Quote by Bessie Head: “Grief does not change you. It reveals you.”

Loss doesn't make you into a different person — it strips away the surface layers and shows what was already there underneath. How you grieve — what you reach for, what breaks, what holds — tells you more about yourself than your better moments ever could. Pain is a form of self-revelation.

Head published A Question of Power in 1974, drawing heavily on her own psychological breakdowns in Serowe, Botswana, where she lived as a stateless refugee. South Africa remained under apartheid, and Botswana was itself navigating independence while hosting many exiles from neighbouring countries under white minority rule.

Botswanan novelist born in South Africa to a white mother and Black father, whose birth was considered illegal under apartheid law. Her novels, including A Question of Power (1974), draw on her experiences of exile, mental illness, and displacement to explore questions of identity and belonging in postcolonial Africa.