Migration and Exile: The Exotic Essence of Life in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather

Agbo, Joshua

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-96496-6_5

Migration and Exile: The Exotic Essence of Life in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather

Joshua Agbo⁵

Chapter
First Online: 09 October 2018

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Part of the book series: African Histories and Modernities ((AHAM))

Abstract

Under the flashing light of hope, Makhaya Maseko, the protagonist of Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather, seeks exile in a world elsewhere. For him, exile is always about a journey and the discovery of new places through migration. It is about the search for home by homing away from the harsh environment of one’s birthplace. It is about the search for selfhood, the shaping, and reshaping of migratory experience by peeling off the old self for a new self to grow. It is about the redefinition of the exile’s identity within the migratory space. To be more than one, Makhaya changes his name and identity in several circumstances, and from the beginning of the story, he has a feeling of exile and he longs to be part of it. He represents both belonging and estrangement, desire and exile, migration, and the formation of multiple identities. He sees all of these as an existential core of life, regardless of the pains and harassments involved in the crossing of border to exile. He attempts to process the paradox of belonging to two worlds: that of South Africa and Botswana, in which the way he lives moulds his story and his story moulds the way he lives in these two worlds. This chapter explores the threshold of migration and exile within the post-colonial context.

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Notes

1.
Paul Auster, “An Interview with Edmond Jabès,” The Sin of the Book: Edmond Jabès (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 17.
2.
Studs Terkel, Hope Dies Last: Making a Difference in an Indifferent World (London: Granta Books, 2003), xi.
3.
Terkel, Hope Dies Last: xi.
4.
Bessie Emery Amelia Head, When Rain Clouds Gather (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1969), 1.
5.
Coetzee John Maxwell, Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons, (New York: Viking Press, 2003), 38.
6.
Maxwell, Elizabeth Costello: 38.
7.
Maxwell, Elizabeth Costello: 38.
8.
Paul Tabori, The Anatomy of Exile (London: Harrap, 1972), 30.
9.
Percy Mosieleng, “The Condition of Exile and the Negation of Commitment: A Biographical Study of Bessie Head’s Novels,” Emerging Perspectives on Bessie Head, ed. Ibrahim Huma, (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2004), 51.
10.
Edward Said, “The Mind of Winter: Reflections on Life in Exile,” Harper’s September (N.P., 1984), 54.
11.
Desiree Lewis, “Power, Representation and the Textual Politics of Bessie Head,” Emerging Perspectives on Bessie Head, ed. Ibrahim Huma, (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2004), 123.
12.
Lewis, “Power, Representation and the Textual Politics…” 123.
13.
Lewis, “Power, Representation and the Textual Politics…” 123.
14.
Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association Books, 1991), 123.
15.
Yuval-Davies Nira, The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations (London: Sage, 2011), 6.
16.
Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: 123.
17.
Edward Hall, The Hidden Dimension (New York: Anchor, 1966), xi.
18.
Howard F. Stein, Developmental Time, Cultural Space: Studies in Psychogeography (Norman: University of Oklohoma, 1987), xii.
19.
Stein, Developmental Time, Cultural Space: 4.
20.
Head, When Rain, 127.
21.
Head, When Rain, 127.
22.
Head, When Rain, 127.
23.
Maxine Sample, “Space: An Experiential Perspective: Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather,”
Critical Essays on Bessie Head, Sample Maxine, ed., (Westport: Praeger, 2003), 35.
24.
Sample, “Space: An Experiential Perspective:” 35.
25.
Victor Turner, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage,” Betwixt and Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation, Louise Carus Mahdi, Stephen Foster, and Meredith Little, eds., (LaSalle Open Court, 1987), 6.
26.
Sample, “Space: An Experiential Perspective:” 35.
27.
Turner, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage,” 9.
28.
Head, When Rain, 3.
29.
Head, When Rain, 3.
30.
Head, When Rain, 3.
31.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Les Confessions, in Confession,” Autres Textes Autobiographique: Oeuvres Completes, (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2000), 95.
32.
Michael de Montaigne, “Du Repentir,” Essais, (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1965), 13.
33.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding of Identity and Discovery (London: Penguin, 2004), 14.
34.
Head, When Rain, 1.
35.
NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names (London: Chatto & Windus, 2013), 82.
36.
Head, A Bewitched Crossroad (Johannesburg: Donker, 1984), 130.
37.
Lewis, “Power, Representation and the Textual Politics…” 123.
38.
Head, The Deep River: A Story of Ancient Tribal Migration, 6.
39.
Head, The Deep River: 6.
40.
Head, The Deep River: 6.
41.
Head, The Deep River: 5.
42.
Head, When Rain, 3.
43.
Head, When Rain, 3.
44.
Head, When Rain, 3.
45.
Head, When Rain, 3.
46.
Head, When Rain, 4.
47.
Head, When Rain, 4.
48.
Head, When Rain, 4.
49.
Head, When Rain, 4–5.
50.
Head, When Rain, 5.
51.
Head, When Rain, 5.
52.
Head, When Rain, 5.
53.
Head, When Rain, 6.
54.
Deborah B. Fontenot, A Vision of Anarchy: Correlate Structures of Exile and Madness in Selected Works of Doris Lessing and her South African Contemporaries (Ph.D. diss, University of Illinois, 1988), 16.
55.
Head, When Rain, 11.
56.
Head, When Rain, 11.
57.
Head, When Rain, 11.
58.
Edward Relph, “Geographical Experiences and Being-in-the-World: The Phenomenological Origins of Geography,” Dwelling, Place, and Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World, David Seamon and Robert Mugerauer, eds., (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Nijhoff, 1985), 38.
59.
Head, When Rain, 12.
60.
Sample, “Space: An Experiential Perspective:” 43.
61.
Jean Marguard, “Bessie Head: Exile and Community in Southern Africa,” London Magazine. Vol. No. 18, 1979, 55.
62.
Lewis, “Power, Representation and the Textual Politics…” 130.
63.
Head, When Rain, 2.
64.
Head, When Rain, 8.
65.
Alan Bennett, Writing Home (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), 54.
66.
Head, When Rain, 7.
67.
Head, When Rain, 7.
68.
Head, When Rain, 8.
69.
Head, When Rain, 9.
70.
Head, When Rain, 9.
71.
Head, When Rain, 9.
72.
Head, When Rain, 18.
73.
Head, When Rain, 17.
74.
Belinda Bozzoli, “Class, Community and Ideology in the Evolution of South African Society,” Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives, Bozzoli Belinda, ed., (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987), 14.
75.
Lewis, “Power, Representation and the Textual Politics…” 131.
76.
Head, When Rain, 17.
77.
Head, When Rain, 17.
78.
Head, When Rain, 184.
79.
Head, When Rain, 184.
80.
Head, When Rain, 192.
81.
Head, When Rain, 7.
82.
Head, When Rain, 7.
83.
Head, When Rain, 13.
84.
Head, When Rain, 13.
85.
Head, When Rain, 13.
86.
Head, When Rain, 5.
87.
Lewis Nkosi, Tasks and Masks: Themes and Styles of African Literature (Harlow: Longman, 1981), 101.

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Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK
Joshua Agbo

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Joshua Agbo
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Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada
Kenneth Kalu
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
Toyin Falola

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Agbo, J. (2019). Migration and Exile: The Exotic Essence of Life in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather. In: Kalu, K., Falola, T. (eds) Exploitation and Misrule in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96496-6_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96496-6_5
Published: 09 October 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-96495-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-96496-6
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