SOURCE: Head, Bessie. “Social and Political Pressures That Shape Literature in Southern Africa.” World Literature Written in English 18, no. 1 (April 1979): 20-6.

In the following autobiographical essay, Head describes the ways in which her works reflect “the whole spectrum of Southern African preoccupations—refugeeism, racialism, patterns of evil, and the ancient Southern African historical dialogue.” Denied a passport to return to South Africa, the exiled writer settled in neighboring Botswana, where she lived and wrote until her death in 1986.

In some inexplicable way the South American writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, captured the whole soul of ancient Southern African history in a few casual throw-away lines in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude:

… In the small separate room, where the walls were gradually being covered by strange maps and fabulous drawings, he taught them to read and write and do sums, and he spoke to them about the wonders...