Background
Ethnicity:
Head was the daughter of a white woman and black man.
Being the daughter of a White mother (who was disowned by her parents when she became pregnant and sent to a mental asylum where Head was born) and a Black father, she had a very difficult childhood. Allegedly her foster parents rejected her at some stage because she was too Black and she was then raised in an Anglican mission orphanage. She was granted Botswana citizenship in 1979.
Career
Head trained as a primary school teacher and taught for a few years but in 1959 she began a career as a journalist. She wrote short stories for Johannesburg’s Golden City Post a weekly supplement that was related to the more famous Drum magazine. Her work for Drum magazine won her a reputation as writer.In 1960 Head moved to Cape Town where she became part of a group of anti-apartheid activists.She married fellow activist Harold Head in 1962. Together they lived in District Six and Head worked for a monthly magazine, The New African where she found general support for her Africanist politics. During this period in District Six, Head wrote her first novel, The Cardinals but this was only published after her death.In 1963, she moved to Port Elizabeth with her husband, where he was to work as the first Black reporter for the Evening Post. In Botswana, Head taught for a while and then started to work on the Swaneng Hill project dealing with community farming education in Serowe, but had a difficult time as she experienced rejection from the Africans of Botswana. After losing her job as a teacher she worked on a farm and then for a construction company. She turned to writing, and in her writing draws from her experiences in South Africa. She talks about her vision for the future and the problems she experienced with identity. In Botswana, Head wrote a short novel, When Rain Clouds Gather followed by Maru, a novel that dealt with the oppression against the Masarwa people. After Maru, Head wrote A Question of Power which is a reflection of her experience of a mental breakdown that she suffered as a result of living in fear and poverty as a refugee.In 1977 she published the first collection of short stories (The Collector of Treasures) to be published by a black South African woman. The Botswana government finally granted Head citizenship in 1979, which allowed her to travel overseas. Her reputation as a writer grew and she often met academics and students who wished to make her work the subject of their thesis and even South African publishers eventually published her work.