An Examination of Sojourner Truth’s Essay “Aren’t i a Woman?” 

In the essay Arent I Woman? Sojourner stresses the main points she is trying to make as an African-American female. Sojourner talks about how African-American women were treated completely opposite from Caucasian women as far as daily living went. What I mean by daily living is shopping, asking for things, being helped into carriages, being helped over dirty ditches, and eating in the best places. She also talks about how her master treated her as if she received special treatment. She releases her anger by saying, I have plowed, planted, and gathered into barns, and you're saying that is not good enough.

I work just as hard as a man, even harder, and you say I'm still not good enough. I bear the lash and eat just as much, and I'm still not good enough. Sojourner is trying to prove everything a black woman can do, maybe even more than a man, and she is asking whoever is listening, Aren't you a woman?" I feel as though Sojourner is presenting more than two points of view that are very important and are still important today. One is women's rights, another is African-American rights, and the last is slavery. All three issues were very important and still are in today's societies.

I also feel as though she is contradicting herself because first, she says she should be helped everywhere she goes because she is a female, and then she complains when she gets special treatment because she is a female. I believe that the question of the matter is not whether Sojourner repeats a question or whether we pay attention to her question. Independently of what the question means or what the person asks, the fact of the matter is that we are what we are and not (never) what others want us to be or become. The hard part is to have the strength to defend our beliefs and never give in to the desires of others. It is this particular belief of mine that leads me to think that there is no crime worse than the theft of identity. Women and not only women around the whole world suffered from these crimes, and the color of their skin was not always brown on the bodies of the sufferers.

Furthermore, there is no color for the souls, and might we be misled to direct our talk about these things from the particular point of view of the color of some skins? It is needless to say that these skins are those of the sufferers and are never related to the color of the minds or souls of the criminals. Of course, the story is told from the point of view of the winners, but it is the right of the sufferers to keep their strengths and let the world know that the truth has two sides, and both sides are seldom identical.

In any case, who decides who wins? In one way or another, we are sufferers and survivors in this world, and the sacrifices we make, voluntarily or not, will become our key to a better way of life, sooner or later. May Sojourner's soul, wherever it might be, be cleaned and recognized for her strengths, and may our time spent in remembering her, or even in talking about her, or even through including her in some project of ours, be another push to bring her memory (one among millions) out of the darkness and into the light of truth, respect, and honorability.

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