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    A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "When Rain Clouds Gather"
    A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "When Rain Clouds Gather"
    A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "When Rain Clouds Gather"
    Ebook42 pages45 minutes

    A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "When Rain Clouds Gather"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "When Rain Clouds Gather," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535842792
    A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "When Rain Clouds Gather"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "When Rain Clouds Gather" - Gale

      10

      When Rain Clouds Gather

      Bessie Head

      1969

      Introduction

      Bessie Head's When Rain Clouds Gather, published in 1969, is a story about people as well as about a land. The people in the book come from varied walks of life, with many of them being refugees from places that did not appreciate them. The main characters are looking for newer and better lives. The land is in the southern African country of Botswana, a harsh, mostly desolate place. As the characters work with the land they are living on, they study it in hopes of discovering what the land is capable of producing. In many ways, the characters are similarly studying themselves and their own abilities.

      When Rain Clouds Gather was Head's first novel. Many of her characters are based on real people she met while she, like the people in this novel, was a refugee. While living in Botswana, Head lived in a village somewhat like the village she creates in her story. She became fascinated with the agricultural experiments that were going on in the village, so much so that she dedicates some of her story to describing the development of the land. The narrative that involves the agricultural processes, far from being a dry exploration of technical terms, reflects present-day concerns about the preservation and sustainability of the land.

      At the heart of this novel, however, are the people and their need for freedom, love, respectability, and appreciation. Their lives are harsh in many ways, but they all have dreams of a better future. They also have the will and determination to work toward realizing their goals.

      Author Biography

      Bessie Head lived a tragic life, beginning with her birth. Head was born on July 6, 1937, in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, the child of a white woman and a black African man. She learned very little about her biological parents: she knew only that her father was black and that her mother (also named Bessie) was psychologically unstable, giving birth to her daughter while a patient in Fort Napier Mental Hospital. After birth, Head was briefly adopted by an unnamed white couple who returned her once they discovered she was biracial. Shortly afterward, Nellie and George Heathcote adopted Head, and they would become the only parents she would know. Head's biological mother died in the hospital when Head was six years old.

      When she was fourteen, Head was sent away to school. While there, one of the school's administrators told Head that the Heathcotes were not her real parents. It was the first time Head had heard this, and the news traumatized her; she sought comfort in reading. After graduating from high school, Head taught for two years but found she did not like teaching, and was more interested in writing. At the age of twenty-one, she found a job as a journalist for

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