially and I writer of such renown as she chose to remain in an isolated got tremendously perceptive and welcoming reviews from village, with no telephone, few modern conveniences, reviewers in America; whereas I've not experienced such remote from the culture of cities. She told me Serowe a grasp of real idea material in reviews in other countries suited her literary themes. She came from a humble like, say, for instance in England and other places where background, she said, and preferred ordinary people. my books are reviewed. So that there's this complete Powerful people, she went on, tended to be domineering; disparity between a publisher's estimate of his public and they don't pay their bills. The village people, she said, pay the reading public in America which actually is very their bills "meticulously." "I have the courtesies, and love, responsive to questions of human suffering. I have been of the people," she said. ''What other life can I live?" baffled because a publisher says you have to be very careful about the American public and yet the American public Head, Bessie. Marn. African Writers Series, No. 101. seems to be the most responsive and sympathetic in the London: Heinemann, 1972. world. Head, Bessie. A Question of pozver. African Writers Series INTERVIEWER: What do you see as the chief problems No. 149. London: Heinemann, 1974. ' of the writer in the society in which you live and move?

HEAD: As you know we are mainly importers of books. So that we have no publishing houses in Botswana. There are printing firms and things like that but the whole tradition of reading is almost non-existent. There is a very strong oral tradition in a country like Botswana. I've been a bit envious of what writers have and can get in America, the kinds of encouragement like grants to carry on writing for a whole year or six months and not worry about financial details. I have felt that very badly because it is extremely difficult to live on one's writing. I, as a side line, keep a little vegetable garden going and I do some peddling and that brings me in a little bit of petty cash but it's a tremendous struggle for me to keep going.

INTERVIEWER: Since our interview, Bessie Head was invited to participate in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in the United States. In late nineteen seventy-seven she left her village of Serowe for a four-month stay at this Midwestern American university, free to write, to meet authors from all over the world, to discuss the problems of the literary artist, free-as she Cover of Conversations with African Writers: Interviews with Twenty-Six African Authors, by Lee Nichols. had put it to me earlier-from worrying about financial r:: Nichols, Lee. seven days per week. He was appointed Special Born January 2, 1915, in Projects Officer in the VOA African Division in 1973 Hawthorne, New York. and in that capacity has been working on special He obtained a B.A. in reporting assignments in Africa. He is the author of journalism and a the VOA series "African Universities in the Seventies: master's degree in Progress and Problems"; "Conversations with African international relations Writers"; "Science in Africa"; and a number of special and international programs on development in Africa. communications from The American University, In 1996, Lee Nichols donated the entire collection of Lee Nichols, right, with late Washington, D. C. He materials related to his African writers project to the Somali author Musa Galaal worked successively for a Archives of Traditional Music. The collection (accession small daily newspaper, a number 96-284-F /B)includes not only all of the Voice of black weekly newspaper and a trade union publication America broadcasts, but also the complete taped in the United States before being employed by United interviews from which the broadcasts were edited, a total Press International, one of the leading American news of 175 tapes. Correspondence with the writers, agencies, where he worked for 17 years as a reporter, writer and editor. He joined the Voice of America in background materials about the writers that Nichols 1958. He launched VOA's English-to-Africa service in collected, photographs aswell as literary manuscripts that 1963 with the half-hour program "African Panorama"­ the writers sent to Nichols are also included in the a service which has since expanded to six hours daily, collection.

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