Group Read, August 2023: A Question of Power

Our August group read is A Question of Power by Bessie Head. Please join in the read and add any comments to this thread.

I'm about half way through. The first 50 pages were really tough going. Then it became clearer. Now it's hazy again. Of course a book about a woman with mental health problems struggling with apartheid was never going to be easy!

Is anybody else reading this, or have you read it? I'm finished and while I feel like I learned things here, it was such a struggle. Which I suppose is not inappropriate.

>3 annamorphic: I’m about two thirds through. I quite like the story of village life and the cooperative store and gardens and her interaction with the locals, but I really don’t like or see the point of the nightmare visions. I’m hoping there is some sort of resolution of the latter rather than just a cathartic dump of pointless horror stories.

>4 puckers: I gather that this is partly autobiographical and that it's an account of what it's like to be severely mentally ill. Who has the power, since that's the question? Is it her or the figures of her visions? When she is sent to mental facilities she gets no help from people in power there. So power has to come from her. That's my take-away, more or less.

>5 annamorphic: I’m hoping/assuming she gets beyond these nightmares at some point but doesn’t make pleasant reading.

Finished the book today. Not really a spoiler (as it is semi-autobiographical) that she eventually overcomes her demons, but this only happens in the closing pages and, as I flagged above, you have to wade through a lot of repetitive horror to get there. Amazing that her little boy gets through all this apparently mentally/emotionally unscathed.

I finally finished this one. Even though it was short, it was quite a difficult read, but well worth the time in my opinion. I went in not knowing anything about it and was quite confused at first but soon realized it was dealing with the struggles of mental illness plus issues of racism and apartheid. In the beginning it almost felt like she was telling a folk tale with the style of her writing. I ended up really liking her writing style, even though a lot of the things she was describing were not pleasant, the way she wrote about it made me want to keep reading.
A book like this is why I keep going on my quest to read off the list. This is something I never would have picked up if it were not on the list and although I wouldn't consider it a new favorite, I'm glad to have had the experience of reading it and experiencing something completely out of my comfort zone.