Ain't I a Woman

 

That man over there say

   a woman needs to be helped into carriages

and lifted over ditches

   and to have the best place everywhere.

Nobody ever helped me into carriages

   or over mud puddles

      or gives me a best place…

 

And ain’t I a woman?

   Look at me

Look at my arm!

   I have plowed and planted

and gathered into barns

   and no man could head me…

And ain’t I a woman?

   I could work as much

and eat as much as a man--

   when I could get to it--

and bear the lash as well

   and ain’t I a woman?

I have born 13 children

   and seen most all sold into slavery

and when I cried out a mother’s grief

   none but Jesus heard me…

and ain’t I a woman?

   that little man in black there say

a woman can’t have as much rights as a man

   cause Christ wasn’t a woman

Where did your Christ come from?

   From God and a woman!

Man had nothing to do with him!

   If the first woman God ever made

was strong enough to turn the world

   upside down, all alone

together women ought to be able to turn it

   rightside up again.

Erlene Stetson, Ain't I a Woman: A Book of Women's Poetry from around the World, ed. Illona Linthwaite (Gramercy, 1993)