The result was part shameless self-promotion, part astute politics and part idealistic wish fulfillment. Others also saw value in her person and joined in the construction of Sojourner Truth, sometimes without invitation, often with her silent consent. But self-invention, so characteristic of the 19th century, was only one dimension of Sojourner Truth's story. Like her name, taken to replace the rather ill-fitting Isabella Van Wagenen, her persona was carefully constructed by herself this shrewd, illiterate former slave understood that her life was her only capital. If Sojourner Truth seems somewhat larger than life, it is because she was. Her most famous utterance - ''Ar'n't I a woman?'' - defines the contested terrain between the races and the sexes and demands that we consider the special place of black women in our racially divided, sex-segregated past. Tall, husky-voiced, stern-visaged and midnight black, she peers out at us from popular etchings and photographs as the very embodiment of the Strong Black Woman. Sojourner Truth strides through American history larger than life.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |