Outsider? All About Belonging...

As an international student, I always feel that I’m like an outsider in the United States since we have different kinds of culture and different language. However, I know that what kind of race I belong to. In Bessie Head’s novel A Question of Power, the main character, Elizabeth, faces the situation that she’s confused about whom she is and where she’s from. In the novel, we can see that Elizabeth is a poor black woman who needs to face the racist and sexist discrimination. When she was a child, she was sent to a missionary school and she was later told the truth about her real mother. “You must be very careful. Your mother was insane. If you’re not careful you’ll get insane just like your mother. Your mother was a white woman. They had to lock her up, as she was having a child by the stable boy, who was a native” (Head P. 16). The principal of the missionary school told Elizabeth. After hearing this, she has no idea who her real mother is; therefore, she asks her foster mother later. Her foster mother tells her that Elizabeth was born in the mental hospital. Also, she tells Elizabeth that “when you were six years old we heard that your mother had suddenly killed herself in the mental home” (Head P. 17). After that, Elizabeth has spent her life with different kinds of family, such as Asian and German, all of whom she learns about Indian philosophies and Hilter that kinds of stuff.

Elizabeth finally leaves South Africa and moves to Botswana with her son. Her husband did not go with because she was fleeing from him. Her husband is “a gangster just out of jail.” (Head P. 18) and he is a person that “women were always complaining of being molested” (Head P.19) Therefore, after a year her son was born, she decides to “walked out of the house, never to return.” (Head P. 19) She reads the newspaper advertisement and notices that Botswana is looking for teachers; therefore, she decides to go there. However, "she was forced to take out an exit permit, which, like her marriage, held the ‘never to return’ clause” (Head P. 19). She does not care because she hates her country and she has already decided to create a new life after she leaves. However, she has to face another problem in Botswana because the African villagers are suspicious of her and don’t like her behaviors. She says that “as far as Botswana society was concerned, she was an out-and-out outsider and would never be in on their things” (Head P. 26). She struggles to escape from the oppressive social situation; however, she then becomes a schizophrenic person who lives with two main imaginary figures, Dan and Sello. They are like God and Evil for Elizabeth and they actually are showing what’s going on in Elizabeth’s deep mind.

As an international student, I can imagine how hard Elizabeth is facing the new environment. When I first arrived in the United States, I felt so lonely since I had no close friends. Also, the culture is totally different from the place that I came from. I felt that I was like an outsider. I tried my best to adopt the new culture. Even though I’ve finally got used to it, the moment that I was trying to adopt the American life was hard and stressful. Therefore, I can totally understand why Elizabeth becomes a schizophrenic person because she faces something that far harder than she can expect.