Bessie Head

Bessie Amelia Emery Head, known as Bessie Head (6 July 1937 – 17 April 1986), though born in South Africa, is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer. She wrote novels, short fiction and autobiographical works.

Bessie Amelia Emery was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. It was claimed that her mother was mentally ill so that she could be sent to a quiet location to give birth to Bessie without the neighbours knowing. However, the exact circumstances are disputed, and some of Bessie Head's comments, though often quoted as straight autobiography, are in fact from fictionalized settings. After her mother killed herself, Bessie was raised by foster parents and later in a mission orphanage.

Qualifying as a teacher in January 1957, she taught at a school in Clairwood, a suburb of Durban, then between 1958 and 1960 was employed as a journalist by The Golden City Post and Drum magazine. She joined the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1960. On 1 September 1961 she married Harold Head.

In 1964, abandoning her life in South Africa, she moved with her young son to Botswana (then still the Bechuanaland Protectorate) seeking asylum, having been peripherally involved with Pan-African politics. It would take 15 years for Head to obtain Botswana citizenship. Head settled in Serowe, the largest of Botswana's "villages" (i.e. traditional settlements as opposed to settler towns). Serowe was famous both for its historical importance, as capital of the Bamangwato people, and for the experimental Swaneng school of Patrick van Rensburg. The deposed chief of the Bamangwato, Seretse Khama, was soon to become the first President of independent Botswana.

Her early death in Serowe in 1986 (aged 48) from hepatitis came just at the point where she was starting to achieve recognition as a writer and was no longer so desperately poor.

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