Blog Post #5 Sojourner Truth

Ain't I Woman?

I wanted to do Sojourner Truth's Ain't I Woman because I related back to her alot in my final project and I find her poem to be very powerful and relatable. I think she did a beautiful job with taking about all of her hardship and stating that she is woman after each part. If women should be helped into carriages and lifted over puddles, why is she doing all the work of a man, baring children to be sold off to slavery, if she is woman. Why is she doing all this work and still does not have money to eat as much as she wants if she is woman? My favorite part of the poem is when she says

"Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [Intellect.] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negro's rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours hols a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?"

She says so much in that paragraph. She refers to the opression of African American women through sexism and racism, not just one or the other, which is not often talked about as one. The analogy of the pint and the quart is clever, it shows how little African American women had, and how little anyone helped or let them have of what they deserved.

An argument she used in her speech which I hear oftne when sexism is talked about is that men are superior, and women come back with men wouldn't be around if it weren't for women, which is 100% percent true. Jesus Christ came from man and women. Without women, there really would be no man. Sojourner Truth's speech is beautiful and relatable.The way she worded everything with truth and sass really adds to her speech.