Bessie Head was a South African writer of mixed race who faced discrimination due to her illegitimate status and complex racial background. She wrote short stories capturing the African experience with colonialism, apartheid, and exploitation. Her story "The Collector of Treasures" depicts a woman who murders her abusive husband after facing domestic violence and oppression as a result of the intersection of race, class, and gender roles in her society. The story examines themes of feminism, patriarchy, and Head's vision for a more equitable and humane society beyond racial and gender divides.

1.  BESSIE HEAD
 Bessie Amelia Emery Head, a South African coloured writer (1937-1986)
 White upper class mother and a black labourer, reversing the gender and race
normative power structures. ‘Othered’ not just by men, black and white, but also
faced internal colonization for being illegitimate, mixed-race and reversing the
colonial sexual politics of white man raping the black woman, just as Africa raped
by Europe.
 Miscgenation (inter-racial breeding) led the mother to be confined to a mental
asylum while she was pregnant where she committed suicide after 6 years and
Head was adopted by a coloured family till 13 but shifted to an orphanage.
 Moved to Cape Town in 1957 – coloured population yet faced discrimination for
being illegitimate. Also people spoke Afrikaans whereas she spoke English so faced
cultural, social, racial, linguistic ‘othering’.
 Briefly joined ANC AND BCM but soon left it, printed her own newspaper The
Citizen

2.  The movements failed to satisfy her humanistic stance of inclusivity of mankind –
irrespective of class, race, gender and found them focussed more upon polarization
of blacks and whites:
“Some people can hog the black skin for themselves but I have to opt for mankind
as a whole”
 Took refuge in the British Protectorate, later Botswana, that was not a colony of
British Dominion, and yet remained an outsider for not being ‘black enough’.
 Left journalism to become a writer, unlike her contemporaries, who lived in the city
and preferred to describe the rural experience. Most African writers devoted to
portray the ‘African urban male experience’ – “Jim comes to Jo’burg”, the popular
motif
 Exiled in her own land, from Botswana to Serowe, teacher then wrirer
 Famous novels: When Rain Clouds Gather, A Question of Power, A Bewitched
Crossroad
 Collection of short stories: The Collector of Treasures
 Non: Fiction: Serowe: Village of the Rainwind

3. AFRICAN SHORT STORIES
 Marginalized since novel is a more popular genre
 Male writers like Achebe and Rushdie have received recognition for their short stories but
women, then black, or coloured could not receive recognition till late 29th century
 Capture the African experience of colonialism, apartheid, sexual exploitation, in a condensed
plot structure and characterization
 Short stories by African women face multiple levels of discrimination – race, gender and less
popular genre of writing
 Oral narratives encapsulated into written form

4.  Black Feminist Movement/ Womanism
 Black Feminism movement focusses specifically on the concerns of African-American women
as opposed to the white women
 African womanism arose with the publication of Clenora Hudson-Weem’s Africana Womanism:
Reclaiming Ourselves, that rejected feminism as a movement since the experience of a white
woman and a white man is different from that of a black woman and a black man who is
doubly oppressed and ‘othered’ due to race, class and gender
 Colonialism and racism redefined conventional gender roles therefore the feminist movement
in the West cannot understand the needs and struggles of African women
 “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender” – Alice Walker coined it in her short story
“Coming Apart”. The debate continues whether feminism or womanism is the umbrella term
for the inclusion of the other.
 Womanism according to Walker, is a more humane approach, concerning the well-being of
both men and women. She writes it is at the “intersection of race, class, and gender
oppression

5.  Bell Hooks: Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981)
 “racism has always been a divisive force separating black men and white men, and sexism has
been a force that unites the two groups”
 Hooks explores the plight of Black women due to racism, slavery and gender
 Alice Walker: In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens
 Defines ‘womanist’ as a ‘black feminist of feminist of colour’
 Paula J Giddings: When and Where I Enter
 “In the first place, she said, Jesus came from ‘God and a woman – man had nothing to do with
it’
 Barbara Smith: Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology
 Lesbian feminist struggle
 “A black feminist perspective has no use for ranking oppressions, but instead demonstrates the
simultaneity of oppressions as they affect Third World women’s lives”

