In this critical study, Dorothy Diver discusses the way Head's writings - novels, short stories, letters, sketches, essays, reviews - address the ethical and spiritual difficulties of life in societies riven in one way or another by social and racial divisions and hierarchies that held people back from achieving their full humanity. Head's spirited and uniquely personal critique of what it means to be 'African' and 'female' in a postcolonial world is shown to engage with the possibilities for moving beyond such categories.