"The Collector of Treasures"

Why was Bessie Head, the author, rejected socially?

• She was ugly.

• She was born a crime.

• She was not "African" enough for acceptance in the colored family.

• She was "insufficiently white" for the Afrikaner family.

What jobs did Bessie Head have?

• She was a school teacher, journalist, and a farmer.

• She was a school teacher, mother, and a politician.

• She was an unemployed mother.

• She was an inmate of a mental institution.

Head's fiction is particularly sensitive to ...

• racial stereotypes

• women's oppression

• family issues

• dystopic science fiction

What does the statement "always found gold amidst the ash" (58) mean?

• She found love as treasure despite destruction in her life.

• She worked in the mines of South Africa.

• She would search crematoriums to find gold.

• Her life was all destruction and she son was her only treasure.

Dikeledi Mokopi is in prison because she ...

• killed her family.

• killed her husband.

• attacked a police officer.

• attacked her husband's girlfriend.

"The torchlight struck the side of her face like an agonizing blow" (54) is an example of ...

• personification.

• a simile.

• onomatopoeia.

• an allegory.

What is the contrast between Dikeledi and Kebonye?

• Both are husband killers.

• Dikeledi looked more like a skeleton than a human being and Kebonye looked like a full, plump figure.

• Both have experienced horrible terrors.

• Dikeledi killed her husband with a knife and so did Kebonye.

Why are the women impressed with Dikeledi?

• She killed her husband.

• Her thatched roof does not leak.

• She managed well enough to feed her three sons.

• By mid-morning, she had invented a pattern and created the front part of a jersey (sweater).

"I managed well enough to feed those mouths" (57) is vivid imagery explaining how she ...

• was able to feed her children.

• was able to feed everyone in the village.

• was able to feed the animals.

• was able to feed the village gossipers.

Kebonye killed her husband because he

• was an education-officer for the village.

• was raping school girls that he was supposed to protect.

• used to kick her between the legs when he wanted intimacy.

• made her abort her child.