Sojourner Truth
-
USA in the mid-nineteenth century, dictated her life story, a spiritual autobiography or slave narrative, to a literate transcriber in 1850. Her texts are problematic because of the other voices (voices of literate white well-wishers) which interpose themselves between author and reader. Her art was oral; she was a speaker and preacher rather than a writer (though her works include poetry as well as speeches). As a celebrity in her lifetime, she was much observed and written about, but her transcribers mostly seem to have succumbed to the temptation of fairly radical editing.
, a charismatic religious and political leader (Christian revivalist, abolitionist, and feminist) in the northern states of the - BirthName: Isabella HardenberghSlaves did not have surnames, and were often called by their owners' names. One would expect Isabella to be called at first by the name of her owner at birth, which (given in various, often anglicized forms) was Hardenbergh. She is, however, more often called by a name her father used, Baumfree (also usually corrupted). She is never called by the name of her last and perhaps harshest owners, Dumont.
- Nickname: Bell
- Self-constructed: Van Wagener; Sojourner TruthShe took for herself the name of a family who bought her only to free her, after she had fled from the Dumonts. This name is sometimes given as a single word.The name by which she became famous was unique, fitted to her by its spiritual symbolism, owed not to an owner, husband, or father but, as she said, to God himself who bestowed it on her.