ABSTRACT

To the woman who became Sojourner Truth, knowing and being known were always of both material and epistemological significance. Merely asking about the education of 'Sojourner Truth' immediately raises the question of the identity of this complex figure. The metonymic Sojourner Truth has knowledge, but no education beyond her experience of slavery. More than a century and a quarter after its publication, the Narrative of Sojourner Truth still has not found its niche in the literature of ex-slaves. The feminist press of the 1880s testifies to Gage's enduring reputation as an ardent feminist. Cartes de visite, the invention of Andre Adolphe Eugene Disderi of Paris in the mid-1850s, were made with a camera with four, six, eight, or twelve lenses exposing different portions of a single large plate. At intermissions she was busy selling the 'Life of Sojourner Truth', a narrative of her own strange and adventurous life.