Entering the Oppressor’s Mind: A Strategy of Writing in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power, Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins and Unity Dow’s The Screaming of the Innocent

In this article, Bessie Head’s A Question of Power (1974), Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins (2002) and Unity Dow’s The Screaming of the Innocent (2003) are read as examples of texts in which women writers explore from within the minds and motives of fellow-African, male figures who perpetrate crimes and cruelties against women in their respective postcolonial societies. It is argued that, by doing so, these authors employ a strategy of both acknowledging (“owning”) and analysing the evils against which they simultaneously protest by their vivid portrayal of the harm done to women or girls by such men. Writing of this kind is seen as a form of social action through the authors’ employment of “illocutionary force” (Maria Pia Lara’s phrase). Following the introduction, the individual social setting and the texture of writing in each text is analysed in turn, while correspondences with the other two novels are briefly noted in the conclusion.