Reviews for Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol

The average rating for Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-04-04 00:00:00 Travis Neufeld So I was really excited to read this (not disappointed), though it got lost in the shuffle of moving and my thoughts are all disjointed. I love how the author organizes the book in terms of Truth's actual life and then how she has been used as a symbol by various people and movements. Finally got the back story on Ain't I a Woman and how it was re-written in southern black dialect. But the thing is, Truth was from New York and spoke Dutch. And this brings me to the point that U.S. slavery has become so strongly tied to the South in mainstream discussion, though it's important to realize how fully the entire country has relied on slave labor and how closely it was tied to Northern interests as well as Southern. I kept thinking about this especially after the Charleston shooting and all the controversy over the Confederate flags. Yes, of course, bring them down. But a history of slavery and current racial divisions are not a simple racist South / enlightened North division. It's too easy. And it deflects away from the kinds of questioning that needs to happen throughout the whole country. Anyway, Truth was a complete badass. Her commitment to her spirituality was really interesting. A lot of the early connections she made with abolitionists and feminists came more from her being involved in religious communities with middle-class white people rather than from being an activist. Also, reading this book was really helpful in understanding her as a flawed, real person. She's a really important figure, and I highly recommend this one!

Review # 2 was written on 2010-04-10 00:00:00 Adam Horne I had no idea that the caption for the cover image, which is the most popular image that remains of Sojourner Truth, is "I sell the shadow to support the substance." Painter's fascinating biography paints the fullest description of Truth's life I have read, puts Truth's own autobiography into context & includes a number of surprising (to me) elements including a 1858 "breast-baring incident" during which Truth showed her breasts to prove her womanhood and shame the audience of mainly white men; details about Truth's complicated religious history -- she was an illiterate itinerant preacher known for challenging Frederick Douglass by famously asking him, "Is God Dead?", but later in her life frequented seances and hung out with spiritualist Quakers -- and, at the end, asks the question of whether or not we are comfortable enough with the nuances of Truth's life to be more curious than we are about her trajectory rather than her usefulness as a symbol. A very intriguing and well-written biography.