No one who reads Painter's groundbreaking biography will forget this landmark figure and the story of her courageous life. No one who heard her speak ever forgot Sojourner Truth, the power and pathos of her voice, and the intelligence of her message. As an abolitionist and a feminist, Truth defied the notion that slaves were male and women were white, expounding a fact that still bears repeating: among blacks there are women among women, there are blacks.

Inspired by religion, Truth transformed herself from a domestic servant named Isabella into an itinerant pentecostal preacher her words of empowerment have inspired black women and poor people the world over to this day. Now, in a masterful blend of scholarship and sympathetic understanding, eminent black historian Nell Irvin Painter goes beyond the myths, words, and photographs to uncover the life of a complex woman who was born into slavery and died a legend. Because other biographies of Sojourner Truth, unusual even among ex-slave women. Like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, she is regarded as a radical of immense and enduring influence yet, unlike them, what is remembered of her consists more of myth than of personality. Norton & Company, 28 (370pp) ISBN 978-9-6.

Straight-talking and unsentimental, Truth became a national symbol for strong black women-indeed, for all strong women. Sojourner Truth: ex-slave and fiery abolitionist, figure of imposing physique, riveting preacher and spellbinding singer who dazzled listeners with her wit and originality. In this episode of Stepping Into Truth artist and historian Nell Irvin Painter and I talk about race, age, art and what it was like to go from being a history. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles. Purchase a videotape 24.95 Read the transcipt, listen to the interview on-line, or read a classroom guide for studying the book. The interview was aired on C-Span on December 8, 1996. A monumental biography of one of the most important black women of the nineteenth century.Sojourner Truth first gained prominence at an 1851 Akron, Ohio, women's rights conference, saying, 'Dat man over dar say dat woman needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches. On October 22, 1996, Nell Painter was interviewed on C-Span about Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol.

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