Annotating Bessie Head's A Question of Power

Abstract

This article makes an argument for the importance of annotating Bessie Head’s most famous novel A Question of Power. It briefly discusses some of the more general issues in annotation, such as problems of interpretation, availability of different editions, and relevance of other materials. The article makes the argument that since so much of Head’s writing and philosophy involves uncertainty and open-endedness, it is important to make as much information as possible available to readers of the novel in order for them to understand what happened in Head’s own life and to recognize how she used that material in her work to create meaning. The article concludes with the suggestion, in the spirit of Head herself, that perhaps the novel can never be ‘fully’ annotated.