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Overview
A monumental biography of one of the most important black women of the nineteenth century.
Sojourner Truth first gained prominence at an 1851 Akron, Ohio, women's rights conference, saying, "Dat man over dar say dat woman needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches. . . . Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles . . . and ar'n't I a woman?"
Sojourner Truth: ex-slave and fiery abolitionist, figure of imposing physique, riveting preacher and spellbinding singer who dazzled listeners with her wit and originality. Straight-talking and unsentimental, Truth became a national symbol for strong black women—indeed, for all strong women. Like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, she is regarded as a radical of immense and enduring influence; yet, unlike them, what is remembered of her consists more of myth than of personality.
Now, in a masterful blend of scholarship and sympathetic understanding, eminent black historian Nell Irvin Painter goes beyond the myths, words, and photographs to uncover the life of a complex woman who was born into slavery and died a legend. Inspired by religion, Truth transformed herself from a domestic servant named Isabella into an itinerant pentecostal preacher; her words of empowerment have inspired black women and poor people the world over to this day. As an abolitionist and a feminist, Truth defied the notion that slaves were male and women were white, expounding a fact that still bears repeating: among blacks there are women; among women, there are blacks.
No one who heard her speak ever forgot Sojourner Truth, the power and pathos of her voice, and the intelligence of her message. No one who reads Painter's groundbreaking biography will forget this landmark figure and the story of her courageous life.
Synopsis
A monumental biography of one of the most important black women of the nineteenth century.
Publishers Weekly
The distinguished Princeton professor gets beyond anecdotal myth to fully render the abolitionist leader. (Oct.)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
The distinguished Princeton professor gets beyond anecdotal myth to fully render the abolitionist leader. (Oct.)Library Journal
In this biography, Painter (history, Princeton Univ.) traces Truth's life and legacy, detailing her early life as Isabella, who was born a slave; her self-transformation to Sojourner Truth; and her strength and perseverance in pursuing her causes. (LJ 9/1/96)Sacred Fire
Sojourner Truth was one of the most notable and highly regarded African American women in the nineteenth century. Named Isabella, she was born a slave in 1797 in Ulster County, New York, the second youngest of twelve children of James and Elizabeth. By the time she was sixteen, she was almost six feet tall. Isabella changed names twice in her lifetime, not wishing to be known by the name of her previous slaveholders. In 1843 she became Sojourner Truth, a woman whose proclaimed mission was to "sojourn" the land and speak God's "truth."In this recently published biography, Sojourner Truth: A Life,a Symbol historian Nell Irvin Painter gives us incisive information about Sojourner's life; she also deals with fascinating issues relating to this woman's life-issues such as child abuse (that of Truth toward her daughters), sexual abuse (that of her slave mistress toward Truth), as well as the psychological consequences for women from these kinds of behaviors.
A woman of remarkable intelligence despite her illiteracy, Truth had great presence. Her voice was low, so low that listeners sometimes termed it masculine, and her singing voice was beautifully powerful. Whenever she spoke in public, she also sang. No one ever forgot the power and pathos of Sojourner Truth's singing, just as her wit and originality of phrasing were also of lasting remembrance. As an abolitionist and feminist, she put her body and her mind to a unique task, that of physically representing women who had been enslaved. At a time when most Americans thought of slaves as male and women as white, Truth embodied a fact that still bears repeating: Among the blacks are women; among the women, there are blacks.
With Sojourner Truth, Painter, a renowned writer and Edwards Professor of American History at Princeton University, has written a biography that is much like Truth herself: fiery, eloquent, illuminating, and succinct. Perhaps most compelling is Painter's demystification of the "Ar'nt I a Woman" speech that has come to be associated with Truth and with the image of her as an invincible black female.
Kirkus Reviews
A successful effort to separate a human being from the familiar "Strong Black Woman" symbol she has become.A powerful speaker who moved audiences to laughter even as she delivered harsh truths about slavery and discrimination, Sojourner Truth has in Painter (Standing at Armageddon, 1987, etc.) a congenial biographer whose work is as readable as it is scholarly. Information on Truth is frustratingly incomplete, but Painter shines when striving to separate facts from myths and assemble those facts into a reasonable whole. A slave in upstate New York until 1827, Truth gained from her intense involvement with Methodism a sense of self- worth as well as an opportunity to speak publicly at religious camp meetings around New York City. Following a curious period of attachment to the self-styled Prophet Matthias (to whom she gave her devotion and all her money), Truth joined a Massachusetts cooperative community, where she met some of her future antislavery contacts. Central to the story of her growing celebrity is, of course, the 1851 Ohio Women's Rights Convention, where, Painter convincingly argues, Truth made an effective speech—but not the expanded "ar'n't I a woman" showstopper printed 12 years later by Frances Dana Gage. Likewise punctured are embellished accounts of Truth's meeting with Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe's largely fanciful Atlantic Monthly sketch of Truth, early examples of how various people (including, in this century, academics) craft "a usable Sojourner Truth of their own," emphasizing whatever they need her to be: slave, black, female, radical, or quaint. In this account, Truth is shrewd but angry, calling, Painter says, for revenge on " `white people'—not `slaveholders' or `white southerners,' or any narrower subset of the guilty." That being so, one wishes Painter had contemplated more fully what this means coming from a woman who seems to have had an abundance of enduring white contacts but fewer blacks ones.
No one seriously interested in Sojourner Truth can afford to ignore this book.