Living on a Horizon Bessie Head and the Politics of Imagining

Bessie Head's writing illustrates a fusion of styles, subjects and philosophical and literary influences. This book explores this range by drawing both on postcolonial and feminist theories. Focusing on Head's acute sensitivity to social and historical experiences, the book deals with Head's use of myths and trans-cultural fictions that convey knowledge about her immediate world and the historical domains beyond it. In addition, Bessie Head's autobiographical vision generates an exploration of personal injustices as well as the processes they signal. Hinduism and eastern philosophy were central to Head's philosophical vision, and the book shows how this vision allowed her to explore existential questions and spiritual concerns in innovative and unexpected ways. By using language auto-referentially and symbolically, by drawing on myths and by developing abundantly textured metaphors, Head produces fictions that manifest the notions of freedom and serenity she urgently endorses, and that are as concerned with challenging the realities she confronts as they are with utopian imagining.