#bessiehead

[chrislanier]

#whenraincloudsgather #bessiehead #iapprovethisbookcover Actually finished this several months ago, but wanted to make note of it. Have been wanting to re-read books that were important to me in my 20s. In under 150 pages, this weaves together the experience of undocumented refugees, the precarity of human civilization in relation to the environment, tensions between science and tradition, the political corruption of comfortable elites, the potentially fatal inertia of our various tribalisms... written long before climate change became a household world, Head managed to sketch out our global situation in the microcosm of a small village in Botswana. It’s also a very moving book about the thirst for belonging to a community, and the struggle to find a home on the earth. I feel (and fear) its relevance will only grow in the coming decades. https://www.instagram.com/p/B6Y_4e-BReA/?igshid=pqwend277w6s

[edaciouspod]

She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless she persisted. #bessiehead #herstory #blackhistorymonth #shepersisted #neverthelessshepersisted (at Women's Equality)

[ciao-stella]

There was a world apart from petty human hatreds and petty human social codes and values where the human soul roamed free in all its splendour and glory. No barriers of race or creed or tribe hindered its activity

Maru Bessie Head

[recoveringwhitegirl]

Quote

"He was literally suffocating. Inside the fat, overstuffed body was a spirit that fiercely resented intense, demanding, vicious people. It was as though they had the power to trap him inside a dark airless tunnel when all he wanted was the casualness of the free air" - Bessie Head

[kegakilwe]

The contradictions were apparent to Makhaya, and perhaps there was no greater crime as yet than all the lies Western civilization had told in the name of Jesus Christ. It seemed to Makhaya far preferable for Africa if it did without Christianity and Christian double-talk, fat priests, golden images, and looked around at all the thin naked old men who sat under trees weaving baskets with shaking hands. People could do without religions and Gods who died for the sins of the world and thereby left men without any feeling of self-responsibility for the crimes they committed. This seemed to Makhaya the greatest irony of Christianity. It meant that a white man could forever go on slaughtering black men simply because Jesus Christ would save him from his sins. Africa could do without a religion like that.

 Bessie Head, When Rain Clouds Gather