BOTM August - A Question of Power

[Celia]

Bessie Head’s A Question of Power is a novel on two levels: On the literal level, it is the story of the woman Elizabeth, who has come to Botswana with her small son as an exile from South Africa. Elizabeth first teaches school and later becomes involved in a cooperative farming venture designed to boost the economy of the village of Motabeng and to instill some pride in the Batswana. On this level, the story has little action and few emotional hills and valleys. On another level, however, the novel is a record of Elizabeth’s mental breakdown and of her wavering in and out of the terrifying world of insanity. The daytime world of Elizabeth’s mundane chores and her routine work at the school and later in the gardens contrasts sharply with the nighttime world that eventually takes over and leads to her total mental collapse.

Reared in South Africa by a foster mother, whom she believes is her true mother, Elizabeth is shocked, on being sent to a mission school, to learn that her mother is white and that she is living in a nearby mental hospital. Elizabeth’s teachers are warned to be on guard against any signs that the child is afflicted with the mother’s illness. Only after Elizabeth leaves South Africa to answer an advertisement for teachers in Botswana, walking out on a cheating husband and taking with her a small son, does she indeed start to show signs of insanity. Within three months of her arrival in Botswana, the normal and the abnormal start to blur for Elizabeth. She starts to hallucinate, and in the fantasy world created by her disturbed mind, she is obsessed with questions about the soul and the nature of good and evil. Good and evil take human shape in her fantasies, starting when she awakens one night to imagine a man sitting in the chair by her bed.

From
https://www.enotes.com/topics/questio...

[Rosemarie]

I read this book last year and it was worth the effort since it opened my eyes to a very different cultural experience. There is a real depth to the writing as well.

[Gail]

I just finished A Question of Power and have to let some time go by to process it fully. I am also sure that this book needs to be read more than once.
The book describes in truly beautiful writing, a visual argument between two different sets of power that are working aggressively to kill the soul of our main character, Elizabeth. The two ends of the power struggle do not break down into good and evil and even though they lean toward the spiritual versus the sexual, that doesn't capture it either. Both characters exist in real life and are named Sello and Dan, but our main character Elizabeth does not really know them in real life. She only knows them in her dream state and in her state of mental collapse.
The reader is dragged through the total fragmentation of Elizabeth's mind and because nothing is ever explained or given any context other than through Elizabeth's mind and observations we experience the mental breakdown as she does.
In this way the book is a discussion about power, the power dynamics of mental health, but also of gender dynamics in that Elizabeth can pit the two against each other but has no way of fighting back except to persevere. She is fully submissive to these male forces.
The book also shines a light on racism as Elizabeth experienced the extreme racism of South Africa and on moving to Botswana experiences being an outsider as she is of mixed race and has no local tribal or village affiliation.
The sections in the book in which Elizabeth is acting relatively normal and we get to see her interact with Tom or Kenosi and "the small boy", who is her son but who she does not recognize as someone to love, only someone to feed now and then, are a strange relief from the sexual screaming happening in the rest of the book.
This is a truly powerful book unlike any other I have read but it is not an enjoyable book to be so fully drowned in and yet that is the only way to read this book, to live through it.
I am giving it 4 stars but may up that after I process further.