When Rain Clouds Gather Explained

When Rain Clouds Gather
Author:Bessie Head
Orig Lang Code:en
Country:United Kingdom
Language:English
Set In:Eastern Botswana, 1960s
Publisher:Victor Gollancz
Pub Date:1968
Media Type:Print: hardback octavo
Pages:188
Isbn:0435121685
Oclc:251800534
Dewey:823.914
Congress:PR9408.B553H4
Followed By:Maru

When Rain Clouds Gather is the first novel by South African-Motswana author Bessie Head, published in 1968.[1] [2] [3]

Having left South Africa in 1964, Head wrote the novel while in exile in Botswana, completing it in 1967.[4] It was first published in London by Victor Gollancz and subsequently by William Heinemann (1972), and in the US by Simon & Schuster.[5]

Plot

Makehaya escapes Apartheid South Africa into Botswana. In the village of Golema Mmidi he meets Gilbert, an Englishman who is trying to modernise farming. They join forces to create a utopia but are opposed by the village chief.

Reception

David P. Bargueño wrote that the book emphasises the twin aspects of hope and despair, and that it depicts love as "a magical force that can overcome insuperable challenges", an idea not present in Head's 1971 work A Question of Power, written after her nervous breakdown.[6]

Helen Oyeyemi wrote of When Rain Clouds Gather and Head that "Her men […] are intensely perceptive, imbued with a 'feminine sensitivity' that raises them above the level of 'grovelling sex organs' that Head complained African men were traditionally reduced to within their communities.[7] "

Writing in Open Cultural Studies in 2019, Gerd Bayer says that When Rain Clouds Gather "anticipated some of the politics of early twenty-first-century environmental thinking in the postcolonial sphere. The alliance of various marginalized characters who, one way or another, violate against existing hegemonic structures replaces the ideological and cultural conflict over territory."[8]

In 2022, When Rain Clouds Gather was included on the Big Jubilee Read, a list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors produced to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee.[9] [10]

The novel is referenced in the project When Rain Clouds Gather: Black South African Women Artists, 1940–2000, curated by Portia Malatjie and Nontobeko Ntombela.[11]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: When Rain Clouds Gather | Encyclopedia.com. www.encyclopedia.com.
  2. Web site: 248. When Rain Clouds Gather by Bessie Head*. 12 July 2013. ImageNations.
  3. Web site: Why Bessie Head wrote. Darryl. Accone. News24. 6 July 2021.
  4. Book: Postcolonial African Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Siga Fatima. Jagne. Pushpa Naidu. Parekh. 12 November 2012. Routledge. 9781136593970 . Google Books.
  5. Web site: When Rain Clouds Gather. Bessie. Head. 22 April 1968. openpublishing.psu.edu.
  6. Book: Irele, Abiola. The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought. 22 April 2010. Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-533473-9 . Google Books.
  7. Book: Head, Bessie. When Rain Clouds Gather And Maru. 2 September 2010. Little, Brown Book Group. 9780748125685 . Google Books.
  8. When Earth Matters: Bessie Head's When Rain Clouds Gather. Gerd. Bayer. 1 January 2019. Open Cultural Studies. 3. 1. 448–455. www.degruyter.com. 10.1515/culture-2019-0038. 198490260 . free.
  9. News: The God of Small Things to Shuggie Bain: the Queen's jubilee book list. Harriet. Sherwood. 18 April 2022. The Guardian.
  10. Web site: BBC Arts - BBC Arts - The Big Jubilee Read: Books from 1962 to 1971. BBC. 17 April 2022.
  11. Web site: 'When Rain Clouds Gather: Black South African Women Artists, 1940–2000. ArtForum. October 2022. 11 May 2023.