Synopses & Reviews
Runaway slave Sojourner Truth gained fame in the nineteenth century as an abolitionist, feminist, and orator and earned a living partly by selling photographic carte de visite portraits of herself at lectures and by mail. Cartes de visite, similar in format to calling cards, were relatively inexpensive collectibles that quickly became a new mode of mass communication. Despite being illiterate, Truth copyrighted her photographs in her name and added the caption andldquo;I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance. Sojourner Truth.andrdquo;
Featuring the largest collection of Truthandrsquo;s photographs ever published,and#160;Enduring Truthsand#160;is the first book to explore how she used her image, the press, the postal service, and copyright laws to support her activism and herself. Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby establishes a range of important contexts for Truthandrsquo;s portraits, including the strategic role of photography and copyright for an illiterate former slave; the shared politics of Truthandrsquo;s cartes de visite and federal banknotes, which were both created to fund the Union cause; and the ways that photochemical limitations complicated the portrayal of different skin tones. Insightful and powerful,and#160;Enduring Truthsand#160;shows how Truth made her photographic portrait worth money in order to end slaveryandmdash;and also became the strategic author of her public self.
Review
andldquo;In this lavishly illustrated and lucidly writtenand#160;volume, Grigsby trains her inimitable gaze on the photographic self-construction of Sojourner Truth, whose life history resonates as much today as it did for her nineteenth-century audiences. Grounding her study in meticulous archival research, Grigsby weaves a fascinating account of how Truthandrsquo;s circulation of her image in the form ofand#160;cartes deand#160;visiteand#160;not only supported her financially, but also represented an incisive intervention into national discourses around race, gender, copyright law, paper currency, and authorship during and after the Civil War. The result is a highly affecting book that at once reframes questions of black aesthetic agency and sets a new standard for what the art-historical monograph might be.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Grigsbyandrsquo;s marvelous explorationandmdash;a deep, wide, and beautiful inquiry into Sojourner Truthandrsquo;s use of technologyandmdash;features more of her photographs than have ever been collected before. Among its many insights, I especially relished the analysis of Truthandrsquo;s illiteracy. Enduring Truths is art history with a wide-ranging concept of history left in. A terrific book, and one weandrsquo;ve needed for a long time.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Grigsby convincingly demonstrates how Truthandrsquo;s shrewd engagement with the new medium of photography, in tandem with her deliberate efforts to secure legal and monetary control over her portraits, became a platform for the assertion of a former slaveandrsquo;s claims to personhood and self-possession.and#160;Enduring Truthsand#160;is a fundamental contribution to our ongoing efforts to disentangle the historical bonds between visuality, subjectivity, and slavery, and the jarring processes of the institutionandrsquo;s demise.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Truth's landmark slave narrative chronicles her experiences as a slave in upstate New York and her transformation into an extraordinary abolitionist, feminist, orator, and preacher. Based on the complete 1884 edition, this volume includes the "Book of Life," a collection of letters and sketches about Truth's life written subsequent to the original 1850 publication of the Narrative, and "A Memorial Chapter," a sentimental account of her death.
About the Author
Sojourner Truth, born Isabella, a slave in Ulster County, New York, around 1797, became an abolitionist, orator, and preacher, and eventually an icon for strong black women. She was emancipated by state law in 1827, and the following year she moved to New York City, where she found work in wealthy households and became increasingly involved in unorthodox religious groups. In the early 1830s she joined the commune or “Kingdom” of the Prophet Matthias. By 1843 she had transformed herself into the itinerant preacher Sojourner Truth, and spent most of the next thirteen years in Northampton, Massachusetts. Illiterate, she dictated her autobiography to her neighbor Olive Gilbert, and the
Narrative of Sojourner Truth was published in 1850. The following year Truth set out to promote her book and to speak out on abolition and women’s rights. In the 1870s Truth’s friend and informal manager Frances Titus compiled a new edition of the
Narrative, adding the “Book of Life,” a scrapbook comprising essays, articles, and letters from Truth’s contemporary admirers. Truth died in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1883, and the following year Titus published a new edition that included “A Memorial Chapter.”
Nell Irvin Painter is the author of Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol and Standing at Armageddon, the United States, 1877-1919, The Narrative of Hosea Hudson and Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction. She is Edwards Professor of History at Princeton University, where she currently heads the program in African-American Studies.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I Early Cartes de Visite1 Truth in Indiana (1861)
2 Truth as Libyan Sibyl
3 Truth in Michigan (1863)
Part II Shadows and Substance
4 Truthandrsquo;s Captioned Cartes de Visite (after 1864)
5 Shadows and Chemistry
Part III Texts and Circulating Paper
6 Truthandrsquo;s Illiteracy
7 Truthandrsquo;s Copyright
8 Money and the Civil War
Part IV Collecting and the Late Photographs
9 Album Politics
10 Truthandrsquo;s Last Portraits (1881andndash;82)
Notes
Indexand#160;