Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree, crusaded for the rights of African-Americans, slaves, and women. Her life is described in “The Narrative of Sojourner Truth,” but not in her own words. Since she was illiterate, and could not pen her own story herself, she dictated to a writer who wrote in a different English language. The language in “The Narrative of Sojourner Truth” is elevated and indicative of the white, politically charged and academic language of the time. As Matthew K. Samra points out in “Shadow and Substance,” the narrative was a commercial success, yet was written in language different from the language used by Sojourner Truth herself1. Samra shows that the language used in the narrative is more focused on reaching advocates of the abolition movement rather than authentically presenting the story as Truth saw it and felt it1.

By examining the material in the Samra study, and thinking about how Humez looked at “The Narrative of Sojourner Truth” in the context of linguistics, gender, and race, what is written by Truth on paper is vastly different than how she spoke in real life. In her speech “Ain’t I A Woman,” Truth uses words and phrases that come from the African-American culture of the times2. Truth grew up speaking Dutch, and this proved to be problematic when communicating with her masters. However, she eventually formulated a language that was a reflection of her environment, and the same language is found in her speeches.

As a figure, Truth made history and great impacts on society. It is interesting to note how her life, and her life’s work, was interpreted in publications, like “The Narrative of Sojourner Truth,” and how this interpretation helped ignite and drive the abolitionist movement. Since Truth was illiterate, she relied on people around her to get her story into writing. The genre of slave narratives was popular at the time, like the famous narrative of Frederick Douglass, but women slaves in the genre had yet to breakout.

In the article “Shadow and Substance,” Samra presents a comparison between Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.1 Not so much the individuals, but their narrative presentations as a literary genre; both narratives are written with literary techniques and are presented as a story.3 This sort of account was highly encouraged during the Ante Bellum Era (1820-1860) by abolitionists looking to bring an end to the institution of slavery. Sojourner Truth’s narrative was a story abolitionists used to reach the public consciousness and combat slavery.

The commercial success of Truth’s narrative shows how important she was to the abolitionist movement and the fight against slavery. Samra’s article discusses how her public appearances made her an icon of the movement. It was crucial to get a real, human story out to the public so they could witness, from a firsthand account, the atrocities of slavery. However, the humanness of the story was often left out due to the writing style of Olive Gilbert, the woman who wrote the narrative. There are examples of Truth’s description of events, which are spoken with fervor and hatred, and how they differ from the dry, academic language found in the narrative.

The article “Reading The Narrative of Sojourner Truth as a Collaborative Text,” by Jean M. Humez, analyzes what it meant for her story to be a work of collaboration. It touches on the unequal power over how the experiences of women were represented, and how they collaborated with white political allies.4 The “Narrative of Sojourner Truth” is the perfect example of such a discussion. The article uses her narrative as a way to study a woman’s identity in politics during the nineteenth century; Truth’s identity is overcome by how she is represented in the narrative. Olive Gilbert put her life onto paper, and the paper presented the life of a woman in the context of slavery and sought to use her life’s story as a way to gain political momentum to end the inhumane institution of slavery.