6. The Collector of Treasures
 Oral culture, rural life at the centre. MacKenzie says the story is, “representative rather than
unique example of village life” The choice of the short story over the novel is also deliberate
to emphasize on the orality of African culture.
 Story is based on a real episode in the village in Serowe reconstructed from informal gossip
and oral narrative, her journalist background being a contributory factor
 Black man reduced to ‘boy’ , slavery and so wished to oppress black woman further to claim
their sexuality and manhood as in the case of the protagonist’s husband Garasego, abuse
power as they are accustomed to themselves
 Two kinds of men ; Men like Paul, the neighbour are the hope and future – positing an
equitable society
 Paul-Dikeledi friendship is an ideal example of unconventional companionship, respect
between men and women.
 Female solidarity can be seen between Dikeledi and Kenalepe and in the prison cell
 Patriarchy is based on sexual/phallic oppression and so the protagonist castrates the
husband.

7.  Breakdown of family life, migrant labour due to colonialism, patriarchal oppression,
apartheid, segregation form the backdrop
 Feminist stance as she portrays the protagonist as one who protests against her
victimization in addition to the community of women in the prison also having
committed murder of their husbands. The titular ‘collector of treasures’, Dikeledi not
just claims her individuality but also of black women as a community
 Short story gives brevity, enhances small episodes of daily village life, can lend both
individual and communal experience as opposed to a novel.
 The individual’s story is that of the community – condition of the protagonist is of
that of black women, deprived of education, abandoned by men having extra
marital affairs, struggling with financial stress, rearing children and so on.
 Progressive writer to depict the gender roles in her society and yet offering
alternatives by making the protagonist a strong and self-reliant woman as well as via
characters like Paul and his wife.

8.  Issues:
 Black Feminism/womanism and Head’s denial to be labelled as a feminist
 Title – symbolic of author as a tribal historian; art of story telling
 Colonialism, Neo-colonialism and Racism, Socialism
 Reconstruction of gender roles as a result of intersection of race, class and gender:
Education of women, financial dependence on men, friendship between protagonist and
Paul, Paul as emotional and protagonist as aggressive, violent ; good vs evil men, female
solidarity in prison – thatching, cooking, weaving make Dikeledi and other women offering
support to each other, African man as ‘boy’.
 Family as dysfunctional also result of colonial intersection, extra marital affairs, African
men
 Individual vs communal; rural vs urban experience, dialogic narration, short story genre,
orature recording, looking at in-between spaces, ‘othered’ spaces such as her illegitimacy,
mixed-race, colonialism, racism, humanism as opposed to black nationalism

9.  Protagonist’s name meaning ‘tears’, In her discussion o f The collector o f
treasures Susan Gardner (1989:231) alludes that this collection “has a discernible
feminist content” because it focuses on “the insistence that women have
suffered systematic social injustice because o f their sex”. Following a discussion
of Dikeledi’s deed Bessie Head mentioned towards Susan Gardner (1989:14) that
the story was so shocking to hear: “I’ve never heard of a man being murdered by
his genitals being slit off. But it showed the deep psychological trauma the
woman had lived with”.
 Sexual politics and patriarchy; ‘phallic’ power - Toril Moi (1985: 179n) explains
phallocentrism as “a system that privileges the phallus as the symbol or source
of power”. Following Lacan one should always realise that “phallus” does not
merely refer to the penis itself but it is also a symbolic construct signifying male
dominance in society. Jones (1985:83) points out that since women lack the
phallus, which she regards as “tlie positive symbol of gender, self-possession and
worldly authority”, they not only occupy a negative position in society but also
within man-made language.

10.  All characters in story are non-conventional and part of larger humanist political stance
of the author, female as protagonist and as murderer, Garesego as the phallocentric
misogynist yet a ‘boy’ to the European and Paul as the new African man of her vision,
Paul’s wife ready to share her husband sexually making man as an object of exchange, a
sexual commodity – envisioning a progressively humane society in terms of class, race
and gender
 Theme/s, setting, plot, narration (multiple points of view), characterization,
climax, conflict/s in the narrative etc
 The end : does prison signify women’s non-acceptance as powerful, does the
author then conform to normative or resists the same? Or does it suggest an
exclusive space for women as a solution, prison as bot tragedy yet liberation??