"Ain't I a Woman?"

In Sojourner Truth's poem "Ain't I a Woman?", she expresses her feelings towards prissy white women that don't acknowledge the black women in the community as women.  The poem basically consists of a few lines that explain an example of one of the scenario's where a white woman is babied and "helped over puddles" or "carried in carriages" and such things, and then followed by the line "Ain't I a woman?" (Truth).  The time period can be easily guessed by the different clues within the poem that sets it off.  Truth often talks about how she worked on a plantation and would get whipped, yet still could work harder than the men, in her speech (Truth).  Another thing that she says in her speech that is horrible and should never happen was when her thirteen children got auctioned off as slaves right before her eyes (Truth).

It always gets me when I read these types of things because most of the time they are true stories and horrible things happened in them.  One thing that happens in all of the stories I read is that there are always sexist men and women and racist men and women that put this human being into slavery and treat her worse than their household pet.  I just can never believe that someone could do that and their conscience never get to them and make them wonder what they just did and what they were thinking in the first place to do such a thing.  White men and women are no different than black men and women and if a white woman gets treated like an angel or like a royal figure, there is no reason that a black woman should get the same treatment.  I hate racism and am happy that slavery is over in the United States.  I think about all of the slaves that were beaten to death and think about what their families were affected.



Truth, Sojourner. "And Ain‘t I a Woman?." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 368-370. Print.



Truth, Sojourner. "Ain't I a Woman?". New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 14 Feb 2012.