“The sojourner frequently appears as a motif of journey in my poems. Both as Sojourner and sojourner. The journey presented is unremitting, replete with beauty, astonishment, agony, torment. It establishes the life course of people of African descent in the Americas, motivated by action and deepest reflection. Here, the journeyer Sojourner Truth speaks with an eternal voice and a panoptic sense through an aspect of self to elucidate her sojourning: an invitation to know her newly, what she notes and notices, in rigor and lightness. The ordinary and visionary luminosity of this self-owned woman-being becomes revelation, surprising narrated expectations. This poem is part of a long series about primordial women.”
—Marie-Ovide Dorcely