Sojourner Truth (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

In this many-layered study of Sojourner Truth, Nell Irvin Painter examines a woman who, as an itinerant preacher and lecturer, possessed an uncanny ability to seize an audience. She would rise to her feet in public gatherings and persuasively cut to the heart of divisive issues. Her power came in part from her muscular femininity and blackness combined with a working-class orientation that set her apart from the white middle-class reformers with whom she consorted. These qualities were part of both the reality of her life and the legend it engendered.

Painter presents a dynamic woman who changed and developed through time. She emphasizes that in each phase of Truth’s life—as slave, evangelist, and activist—Truth existed within relationships: with her master’s family and with her own, with other worshippers, within networks of fellow reformers. Painter takes care to correct common misconceptions. Among these is the routine association in the popular mind of Truth with slavery and thus with the plantation South. Painter also emphasizes aspects of Truth’s character that were most important to Truth herself, including Truth’s sustaining religious faith. In telling Sojourner Truth’s story, Painter chooses key events that are highlights of her public image and discusses the historical accuracy of conflicting accounts of these situations.

Painter successfully traces the ways that facts were embellished or re-created in the process of transforming Truth as a human being into Truth as a powerful symbol, and how it is that that symbol- -Truth as an emblem of black fortitude and transcendence over slavery, and as a heroine representing black female strength—has been so long-lasting. Her book is a lively, responsible, complex, and frank study that is ripe for debate and discussion.

Sources for Further Study

Boston Globe. October 11, 1996, p. D4.

Chicago Tribune. October 6, 1996, XIV, p. 1.

The Chronicle of Higher Education. XLIII, September 13, 1996, p. A18.

Kirkus Reviews. LXIV, July 1, 1996, p. 953.

Library Journal. CXXI, September 1, 1996, p. 194.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. October 6, 1996, p. 4.

The New Republic. CCXV, November 4, 1996, p. 37.

The New York Times Book Review. CI, September 22, 1996, p. 29.

Publishers Weekly. CCXLIII, July 1, 1996, p. 46.

San Francisco Chronicle. December 1, 1996, REV5.

The Washington Post Book World. XXVI, September 15, 1996, p. 9.