The title of this book comes from the inspiring words spoken by Sojourner Truth in 1851, nine years before the Civil War, at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. In Deborah Grays White, I Am Not a Woman, her aim was to enrich knowledge of black women and antebellum culture to show an unwritten side of the history of the black American woman. Being African American and being a woman, these are the two main struggles thrown at the Black woman during and after slavery in the United States. White scholars made efforts in 1985 to focus on the experience of female slaves. Deborah Gray White explains her point of view by classifying the difficulties and interactions between the slave and the environment into which the slave was born. It begins with slave mythology using mythologies such as Jezebel or Mammy, a painted image of false images created by whites in the South. It then moves on to the differences between male and female slavery, the harsh life cycle, the network created between the female community, the customs of slave families and the journey from slavery to freedom, as well as the differences between the slave and the white woman, showing that there is more history than myth. (White, 5) Thus, shedding light on the difficulties and harassment that the black woman faced in the antebellum South. The first mythology the slave had to face was that of Jezebel. Jezebel was in every way the counter-image of the ideal of the mid-19th century Victorian lady. (White, 29) It was defined as one that explored the sexual exploitation of African American women. The image of Jezebel was seen as it was because it was assumed that African women were naturally promiscuous and d... half of paper... slaves to the agriculture-based economy, while the industry-led North he saw the threat of political power that the South could gain if slavery continued to expand. This forced both white and black women to escape their social roles and strive for something. For white women this meant escaping their husbands' shadow as they could never vote and for black women it was a way to gain freedom from the plantation and end slavery. Deborah Gray White's book shows a side of slavery containing black women that was unexposed. Although the mythologies of Mammy and Jezebel did not quite match the daily lives of slave women, there is still a big difference between being a slave and a slave or a white woman. Works Cited White, Deborah G. Ar' Ain't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South.New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Print