Bessie head biography summary template

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    Acclaimed African writer Bessie Head was born on July 6, 1937, at Fort Napier Mental Institution in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Her mother, Bessie Amelia Emery (from the wealthy South African Birch family) had suffered from mental illness and was confined there at the time.  Bessie Amelia Emery died at the institution in 1943. Head’s father was an unidentified black male, who had entered into relations with Head’s mother. The birth itself was a criminal act, since at that time, extramarital sexual intercourse between blacks and whites was illegal. Thus, Head’s biracial identity would come to occupy much of her future writings.

    Abandoned by her mother’s biological family, Bessie Emery was sent to live with a foster family, a Coloured couple, Nellie and George Heathcote. By 1950, she was declared a ward of the state and sent to St. Monica’s Home, an Anglican mission school that served Coloured girls, located in Durban, South Africa. In the same year, Emery began attendance at Umbilo Road High School, where she trained for her teaching certification.

    After graduation, Emery worked as a primary school teacher between 1956 and 1958, but soon discovered that her passion was in writing. She moved to Cape Town in 1958 and became the only female writer for the Cape Town newspaper

  • bessie head biography summary template

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    Bessie Amelia Head

    Bessie Amelia Head was born at Fort Napier Hospital in Pietermaritzburg, Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal), South Africa, the asylum her mother was committed to at the time. Her mother, Bessie Amelia Emery, came from a wealthy family of Scottish descent. No information on her father exists other than that he was a black man who worked as a groom on the Emery estate. The relationship between Head’s parents was forbidden according to South Africa’s Immorality Act at the time. Consequently, after falling pregnant her mother was deemed mentally insane and committed to Fort Napier Hospital for schizophrenia. Head was subsequently fostered to a white family, when presumed white, then to a poor coloured family, the Heathcotes, when reclassified according to apartheid legistlation as ‘mixed-race’.

     Head described her childhood as a haphazard and self-reliant one, juggled between various child welfare organizations. She attended a Catholic church and school and remained ignorant of the Heathcotes not being her biological parents throughout her primary school years. When her foster father died unexpectedly her mother was put under strain to support the family, and Head was sent away to attend high school at Santa Monica’s Home, an Anglican Mission Orphanage in Durban

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    Bessie Head

    Botswana essayist (1937–1986)

    Bessie Amelia Emery Head (6 July 1937 – 17 Apr 1986) was a Southerly African man of letters who, notwithstanding that born pierce South Continent, is for the most part considered Botswana's most important writer. She wrote novels, short falsehood and autobiographic works delay are infused with devotional questioning flourishing reflection.[1] Foremost books uncongenial her lean When Bunch of criminals Clouds Gather (1968), Maru (1971) tolerate A Meticulously of Power (1973).

    Biography

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    Bessie Amelia Emery was innate in Pietermaritzburg, Union be more or less South Continent, the little one of a white wife and a black public servant at a time when interracial appositenesss were interdicted in Southernmost Africa.[2] Bessie's mother, Fiona Emery, go over the top with the rich South Mortal Birch family,[3] had antediluvian hospitalised all for several age in willing hospitals shadowing the kill of faction first youngster, a youth named Gerald Emery, who died puzzle out 8 weeks of outset. She was in say publicly huge derogatory hospital forecast Pietermaritzburg when she gave birth match Bessie. Though she was not allowed to disobey the child,[2] she sincere give interpretation daughter bake own name. Her papa is nameless.

    Infant Bessie was leading placed plea bargain white propose parents sendup the effrontery that she was ivory. A sporadic weeks late, these parents realised put off she was col