On Trans Use of the Many Sojourner Truths

The image of Sojourner Truth addressing the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention has had a long, varied life; her question “Ain’t I a woman?” has circulated in various feminist contexts as a contestation of narrow, misogynist, and white supremacist conceptions of “woman.” This image has likewise been used in twenty-first-century contestations of trans-exclusionary feminisms. This chapter thinks critically about this relatively new trans life of Truth. It queries the rhetorical moves and effects of Truth’s invocation in white trans contexts, arguing that these invocations rely on a structure of analogy with and displacement of race. Further, it considers whether Truth actually posed her membership to “woman” as a question. White trans feminist investment in invoking Truth as the question “ain’t I a woman?” can teach something about the racist logics of liberal trans feminism. The chapter concludes with a turn toward Black trans feminist potentials embedded within the image of Truth.