Sojourner Truth – "And Ain‘t I a Woman?"

Sojourner Truth was a good orator as well as Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, but what gave her more of an impact was the fact that she was an African American, and a woman as well. Sojourner Truth fought very hard for rights for African Americans and for women, and she wanted to show the world that there was nothing different between them all (Truth). In her speech, she showed the world that many men were saying that women were delicate and needed help getting into carriages and getting over mud puddles, she was a woman and no one had ever helped her with any of that (Truth). She showed the world that as an African American slave, she had never gotten the benefits that the rest of women got (Truth). She showed that since she had to work as a slave, she had done hard work that many men in the North could not do, because she had no choice and had to do it (Truth). This work fits in the Realism period because it is in the moment and not about the past. It looks forward to the future and concentrates on what could happen (Truth). It is realistic, and she made realistic demands and proved her point based on things that she had gone through (Truth). It does not fit in the Naturalism period, because the speech was given with feeling and it showed the feelings of everyone (Truth). It was not scientific and did not study humans, so the Naturalists would not claim it as theirs (Truth). It is also not in the Regionalism period, because it is not based on a certain region of the United States that wants more attention (Truth). While this work does not really have anything to do with religion, it has a lot to do with government and different issues of the time period (Truth). This speech, while it does not outright attack the government, it is fighting to go against what the government had been saying (Truth). She wanted to get rights for African Americans and women alike, and to do that, she needed to go against the government. She wanted to be able to do everything that men could, because that is what she had been doing her entire life (Truth). This speech does not talk about nature, unless her working in the fields would count, and there is not much about human nature (Truth). One could say that it was about human nature, because she is trying to change ideas that had come to pass because of some original human nature (Truth). This also talks about the American Dream, because one of the most basic American Dreams is equal rights (Truth). She really wanted equal rights, not just for her, but for many other people as well. She was a minority, but she did not want to be treated as such (Truth). There was not any figurative language, and there is not much talk about the Hero, but the Hero would be the one to give them their rights (Truth). Sojourner Truth was an important orator who wanted equal rights for everyone and thought they were very important.

Truth, Sojourner. "And Ain't I a Woman?". Glencoe Literature. Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Douglas Fisher, Beverly A. Chin, and Jacqueline J. Royster. Columbus: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. 368-70. Print.