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Informationen zum Autor MAXINE SAMPLE is Associate Professor of English at State University of West Georgia, where she teaches African and African American literature courses. She has published in such journals as Modern Fiction Studies and Studies in Short Fiction . Klappentext Through narrative and rhetorical strategies that subvert genre and challenge the discourse of race and gender, black South African woman writer Bessie Head creates alternative healing spaces that empower and enoble the marginalized, provide potential for transcendence and self-creation, and render ineffective the power of language to subjugate. This book features new critical material on her life and works and explores the techniques she uses to inscribe an idealistic vision in response to the psychic fragmentation and rootlessness she experienced as an exile.The traumatized characters of When Rain Clouds Gather reflect Head's own use of agriculture and writing as means of coping with her suffering. Maru is a radical subversion of the romance genre, arguing for black women's need for space as creators. A Question of Power employs madness as a potential site of resistance to official constructions of reality. Viewed from the Lacanian association of the incest taboo and the entry into language, The Cardinals proposes a cosmic realm as an alternative to the categorical edicts of patriarchal language. And endowed with a didactic voice, the narrator of The Collector of Treasures claims the authority of several hundred groups to critique the patriarchal society she views. The contributors to this volume draw on new biographical information as well as Head's private papers. Zusammenfassung Through narrative and rhetorical strategies that subvert genre and challenge the discourse of race and gender! black South African woman writer Bessie Head creates alternative healing spaces that empower and enoble the marginalized! provide potential for transcendence and self-creation! and render ineffective the power of language to subjugate. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction Artist in Exile: The Life of Bessie Head by Maxine Sample Agriculture and Healing: Transforming Space, Transforming Trauma in Bessie Head's When Rain Clouds Gather by Maureen Fielding Space: An Experiential Perspective: Bessie Head's When Rain Clouds Gather by Maxine Sample Bessie Head's Maru:Writing after the End of Romance by Colette Guldimann "A Peculiar Shuttling Movement": Madness, Passing, and Trespassing in Bessie Head's A Question of Power by Helen Kapstein The Cardinals: Reclaiming Language through the "Permanent Revolution of Language": Literature by Colette Guldimann The Didactic Judgment of a Woman Writer: Bessie Head's The Collector of Treasures by Loretta Stec Bessie Head: A Bibliographic Essay by Maxine Sample Notes Index Contributors ...
