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Priscilla R., Angel V., Autumn S., Summer B., Kevin G.., Duy N., Daniela H.

April 29 2020

Each person writes a paragraph to create an essay.

Prompt: In 1851, Sojourner Truth, a free slave, spoke at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. Read the following excerpt from her speech carefully. Then write a well-developed essay in which you analyze the choices Truth makes to convey her message to the audience.

A speech at the 1851 Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio spoken by Sojourner Truth is about the cruel reality of the treatment of women. A white man exclaimed from the crowd of the convention said “women should need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere”. Truth counter argued this claim by saying how she has “ploughed, planted and bear the whip”. Not just her along but with other black women alongside her. Sojourner Truth uses repetition, analogy, and metaphors in her speech to convey her frustration about the hypocritical truth of how all women should be treated.

However by using repetition in her speech to convey the differences between women of color and men, repeating the phrase “And ain’t I a woman?” after comparing herself to other women and also Christ. Sojourner compares how the slaves were treated differently than the whites and also how men treated women of color differently. She has been through many hardships as a slave. “That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?” Truth helps us visualize how she was treated differently as a woman and slave, how they didn’t have the equal rights as men or white women. Also by comparing women to Christ, she points out how women can be strong when they stand together and how there wouldn’t be any Christ if there wasn’t a woman involved. Overall, she argues how men treat women differently and how women don’t have the same rights as men even though women probably went through some same hardships as men.

            Sojourner is using repetition, by continuously repeating “Ain’t I a woman? “

Truth, chooses to compare the way she was treated to the way others treat other women. She then explains that no one ever helped her over the mud/ dirt piles, how other women were helped. Sojourner then says ” I could work and eat as much as a man – when I could get it- and bear the lash as well. Aint I a woman?” When she says “aint I a woman?”she’s  trying to express in a way the fact that she’s done things like a man. In a matter of sense the message she is trying to convey to audience reading is that both women and men should be treated equally.

Sojourner relates back to the bible when she mentions, “If the first woman was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!” She incites women to fight for their rights as one group; annulling their backgrounds and skin color. In order to receive women’s right to vote.

Sojourner uses repetition to mark her words which are “And aint I a woman”. She uses this to make herself sound more powerful and due to the fact that she is speaking about women empowerment it completely makes sense. She keeps repeating this because she wants to let