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NELL IRVIN PAINTER, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996. Pp. xii + 370. $28.00.
Black, female, and uneducated, Sojourner Truth's presence in the usual lineup of nineteenth-century abolitionists and feminists has made her conspicuous, both in her lifetime and in ours. For this reason, Nell Painter has wisely structured her biography around two Sojourner Truths: the obscure narrative of Sojourner Truth, the life, as well as the public and often contested image that produced Sojourner Truth, the symbol. It is within the complex relationship between these two Truths that Painter's work provokes critical questions about race, gender, class and religion in nineteenth-century America, as well as about the ways that Americans use history in the 1990s.
Painter covers most of Truth's life in the first two sections of the book, from her early life as Isabella, the abused slave of a New York Dutch family, through several religious pilgrimages, to her emergence in the world of antislavery feminism as Sojourner Truth. The specific details are sketchy, the sources are limited, and several times Painter has to admit that much about Truth's life simply cannot be known. Painter compensates with solid descriptions of the various subcultures...