By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ – sometimes known as ‘Ar’n’t I a Woman?’ – is the title of a speech which Sojourner Truth, a freed African slave living in the United States, delivered in 1851 at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. The actual text of the speech has been the subject of some debate and contention, since there are several versions in circulation; but perhaps the most ‘authoritative’ record of the speech is the one given in The Norton Anthology of African American Literature.