DEFINING WOMANHOOD...

I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?... that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from?... From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

                                                                                                                              - Sojourner Truth

Imagine dark women coming up from the murky backwaters of slavery, trudging along a winding, muddy path, heading towards a bleak and faded sunset. And beyond that sunset lies more disappointments. This is exactly why I used to think that African American feminism was a thing apart from commonplace feminism. That these women had the specter of slavery following them around. They were more powerful because of it. That when they began, theirs was an intimidating, louder, hoarser cry for rights. Far too loud and much too hoarse to bear.

But I had not yet come across that life-changing speech.

In eleventh grade, I was gently nudged forth into a speech-making competition. It was called, quite ostentatiously, “Golden Words”. It was a charade—some of the poorest imitations you would ever see, of some of the world’s greatest leaders. But someone had to be a dear and dress up for it. So I did.

The stage was set.

I saw Nehru, Napolean and Martin Luther strut past me.

Till date, I don’t think it was as much ‘me’ choosing to become Sojourner Truth and enacting her popular “Ain’t I a Woman” speech, as it was Truth herself, walking up to me. A strange black dress and a string of fake pearls. That was all it took to look like the nineteenth century women rights activist.

It was harder to ‘be’ her, however. It was a different ball game altogether.

Even if I had to modulate my voice to sound like an angry Oprah Winfrey, to stand on tiptoe and make myself appear larger and bolder, and even though I was declared the winner that evening—even after all this, it was hardly a victory to call mine. I had spent hours in a front of a mirror drinking in the historical speech, till it was lodged in the tiniest crevice of my soul.

Until I had walked up on that stage, I had no idea what it took to be a woman. I thought I was going to be seventeen forever, and a long dead slave woman’s words were hardly of relevance.

I was very, very wrong.

Sojourner Truth’s words caught me by my hair. They drove home the fact that women are not black, white, brown or yellow. There is no slave woman or free woman. A woman is simply a human being—bag of bones, flesh and sinew. And if a woman is just a woman inside, no two ways about it, then how can there be multiple types of feminism? All we ask for, and for that matter what anyone asks for, is the right to ‘be’ ourselves.

Truth did not just get me my first “first position” in the last year of school, amongst a sea of countless competitions I had competed in so far. She made me walk a mile in her shoes. She made me relive history, not just learn it. When my voice reverberated through that room, it was unrecognizable. It was her spirit speaking through me. I could have hardly called myself the same person because neither had I ever hurled out words so loud, nor had I believed in their power so genuinely, ever before in my life.

I think I made her proud.

It is for this reason that I believe in my ability to dream, look and talk like a nineteenth century slave women rights activist. She and I have much in common. This ancient thread binds womankind across the centuries, across seven continents and beyond the tenets of history.

I am Sojourner Truth, and she is I.

Forever.

Yours truly