preview

Injustices of Women of Color by Sojourner Truth in Speech, Ain't I Woman

Good Essays

Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I Woman

In the speech “Ain’t I a Woman”, the Sojourner Truth delivered during the Women’s Convention of 1851, she speaks on the injustices that women and colored people endured during that horrible time in America. I will make an effort to explore the ways she utilizes rhetorical methods as a means to accomplish a victorious and compelling delivery of her message. In this analysis, I will talk about the way Sojourner draws on her own individual experiences evoke an emotional reaction from her audience, relating with the women and mothers equally. She also utilizes repetitive and rhetorical questioning in hopes to counter challenging opinions for gender equality. In the conclusion of her speech, Sojourner makes …show more content…

She goes on with this recurring and lyrical repetition, developing energy in her tone and addresses the crowd with her own short individual experience right before she asks that same rhetorical question. She paints a picture of how she is equal to men by acknowledging her strength and diligent work ethic as she “ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me (Sojourner Truth, Ain’t I A Woman).” Again, she follows this declaration with, “and ain’t I a woman?” She steadily carries on in this same manner, making a declaration to her deserved equality she feels amongst men and then asks the eloquent, but compelling question “and ain’t I a woman?” Even though we were not there hear Sojourner speak these words, as I read the words of “Ain’t I Woman”, I can experience her power, fury, and bitterness develop as she restates this powerful expression. Sojourner Truth brings the harmonious flow gradually to a stop with a graphic image of the sorrow and suffering she has endured as a slave and a woman. She states that she has “borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery” as she “cried out with [her] mother’s grief (Sojourner Truth, Ain’t I A Woman),” and after this memory she declares the last “and ain’t I a woman?” She deliberately concluded this component of her speech with such a remarkably clear picture of brutality and the painful consequences of inequality, pushing her audience, mainly moms, to connect with her pain on a more

Get Access